Milestones: Mar. 11, 1985

DIED. Alexander Scourby, 71, plummy-voiced actor and narrator of television and film, including Victory at Sea (1954); of an apparent heart attack; in Boston. The Brooklyn-born Scourby began on the New York stage in 1936 as a Shakespearean actor. Though he protested, “What actor wants to be known as a voice?” the rich timbre of his instrument took him early to advertising voice-overs, where he was said at one time to be the highest-priced voice in the business, and to Talking Books for the Blind, where he recorded more than 400 works, including the complete King James Bible, War and Peace, Shakespeare and Joyce’s Ulysses.