Born. To Ernie Kovacs, 40, cigar-homping master of ingenious TV pranks, ,nd Edith Adams, 32, blonde singer-comedienne (Li’l Abner): their first child, a daughter; in Hollywood. Name: Mia Susan. Weight: 7 lbs. 7 oz.
Married. Dorothy Dandridge, 36, lithe Negro cinemactress (Porgy and Bess, Carmen Jones); and Jack Denison, 46, white owner of a Los Angeles supper club; both ‘or the second time; in Hollywood.
Died. Charles Starkweather, 20, mass murderer who in 1958 shot, stabbed and clubbed to death ten people, including friends, foes and strangers, in a wild, inexplicable, three-day spree with his 14-year-old girl friend; by electrocution; in Lincoln, Neb.
Died. Patricia Stevens Muntz, 45, owner of Patricia Stevens, Inc., largest combination modeling-agency-charm school in the U.S.; of heart failure (she left two farewell notes and an empty bottle of barbiturates under her deathbed); in Chicago. A onetime Powers model, Pat opened a small agency of her own in Chicago in 1942, over the years added ingenious beauty lures for plain girls, upped enrollment to 2,000, grossed over $1,000,000 a year, had 41 agencies in other cities. In her last days she quarreled bitterly over control of her business with second husband Earl (“Madman”) Muntz, onetime flamboyant California used-car salesman.
Died. Bela Kovacs, 53, stubborn 20th century Hungary freedom fighter who battled the Nazis, then the Communists, always against hopeless odds, became the embodiment of democratic hope in Hungary; of internal complications resulting from nine years in a Russian prison; in Pecs, Hungary. A leader of Hungary’s underground in World War II, stocky, peasant-reared Kovacs emerged as a dominant figure in the postwar period, led a coalition of peasants and the urban middle class (Smallholders Party) to a smashing victory over the Communists in the 1945 free elections. When the Red army moved into Hungary, it threw him into prison, tortured him for five months until he signed a confession of plotting against Russia. Released in the thaw of 1956, Kovacs joined Imre Nagy’s short-lived, Communist-defying government, survived its collapse when Russian tanks blotted out the revolution, but was too broken in body and spirit to defy the Communists any longer.
Died. Dorothy Shaver, 61, president of New York’s Lord & Taylor; of a stroke; in Hudson, N.Y. Arkansas-born Dorothy Shaver climbed up through the world of fashion by her flair for showmanship, was elected Lord & Taylor’s first woman president in 1945, enlivened her store by spraying perfume at the entrance, decorating the awnings with roses.
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