Milestones

By Richard Corliss; Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Elizabeth L. Bland, Lina Lofaro And Deirdre Van Dyk

DIED. SAM PHILLIPS, 80, prime impresario of rock 'n' roll; of respiratory failure, in Memphis, Tenn. In the '50s Phillips' Sun Records in Memphis was the home of raw genius, both black (Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King) and redneck (Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and that holy hellion of rockabilly, Jerry Lee Lewis). One day an 18-year-old Elvis Presley went to Sun's studio to record two songs for his mother and was soon vamping on the Arthur Crudup tune That's All Right. Phillips legendarily remarked, "That's a pop song, just 'bout." Pop as in a pop-music explosion. Phillips didn't sing or play an instrument, he didn't always produce the music that came out of his studio, and in 1955 he shortsightedly sold Presley's contract to RCA for $35,000. But his ear was infallible. He had the aural version of precognition. He retired a rich man--not because of Sun but because he was an early shareholder in another midcentury Memphis business, Holiday Inn. --By Richard Corliss

DEADLOCKED. A jury in the trial of JEREMY MORSE, 25, ex--police officer in Inglewood, Calif., accused of assault after he was caught on videotape battering a handcuffed black male suspect; in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said they will press to retry Morse within 60 days.

DISCONTINUED. The original BEETLE, lovable roadster and iconic artifact of the '60s; 70 years after Hitler commissioned a people's car--in German, Volkswagen. Competition from more modern vehicles pushed Volkswagen to phase out production at the car's last remaining plant, in Puebla, Mexico. The plant will continue to build the redesigned version introduced in the late 1990s.

DIED. JANE BARBE, 74, doyenne of telephone and voice-mail recordings, whose messages included "I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service" and "At the tone the time will be..."; of complications from cancer; in Roswell, Ga. Valued for her calm, friendly delivery and skill at cramming her messages into precise time constraints, Barbe--who also recorded weather updates and hotel wake-up calls--was heard some 40 million times a day during the 1980s and early '90s. "Vocally," she said, "I get around."

DIED. VANCE HARTKE, 84, three-term Democratic Senator from Indiana; of a heart attack; in Falls Church, Va. A populist and passionate liberal, Hartke was known in the Senate for his early opposition to the war in Vietnam. In 1966, more than two years before America's deep divisions over the war would become dramatically clear at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he was one of six Senators to draft a letter to President Johnson, his onetime mentor in the Senate, seeking a suspension of bombing in North Vietnam.

DIED. WALTER ZAPP, 97, inventor of the Minox mini-camera, a device tiny enough to be hidden in a closed hand; in Binningen, Switzerland. Though the camera he created in 1936 became a popular gadget in James Bond movies and other spy films, Zapp's invention was inspired not by anything so intriguing as espionage but by having once worked as an art photographer's apprentice, which required him to lug around heavy wooden cameras.

DIED. BOB HOPE, 100, wisecracking comic legend whose career spanned vaudeville, TV and film; in Toluca Lake, Calif. (see ESSAY).