• U.S.

Milestones: Nov. 28, 1969

3 minute read
TIME

Married. Evelyn Y. Davis, 40, corporate gadfly whose insistent questions at annual stockholders’ meetings (some 60 a year) are viewed by management as only slightly less disruptive than stink bombs; and Marvin Knudsen, 59, a New York stockbroker; both for the second time; in Greenwich, Conn.

Divorced. Manuel Ycaza, 31, tabasco-tempered Panamanian jockey, whose hell-for-leather racing style has won more than $19 million in purses since 1957; by Linda Bement Ycaza, 27, Miss Universe of 1960; after seven years of marriage, two children; in Mineola, N.Y.

Died. Lee Pressman, 63, the C.I.O.’s legal counsel from 1936 until 1948, when his far-left politics finally cost him his job and career; of cancer; in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Pressman never made any bones about his Communist leanings, often supporting the Moscow line. Yet as a union lawyer he was tops; he played a major role in negotiating the original C.I.O. contracts with such industrial giants as U.S. Steel and General Motors, and ably fought labor cases before the Supreme Court.

Died. Boris Kroyt, 72, Russian-born viola virtuoso and for 31 years a pillar of the Budapest String Quartet; of cancer; in Manhattan. Ranked with Paul Hindemith and William Primrose as one of the viola’s great masters, Kroyt joined the Budapest in 1936, and two years later the brilliant foursome traveled to the U.S., where their concerts and records raised chamber music to new heights of popularity. Their repertoire ran from the classical Beethoven and Brahms to moderns like Bartók and Milhaud, all played with a passion and Toscanini-like elegance that substantiated their preeminence as the best string quartet of the century.

Died. Joseph P. Kennedy, 81, patriarch of a star-crossed dynasty (see THE NATION).

Died. Vincent Sardi Sr., 83, the stage-struck Italian immigrant who in 1921 founded Sardi’s Restaurant, Broadway’s celebrated theatrical rendezvous; of pulmonary thrombosis; in Saranac Lake, N.Y. A warmhearted and generous friend of everyone theatrical, Sardi played host to all the stars—Garbo, the Barrymores, Katharine Cornell—and made certain that they dined undisturbed by autograph seekers; the young hopefuls lived on Sardi’s credit; plays were conceived and cast at the crowded tables; and on opening night, Sardi’s was where everyone anxiously awaited the critics’ reviews. As Dennis King once put it: “Sardi’s is more than a restaurant—it is a message center, a lovers’ rendezvous, a production office, a casting center, and even a psychiatrist’s couch.”

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