Monday, Oct. 15, 1979
MARRIED. Martin Scorsese, 36, American film director (Taxi Driver, Mean Streets); and Italian Actress-Journalist Isabella Rossellini, 27, daughter of Screen Star Ingrid Bergman and the late director Roberto Rossellini; he for the third time, she for the first; in Bracciano, Italy, with Actor Robert De Niro as best man.
DIED. Armi Ratia, 67, Finnish designer and the dynamo behind Marimekko, the internationally known fabric and fashion house; after a long illness; in Helsinki. In 1949 Ratia quit her advertising job to write a novel and help salvage her husband's threadbare oilcloth company. The novel never was written, but the firm with Ratia as president took shape in 1951 as Marimekko (translation: a little dress for Mary). Ratia's bold-hued, clear-figured prints and the functional clothes she cut from them became Finland's hottest export since the sauna.
DIED. Roger K. Fawcett, 69, president of Fawcett Publications; of cancer; in New York City. The Minnesota-born Fawcett succeeded his father as chief executive officer of the firm, which publishes magazines (Woman's Day, Mechanix Illustrated), paperbacks with the Crest, Gold Medal and Popular Library imprints and Charles Schulz Peanuts books. Fawcett sold the family-owned company to CBS in 1977 for $50 million.
DIED. Yaeko Mizutani, 74, grande dame of the Japanese stage for a quarter of a century; of cancer; in Tokyo. A breathtaking beauty, Mizutani made her stage debut at eight and became the national sweetheart, playing romantic roles in plays by Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Ibsen. In 1928 she joined Japan's renowned Shimpa theater company, and later proved her acting talents in films and on television.
DIED. Roy Harris, 81, prolific composer often called "the Walt Whitman of American music"; after several strokes; in Santa Monica, Calif. The big, rawboned musical pioneer was born in a log cabin, perhaps appropriately, on Lincoln's birthday in Lincoln County, Okla. In the late 1920s he studied classical composition under Nadia Boulanger in Paris. But his vigorous rhythms and clean melodic lines were more reflective of the open spaces and the expansive optimism of his native land than of Europe. "America," he said, "is the richest, strongest, best fed of countries. Why should our composers produce fussy little bits of emaciated music based on secondhand European prototypes?" He wrote 16 symphonies and 185 other major works, many of them for his pianist wife, Johana. His Symphony: 1933 was the first American symphony ever recorded; the Harris Third (1937) is now a repertory staple.
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