Milestones: Sep. 20, 1982

HOSPITALIZED. Janet Gaynor, 73, winner of the first Oscar for Best Actress (1929), in serious condition with eleven broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, pelvic fractures, an injured bladder and a damaged kidney; and Mary Martin, 68, star of Broadway’s original South Pacific and TV’s first Peter Pan, in good condition with two fractured ribs, a fractured pelvis and a punctured lung; after a vehicular accident; in San Francisco. Gaynor and her husband Paul Gregory, 61, and Martin and her pressagent, Ben Washer, 76, were riding in a taxi when they were struck broadside by a van. Washer was killed. Gregory is in good condition.

DIED. Clifford Curzon, 75, sublime British pianist whose keyboard virtuosity and prodigious repertory won him world acclaim; of congestive heart failure; in London. A child prodigy, Curzon became a subprofessor at the Royal Academy of Music when he was 19. When asked to explain his musical ability he once said, “I practice and practice and work and work. I dare not take anything for granted.”

DIED. Mohammed Abdullah, 76, the tempestuous “Lion of Kashmir” who struggled over much of his life to free his predominantly Muslim homeland from the political domination of India; of a heart attack; in Srinagar, Kashmir.

DIED. Frederic Dannay, 76, former advertising art director who found his real creative calling as co-author of the Ellery Queen mysteries; in White Plains, N.Y. Dannay and his cousin, former Pressagent Manfred B. Lee, who died in 1971, wrote the first Queen story, The Roman Hat Mystery, for a 1928 magazine contest. They won, marking the beginning of a 43-year collaboration in which Queen, a sophisticated, improbably knowledgeable man about town, solved intricate puzzles in more than 60 novels.

DIED. Jack Tworkov, 82, revered member of the New York school of abstract expressionist painting; in Provincetown, Mass. An admirer of Cézanne, Tworkov worked with bold yet lyrical brushstrokes to build up fields of color, which he played against one another. Like many abstract expressionists, he found his subject in the act of painting. He once said, “My hope is to confront the picture without a ready technique or prepared attitude.”