Divorced. By Brenda Lewis (real name: Birdie Solomon), 38, handsome soprano of the Metropolitan Opera: Simon Asen, 48, conductor; after 15 years of marriage, two children; in Sunbury, Pa.

Died. Lou Costello (real name: Louis Francis Cristillo), 52, comedian, the fat funny half of Abbott and Costello; of a heart attack; in Beverly Hills, Calif. "Now, on the St. Louis team," Straight Man Bud Abbott would say, "Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third." Costello: "Do you know the fellows' names?" A: "Yes." C: "Well, then, who's playin' first?" A: "Yes." C: "I mean the fellow's name on first base." "Who," said Abbott, and they were off on a routine that became so famous that a plaque bearing the dialogue hangs in the baseball Hall of Fame. They performed it thousands of times (on several occasions at the special request of Franklin Roosevelt, who said it was his alltime favorite), once earned $15,000 for a single rendition. Vaudevillians Abbott and Costello joined forces in the '30s. Costello was the son of a Paterson, N.J. silkmaker. In younger, leaner days he had been a lightweight prizefighter and a Hollywood stunt man. Abbott had sold tickets in a theater box office. Their partnership hit the big time with the 1939 Broadway musical Streets of Paris, the big money with the 1941 film Buck Privates. Through 1951, they were almost always among the top ten moneymakers in Hollywood, pulling down as much as half a million a year. Beneath Costello's clowning there was often hidden suffering--he had rheumatic fever, his infant son drowned in a swimming pool--but the farce and slapstick went on uninterrupted until 1957, when Costello ended the partnership and tried unsuccessfully to become a more serious actor. Last week, at the moment when retired Bud Abbott received word that Lou Costello had died, he was watching himself on a TV rerun, telling his little friend "Who's on first."

Died. Ichiro Hatoyama, 76, onetime (1954-56) Prime Minister of Japan; of a heart attack; in Tokyo. A peppery parliamentarian who in earlier days often got into fist fights in the Diet, Hatoyama would have become Premier in 1946 had he not been purged by Douglas MacArthur for his prewar militarist sympathies. He was depurged in 1951. As Prime Minister, he visited Moscow in 1956, formally ended the official state of Russo-Japanese hostility that had lingered on from World War II, opened the way for Japan's membership in the U.N.

Died. Fred Stone, 85, grand old man of show business, multitalented performer, actor, hoofer, singer, comedian, lariatist, tightrope walker, bareback rider, ventriloquist, mime, minstrel; after long illness and two years of total blindness; in North Hollywood, Calif. Famed as half of the vaudeville team of Montgomery & Stone, he made the leap to Broadway as the straw man in The Wizard of Oz (1903). Through such great hits as Victor Herbert's The Red Mill and Jerome Kern's Stepping Stones (in which his daughter Dorothy made her debut), Fred Stone became the nation's top musicomedian, later switched to straight plays and the cinema.

Died. Joseph Finch Guffey, 88, Pennsylvania Democrat, party wheelhorse and boss, U.S. Senator (1935-47); in Washington. Joe Guffey, Princeton '94, joined the undergraduate Democratic Club, met Professor Woodrow Wilson. In the 1912 convention, Guffey swung Pennsylvania votes to Wilson, bucking the opposition of his uncle, Colonel J. M. Guffey, whom he shouldered out as party boss. In 1932 he threw early support to F.D.R., secured his own political career. As Pennsylvania's first Democratic Senator in 54 years, he sponsored the Guffey-Vinson Coal Act, almost lost control of the party in his state when he backed John L. Lewis' candidate for Governor (1938). To the scrapbook of U.S. politics Guffey once contributed a memorable recollection: "One Election Day I handed $2,500 to my campaign manager to get out the vote. I like to tell this story. At the end of the day, he gave me back $1,500. Now doesn't that prove there are some honest politicians?"

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