Monday, Aug. 17, 1959
Married. Margaret O'Brien, 22, a pig-tailed film star at four (Journey for Margaret), who won hearts with her winsome smile until age made her a Hollywood has-been at 13; and Harold Robert Allen, 24, commercial artist; in Los Angeles.
Divorced. Richard McCutchen, 32, personable onetime Marine Corps captain, now a Volkswagen district service manager, famed for his $64,000 winnings on cooking knowledge (he was the first top winner) from TV's now defunct The $64,000 Question; by Betsy Griffen McCutchen, 32; after ten years of marriage, three children; in Delaware, Ohio.
Died. Albert Namatjira, 57, big-boned aboriginal artist who at 31 began painting Western-style watercolor landscapes in the Australian wilds, which became highly popular in civilized Australia; of a heart attack; in Alice Springs, Australia. Namatjira (Flying Ant) used his fame to press for equal rights for his outcast fellow aborigines, but he enjoyed many of their tribal ways, basked in the adulation of some 60 relatives among whom he freely divided his income, finally won full citizenship and with it the right to buy liquor, which he hauled out to his friends for some wild times, ended up in jail for three months, where his health was fatally impaired.
Died. Joseph Revai, 61, Hungarian Communist zealot and wily theoretician, Minister of People's Culture (1949-53), who provided ideology for Hungary's Stalinist Boss Matyas Rakosi and promoted the fierce attack on Cardinal Mindszenty and other religious leaders, skipped to Russia when the 1956 revolt began but returned as soon as it was over to help execute the revolutionaries; in Budapest, Hungary.
Died. Jean Benoit-Levy, 71, French producer of some 400 documentary films, the best of them (La Maternelle, Ballerina) luminous glimpses of a tender world of uncoached children in their ordinary surroundings; in Paris.
Died. Mary Teresa Norton, 84, buxom, bustling New Jersey Congresswoman for 26 years (1925-51), first woman Democrat elected to Congress (first Congresswoman: Montana's Republican Jeannette Rankin--1917-19, 1941-43), a scrappy debater, called by her respectful colleagues "Aunt Mary," who championed her political sponsor, New Jersey Boss Frank Hague, and social legislation; in Greenwich, Conn. An ardent New Dealer, she fought tooth and nail for the 1938 wage-hour bill, chairmaned the House Labor Committee from 1937-47, insisted on her dignity and equality in the halls of Congress (once when a House member referred to her as a lady, she snapped back, "I'm no lady. I'm a member of Congress").
Died. Reuben Bennett D'Aigle, 85, legendary lone-wolf gold prospector who roamed the Canadian North in search of his fortune and always narrowly missed it; of a heart attack; in Scarborough, Ont. On his way to register a claim to gold he discovered in northern Ontario in 1907, "Sourdough" was sidetracked by tales of a silver strike, learned to his sorrow that he had passed up a $500 million gold mine. After years of scouring Labrador (which has remembered him in the names of rivers, lakes and streets), he struck iron ore, but the depression prevented him from mining it and the Canadian Government reaped the harvest of one of the richest iron deposits in the world. He took his luck philosophically: "I was just there a darn sight too soon, but I have certainly enjoyed myself."
Died. Don Luigi Sturzo, 87, priest, brilliant political theorist and grand old man of Italian politics, who led Italy's Roman Catholics back into politics after the bitter break with secular leaders, following Italy's unification, founded (1919) the broad-based Popular Party, largely Catholic but independent of the Vatican, which steered an enlightened middle course between burgeoning extremists of left and right, rose after the Fascist interlude to be Italy's dominant Christian Democratic Party; of a heart attack; in Rome. At the zenith (1923) of his powers Sturzo fell before the violent tactics of Mussolini and fled the country, in exile wrote prophetically (Italy and the Coming World) of postwar disorders, later returned to Italy to lend encouragement to his flourishing Christian Democrats.
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