Friday, Nov. 29, 1968
Married. David Hemmings, 27, mod, madcap British acting sensation (BlowUp, Charge of the Light Brigade); and Gayle Hunnicut, 25, leggy, Texas-born starlet (P.J.), whom Hemmings "married" in an Italian chapel last year in an impromptu ceremony uncluttered by the presence of a clergyman, which he admitted was "emotional and impetuous and, we later realized, quite invalid"; in a Presbyterian ceremony; he for the second time; in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Divorced. Audrey Hepburn, 39, Hollywood's eternal princess (Roman Holiday, War and Peace); and Mel Ferrer, 51, its brooding prince (Knights of the Round Table, War and Peace), who married Audrey after they appeared together in a Broadway production of Ondine (she as a water sprite, he as knight-errant); on grounds of incompatibility; after 14 years of marriage, one child; in Merges, Switzerland.
Died. Fresco Thompson, 66, vice president and general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, who spent 46 years in the game as a player, manager, farm-system director and front-office executive; of uremic poisoning; in Fullerton, Calif.
Died. Daniel Longwell, 69, one of the first editors of LIFE; of a heart attack; at his home in Neosho, Mo. After coming to Time Inc. in 1934 from the trade-book departments at Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., Longwell served as a special assistant to Henry R. Luce, later started the experimental department that led to the publication of LIFE in 1936. Until then, most U.S. magazines used pictures mainly as text illustration; Longwell printed pictures to tell the story--strong, bold, often alone on the page. "We learned," he said, "to give the picture a chance." He began as executive editor of the magazine, became managing editor in 1944 after circulation had skyrocketed from an initial 250,000 to 4,040,300, and two years later assumed the chairmanship of LIFE'S board of editors, a position he held until his retirement in 1953.
Died. Francis Taylor, 70, wealthy Beverly Hills art dealer who started his only daughter, Elizabeth, in pictures in 1943 by wangling her the role opposite Roddy McDowall in Lassie Come Home; in his sleep, apparently of a stroke; in his home in Bel Air, Calif.
Died. Greet Hofmans, 74, Dutch faith healer whose influence on The Netherlands' royal household made headlines around the world in 1956; of unknown causes; in Amsterdam. In 1949 the gaunt, gravel-voiced spinster, who claimed that God had invested her with supernatural powers, was summoned by Prince Bernhard to work her miracles on the young and partially blind Princess Maria Christina. The ministrations failed, and in 1950 Prince Bernhard ordered the faith healer from the palace--though Queen Juliana continued to consult her and allowed her to have meetings on Queen Mother Wilhelmina's estate. Rumor held Miss Hofmans responsible for a growing rift between Bernhard and Juliana, and when the stories got into print in 1956, they stirred a storm that ended only when the palace announced that "the Queen has decided to entertain no more relations, direct or indirect, with Miss Hofmans."
Died. Walter Wanger, 74, high-rolling producer of dozens of screen spectaculars during his 49-year career; of a heart attack; in Manhattan. The Dartmouth-educated son of a well-to-do San Francisco knit-goods manufacturer seemed out of place in the rough-and-tumble Hollywood of the 1920s and '30s, but Wanger's 1921 movie The Sheik, with Rudolf Valentino, was a classic moneymaker of its day. His other hits launched such stars as Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, and Joan Bennett, whom he married in 1940. Then it all soured. In 1951, Wanger's epic Joan of Are turned into a resounding box-office flop. He made headlines himself by shooting and seriously wounding his wife's agent, whom he accused of breaking up his marriage. That extravaganza cost him 15 weeks on a penal farm. After he got out, he took another kind of rap with Cleopatra, which stirred less interest for its artistry than for its monumental $40 million price tag and its famed Taylor-Burton antics. Fired as producer before the film was completed, Wanger sued 20th Century Fox for more than $2,000,000, was in turn sued for libel by Fox President Sov-ros Skouras for his scalding book, My Life with Cleopatra. Skouras later withdrew his suit; Wanger collected $ 100,000 out of court.
Died. Dr. Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, 77, archiater (papal physician) to Pius XII, who shocked his colleagues by peddling graphically grisly articles and photographs of the Pope's death in 1958; of a heart attack; in Rome. The doctor first tried to hawk accounts of the Pope's life and illness in 1954. He found no takers, but several Italian newspapers bought his material after the Pope's death, and the angered Sacred College of Cardinals banned Galeazzi-Lisi from the Vatican.
Died. Pauline McDowell Atkins, 94, last survivor of the 18 founders of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who signed the roll at the first meeting in Washington in 1890 but was not permitted to join the organization officially until the following year because she was only 16; in Manasquan, N.J.
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