Died. Newcomb Mott, 27, Massachusetts book salesman who last November was sentenced to 18 months in a Soviet labor camp for wandering across the Soviet frontier near Murmansk while on a vacation in Norway; reportedly by his own hand (the Russians claim that he slashed his throat in a lavatory of the train that was taking him to a camp in central Russia); near Kirov. Washington immediately denounced Russian handling of the case and demanded a "full investigation."

Died. Gino Prato, 64, former Bronx shoemaker who in 1955 briefly became TV's top-rated star on The $64,000 Question, when he correctly identified the opera with which Toscanini made his operatic debut (Aida) for $32,000, then declined an all-or-nothing chance at the jackpot, after which he became a $10,000-a-year good-will ambassador for the Biltrite Rubber Heel Company; of cancer; in Miami.

Died. Robert Livingston Johnson, 71, who organized the first advertising sales staff of TIME (1923), and supervised those of FORTUNE (1930) and LIFE (1936), as a Republican National Committeeman in 1940 helped win Wendell Willkie's nomination, then became Temple University's longtime (1941 to 1959) president, working ably to increase enrollment and add new facilities, breaking his tenure only in 1953 to head briefly the U.S. International Information Administration; of a heart attack; in Wynnewood, Pa.

Died. John Joseph Broderick, 72, the toughest cop on Broadway in the turbulent 1930s; of a heart attack; in Middletown, N.Y. (see THE LAW).

Died. Herbert Marshall, 75, British-born cinemactor, who lost his right leg in World War I, learned to walk with only the barest limp on an artificial limb, then emigrated to the U.S. and became the very model of a Hollywood Briton in all the stereotypes from charming rake (Trouble in Paradise) to losing-but-noble lover (Accent on Youth); apparently of a heart attack; in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Died. General Courtney Hicks Hodges, 79, World War II commander of the U.S. First Army in its spearhead drive across the center of France and Germany; of a heart attack; in San Antonio. A sober professional who in 1905 flunked out of West Point (for failing geometry), then climbed from buck private to four-star general, Hodges had little of the personal flair of a Patton or a Montgomery; but he was a solid tactician whose 450,000-man force liberated Paris, fought its way out of the bitter Battle of the Bulge and smashed the Nazis' Siegfried Line.

Died. Kaufman Thuma Keller, 80, titan of the auto industry for 21 years as president (1935-50), then chairman (1950-56) of Chrysler Corp.; of a heart attack; in London. "K.T." always referred to himself as "a machinist by trade," and so he was, winning Chrysler a reputation for superior engineering although he had never won a degree, increasing annual production to 1,000,000 cars by 1949 and making the company the nation's No. 3 automaker. At the start of World War II he was asked if Chrysler could make tanks. "Sure," answered K.T., "when can I see one?"--and in little more than a year Chrysler was producing 750 Shermans a month.

Died. Kathleen Norris, 85, grandmother of the American sentimental novel (Passion Flower, Heartbroken Melody), widow of Author Charles G. Norris (Salt) and sister-in-law of the late social novelist Frank Norris (McTeague), a feminist and pacifist who in nearly half a century turned out 81 relentlessly wholesome books (10,000,000 copies sold), plus reportage and innumerable short stories for women's magazines; following a stroke; in San Francisco. "I write," she once said, "for people with simple needs, like myself," and her books played endless variations on a single theme: "Get a girl in all kinds of trouble and then get her out."

Died. The Rev. George Clair St. John, 88, longtime (1908-47) headmaster of Choate, who turned a tiny Connecticut establishment of 35 students into one of the U.S.'s foremost prep schools with an enrollment of 600 and the highest of academic rankings; of cancer; in Hobe Sound, Fla. "The Old Head," as his boys called him, forged Choate in his image; strongly Episcopal in his insistence on compulsory chapel, staunchly ethical in his devotion to the honor system, fresh and human in his habit of occasionally dismissing classes for a hike in the mountains. John F. Kennedy was one of the graduates who remembered his frequent exhortation: "Ask not what your school can do for you, but what you can do for your school."

Died. Arthur Sears Henning, 89, dean of Washington's press corps, the Chicago Tribune's softspoken, acid-penned bureau chief from 1914 to 1949 and close associate of the late Publisher Robert McCormick, whose high-cholered, ultraconservative views he usually reflected; of pneumonia; in Washington Henning knew every President since Theodore Roosevelt, classified him a "outstanding," Woodrow Wilson as "irascible" and Calvin Coolidge, extraordinarily enough, as a man who in private "would talk your arm off if you gave him a chance."

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