Milestones

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Daren Fonda, Unmesh Kher, Ellin Martens and Sora Song

DIED. TROY DONAHUE, 65, hunky, fleetingly adored studio star of the late '50s and early '60s; of a heart attack; in Santa Monica, Calif. The blond, blue-eyed onetime Columbia University journalism student catapulted to matinee-idol status with a lead role in the 1959 teen love story A Summer Place, opposite Sandra Dee. Donahue abused drugs and drink as his career declined in the 1970s, but sobered up before appearing in such low-budget films as Bad Blood (1989) and John Waters' Cry-Baby (1990).

DIED. CHRISTIAAN BARNARD, 78, brash, charismatic South African surgeon who performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967; of an asthma attack; while vacationing in Cyprus. More dramatic than the surgery itself--Barnard called the technique "basic"--was that he proceeded when other heart-transplant surgeons, who had operated only on animals, were reluctant. An antiapartheid activist, he caused a stir when he later transplanted the heart of a young man of mixed race into a well-to-do white man. The thrice-married Barnard unabashedly enjoyed the fruits of his fame. "I love the female sex," he told TIME earlier this month. "I like to enjoy life."

DIED. ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN, 81, witty, accessible Presbyterian theologian who championed ecumenism and civil rights and served with Elie Wiesel on President Carter's Holocaust Commission; in Greenfield, Mass. Brown, whom TIME once called "the Catholics' favorite Protestant," co-wrote the book An American Dialogue to help dispel anti-Catholic prejudice against John F. Kennedy.

DIED. PAULINE KAEL, 82, passionate, pugnacious, widely influential film critic; in Great Barrington, Mass. Kael began writing about movies in the San Francisco Bay Area before serving as the New Yorker's film critic from 1968 until her retirement in 1991 (with a one-year break for a fling at Hollywood producing). In her colloquial, compulsively readable prose, she punctured the pretensions of arty classics from Hiroshima, Mon Amour to 2001: A Space Odyssey; championed such American filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma and Robert Altman; hailed Last Tango in Paris as a cultural event to rival Stravinsky's Rite of Spring; and celebrated the appeal of pop American moviemaking, where "trash" (a favorite term of praise) often gave more pleasure than "art." In the process, she set the tone and the tastes of a generation of critics.

DIED. HEYWOOD HALE BROUN, 83, elegantly literate sports journalist and sometime actor; in Kingston, N.Y. A cbs commentator for 19 years, Broun covered such sports events as Secretariat's victory in the Triple Crown, authored three books and appeared in 14 movies, including For Pete's Sake with Barbra Streisand.

DIED. JUSTIN WILSON, 87, Cajun chef and humorist for public television whose trademark expression was "I gar-on-tee"; in Baton Rouge, La. Bedecked in red suspenders, Wilson, a former safety engineer, studied his mom's cuisine as a boy, wrote five popular cookbooks and was host on such shows as Cookin' Cajun and Louisiana Cookin'.