Milestones, Jul. 24, 1933

Married. Fred Astaire, 34, musicomedy dancer, son of an Omaha brewer; and Phyllis Livingston Baker Potter, 25, Manhattan socialite divorcee; in Brooklyn.

Married. Michael Cudahy, Chicago meat-packing scion (grandson); and Mary Jacklyn Borax, dancer; in Beverly Hills, Calif. Married. Nina Wilcox Putnam Sanderson Ogle, novelist; and Christian Eliot, nephew of Granville John Eliot, Earl of St. Germans; in Las Vegas, Nev., day after she was granted a divorce from her third husband, Arthur James Ogle in Juarez, Mex. Divorced. Elliott Roosevelt, 22, the President’s second son; by Elizabeth Browning Donner Roosevelt, 21; in Minden, Nev. Elliott, who had established residence at Lake Tahoe, followed a pre-arranged program by filing suit first, charging “extreme mental cruelty” which caused him “great mental agony and suffering.” Then from Philadelphia Elizabeth Roosevelt dispatched by airmail a cross-suit, under which the decree was granted her after a 15-min. hearing behind closed doors. Free, Elliott announced he would celebrate by “taking in the World’s Fair,” engaged passage on a Chicago plane. Meanwhile from Fort Worth to Chicago proceeded Ruth Googins, Weliesley graduate in whom Elliott denied any but a “friendly interest” last month when his divorce plans were announced (TIME, June 19). Died. Irene Gömbös, wife of Hungary’s Prime Minister Julius Gömbös, of heart failure; in Budapest. Longtime admirer of Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Julius Gömbös formed an anti-Semitic society called the “Awakening Magyars” during the tangled Hungarian intrigues after the war. He renounced anti-Semitism when he became Prime Minister last September, has since tried to resist the tide of anti-Semitism rolling into Hungary from Nazi Germany, which friends last week blamed for the untimely death (she was not 40) of Irene Gömbös—Jewish daughter of a Jewish champagne manufacturer. Died. Louis M. Kotecki, 51, Milwaukee City Comptroller, indicted four months ago for malfeasance; by his own hand (pistol), after shooting and critically wounding Chief Deputy Comptroller William Wendt, whose testimony before the grand jury, Kotecki believed, had made it appear that the city had been mulcted of some $500,000 through his careless checking of bond transactions; in Milwaukee. Died. Dr. Raymond Philip Dougherty, 55, professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale, curator of Sterling Memorial Museum’s Babylonian Collection; by his own hand (hanging); near his home in Hamden, Conn. In April he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Died. Dr. Frederick Henry Baetjer, 58, famed x-ray pioneer, professor of roentgenology at Johns Hopkins University; of long-standing necrosis caused by x-ray burns; in Catonsville, Md. He began his experiments before the advent of modern protective devices, by 1909 had lost an eye, four fingers. Surgeons had to keep whittling at his ravaged body, performed 73 operations besides innumerable skin grafts.

Died. Edwin Gould, 67, second son of the late famed Financier Jay Gould; of heart failure; in Oyster Bay, L. I.

Died. Irving Babbitt, 67, famed Humanist, professor of French & Comparative Literature at Harvard; after long illness; in Cambridge, Mass. Hating modernism, romanticism, the “Machine Age,” he went back to the Greek and Roman classics for an austere doctrine which, with Princeton’s Paul Elmer More, he fervently preached. In his lectures he loved to excoriate Jean Jacques Rousseau, No. 1 French romanticist; two years ago his students ran lotteries based on the number of writers Professor Babbitt mentioned in a 60-min. lecture (TIME, March 16, 1931).

Died. Sir John Reeves Ellerman, 71, shipping tycoon, reputed possessor of Great Britain’s largest fortune (circa $140,000,000); in Dieppe, France. To his vast shipping enterprises he added real estate and publishing, at one time owned a string of newspapers and smartcharts, including London’s Sphere, Sketch, Tatler. Hardly more than a name to the average Briton, he shunned publicity and public places, shooed away photographers, lived in a simplicity suggesting stinginess, occupied but one inch of space in Who’s Who. He stealthily gave fat sums to charity, was irked when newshawks got wind of his donations.

Died. John Markle, 74, retired coal tycoon, Manhattan charitarian; of heart disease; in Manhattan. Starting with Pennsylvania anthracite properties inherited from his father, he bought up adjacent flooded mines, built the huge Jeddo Tunnel through three miles of rock to drain them. During the 1902 strike he fiercely called on President Roosevelt for Federal troops to subdue the United Mine Workers under John Mitchell. Disgruntled by the settlement of the strike, he gave up active supervision of his properties, moved to Manhattan. In 1907 he went totally blind, later recovered the use of his left eye. Good friend of J. Pierpont Morgan, he was in the Morgan offices when a bomb explosion rocked the building in 1920, was gashed by flying glass. At No. 1060 Fifth Avenue he owned one of the world’s largest private apartments (45 rooms. 22 baths), lived there alone after his wife’s death in 1927. Through the Markle Foundation he gave millions to hospitals, libraries, welfare institutions, Lafayette College (of which he was a graduate).