Milestones, Jul. 28, 1947

Married. John Gilbert Winant Jr., 25, handsome, taciturn elder son of the one-time U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, for 19 months a P.W. in Germany (after his B-17 was shot down over Münster); and Janine Perret, 24, a Swiss girl he met nine years ago; in Geneva.

Divorced. By Hedy Lamarr, 32, conspicuously decorative Viennese-born cinemactress: John Loder, 49, tall, tweedy British cinemactor, her third husband (others: Fritz Mandl, Gene Markey); after four years, two children; in Los Angeles.

Died. Ruth Harkness, 46, first person to capture a live giant panda; of acute alcoholism; in a Pittsburgh hotel bathtub. When in 1935 oil-heir husband William Hale Harkness Jr. died of cancer in Shanghai, spunky Manhattan Dress Designer Ruth promptly sailed off to continue his interrupted giant panda hunt, found a one-pound baby panda nestled in a Tibetan tree trunk, brought it back to Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo.

Died. René Kraus, 46, able Austrian émigré journalist, biographer (Winston Churchill, The Men Around, Churchill) and onetime politico (in Schuschnigg’s pre-Anschluss “inner Cabinet”); after long illness; in Amityville, N.Y.

Died. William Leslie Maxson, 49, jovial, rotund engineer and industrialist; of cancer; in Boston. Maxson, for 15 years a U.S. Navy officer, was blessed by dyers for two big aids in long-distance flying: 1) his invention of a process to precook and quick-freeze complete meals for easy preparation during flight; 2) his “robot navigator,” a mechanical computer for quick solution of complex celestial navigation problems.

Died. Walter Donaldson, 54, Brooklyn-born composer whose Mammy and My Blue Heaven made him one of the brightest of Tin Pan Alley’s neon lights; of a liver ailment; in Santa Monica, Calif.

Died. Yomejiro Noguchi,* 72, Japanese poet and professor who in his younger days came to the U.S., married a Bryn Mawr girl (their son: Manhattan Sculptor Isamu Noguchi), then went back to Tokyo, where he discarded his Western wife and ideas, became a great booster of Japanese imperialism; of stomach cancer; in Toyooka, Japan.

Died. Robert Latham Owen, 91, one of Oklahoma’s first two Senators (from 1907 until he went blind in 1925), co-author of the Federal Reserve Act (which in 1939 he called a failure owing to poor administration), and great friend of the Indian (he was part Cherokee); in Washington, D.C.

* No kin to Microbe Hunter Hideyo Noguchi.