Milestones: Dec. 14, 1981

DIED. Natalie Wood, 43, radiant movie actress who appeared in 45 films and won three Academy Award nominations; of accidental drowning; off Santa Catalina Island, Calif, (see NATION).

DIED. Hershy Kay, 62, versatile composer and arranger for numerous Broadway musicals and ballets, as well as movies and television shows; of heart disease; in Danbury, Conn. The son of Russian immigrants, Kay started his career in 1944 orchestrating On the Town, the first Broadway musical of his friend Leonard Bernstein. They later collaborated on Candide (1956 and 1973) and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976). Kay had three shows currently playing on Broadway: Evita, A Chorus Line and Barnum. Several of his best scores were musical Americana commissioned by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet, and include Cakewalk (1951), Western Symphony (1954) and Stars and Stripes (1958).

DIED. Wallace Harrison, 86, New York architect who played a major role in planning such urban complexes as the United Nations headquarters, Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center; in New York City. Harrison was celebrated for his skills at organizing disparate groups of architects to work on grand municipal projects. Rockefeller Center is considered a prime, innovative example of modern design, but Lincoln Center and the Empire State Plaza in Albany have been widely criticized as banal and pompous. Harrison’s bold, romantic impulses can best be seen in works like the Trylon and the Perisphere, which symbolized the confident mood of the 1939 World’s Fair.

DIED. Walter Knott, 91, entrepreneur who converted a California roadside fruit stand into Knott’s Berry Farm, a multimillion-dollar enterprise; in Buena Park, Calif. Knott, who once marketed jellies and jams and expanded into fried-chicken dinners, opened Knott’s Berry Farm in 1940. The family-owned operation now includes an amusement park, which draws more than 5 million visitors a year, a number exceeded only by the Disney theme parks in Florida and California.

DEATH REVEALED. Fredric Wertham, 86, author and psychiatrist who crusaded against violence in comic books, movies and television; on Nov. 18; in Kempton, Pa. Wertham, a Munich-born authority on criminal psychology, argued that violence is a product of cultural influences. In his books Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and A Sign for Cain (1966), he contended that violence in the mass media was in part responsible for juvenile delinquency. He called television “a school for violence,” and commenting on movies, he wrote, “If I should meet an unruly youngster in a dark alley. I prefer it to be one who has not seen Bonnie and Clyde.” Wertham’s campaign in the 1950s against comic books forced that industry to tone down crime and horror.