MILESTONES

SENTENCED. JAMES WATT, 58, Reagan-era Secretary of the Interior; to community service and a $5,000 fine; after pleading guilty to attempting to influence a grand jury looking into his lobbying activities; in Washington.

DIED. KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI, 54, master Polish filmmaker; after heart-bypass surgery; in Warsaw. An Oscar nominee last year for Red, he made daunting, haunting studies of passion and alienation on the grand scale, as in his 10-hour Decalogue, which dramatizes the Ten Commandments in a Warsaw high-rise, and his Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, Red), in which troubled souls in France, Poland and Switzerland come to terms with a dark obsession. In 1994 Kieslowski said he was quitting films; he just wanted "to sit alone in a room and smoke." He left behind some of the most elegant and intelligent films of the past decade.

DIED. VINCE EDWARDS, 67, actor; of pancreatic cancer; in Los Angeles. As Dr. Ben Casey, he was surly, sarcastic, short-tempered--and that's just how he treated his friends. Yet TV viewers in the 1960s couldn't get enough of the neurosurgeon or of Edwards, who portrayed the combative Casey as the polar opposite of his ratings rival, the saintly Doctor Kildare (played by Richard Chamberlain). Prior to Ben Casey, Edwards was a B-movie gangster. After, he appeared in forgettable film and TV work, including the inevitable Return of Ben Casey in 1988.

DIED. ROSS HUNTER, 74, producer; of lymphoma; in Los Angeles. Hunter's movies were rarely mistaken for art--or for anyone else's work. From weepers (1954's Magnificent Obsession) to musicals (Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967) to comedies (a brace of Doris Day films) to dramas (1970's Airport), the typical Hunter product offered a high-calorie menu of top-priced Hollywood stars, expensive sets and sumptuous costuming that gave tragedy and melodrama a gloss of glamour.