Died. Samuel Klein, 56, world's biggest and fastest independent retail seller of women's clothing; of a heart attack; in Manhattan. He was founder and sole owner of the fabulous S. Klein store on Manhattan's Union Square, a vast establishment (more than 400,000 square feet of floor space) that grosses some $30,000,000 a year without benefit of sales clerks or advertising. Klein started in business with less than $100, reached a personal income of some $1,000,000 a year by selling dresses in enormous quantities at small profits, with a minimum of store help.

Died. Laura Hope Crews, 62, veteran character actress; of a kidney ailment; in Manhattan. She spent most of her life playing the parts of bird-minded flibbertigibbets. She had a thwacking success in one serious role: the pathologically possessive mother in Sidney Howard's The Silver Cord. When sound came to the cinema she went to Hollywood, was flibberti-gibbety Aunt Pittypat in Gone With the Wind. As one of the solicitous old poisoners in Arsenic and Old Lace she played her last part; she was the fourth famed character actress to die in five weeks (the others: Dame Marie Tempest, May Robson, Edna May Oliver).

Died. Joseph Francis Anthony Hagan ("Philadelphia Jack O'Brien"), 64, light-heavyweight champion of the early 1900s; after a prostate operation; in Manhattan. He lost his ring fortune speculating in real estate, turned to bodybuilding, ran famed gyms in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Unknown in the U.S., he went to the British Isles in 1900, knocked out the British heavyweight and middleweight champs, came home in 1902 with a mighty reputation, a small fortune, 18 trunks, 72 sets of red-and-blue silk underwear, a top hat, frock coat, and a rococo vocabulary. He won the light-heavyweight championship from Bob Fitzsimmons, who was 44 at the time, and hit him only once in 13 rounds. O'Brien batted 21-year-old Middleweight Stanley Ketchel around for eight rounds in 1909, when O'Brien was 31, and was then knocked cold. "I had heard," he reminisced later, "that Ketchel's dynamic onslaught was such it could not readily be withstood, but I conjectured I could jab his puss off."

Died. Major General William Crozier (ret.), 87, longtime chief of Army Ordnance (1901-18); in Washington. Made chief of Army Ordnance by Roosevelt I, he helped design the Buffington-Crozier disappearing gun carriage of the U.S. coast defense's-heavy artillery.

Died. A nameless mouse of uncertain age; by devouring (by a pink rat); in Hurstmonceaux, England. His distinction: he was green. He was a triumph of the Rev. Dr. Rosslyn Bruce, an amateur geneticist, who bred 50 mouse generations to achieve the greenness.

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