Milestones

By Melissa August, Elizabeth L. Bland, Unmesh Kher, Kate Novack and Heather Won Tesoriero Sunday, June 01, 2003
    • SETTLED. AOL TIME WARNER'S LAWSUIT AGAINST MICROSOFT, with a cooperation agreement that ends a bitter rivalry between the companies. Microsoft will pay AOL $750 million to settle the antitrust suit brought by its Netscape unit and will grant AOL a seven-year license for use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

    ARRESTED. DERRICK TODD LEE, 34, for five murders in Baton Rouge, La.; in Atlanta. Police said Lee's DNA linked him to the "Louisiana Slasher" serial killings that kept Baton Rouge on edge for 18 months. He is also a suspect in several earlier murders.


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    DIED. LUCIANO BERIO, 77, experimental Italian composer; in Rome. Utilizing everything from electronic sounds to the spoken word, he created an innovative body of work that often divided critics. His 1968 Sinfonia, which he conducted for the New York Philharmonic, featured passages from Beckett and Joyce, musical quotations from Mahler and Stravinsky, student graffiti and the Swingle Singers to create what TIME praised as a "new kind of dramaturgy."

    DIED. KATHLEEN WINSOR, 83, whose 1944 novel Forever Amber was the first of a genre of racy, romantic best sellers; at her home in New York City. The book chronicled the sexual adventures of a young woman in Restoration England and drew the scorn of censors, including the Massachusetts attorney general, who counted 70 references to sexual intercourse and 39 illegitimate pregnancies in its 972 pages.

    DIED. SLOAN WILSON, 83, author of the best-selling 1955 novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit; of complications from Alzheimer's disease; in Colonial Beach, Va. His novel of suburban and corporate angst struck a postwar nerve and coined a cultural catchphrase.

    DIED. SANDMAN SIMS, 86, tap dancer at Harlem's Apollo Theater, whose job for decades was to chase unpopular acts offstage on amateur nights; in New York City. Howard Sims, who won his stage name for dancing on sand, taught his fancy footwork to dancers Gregory Hines and Ben Vereen, and boxers Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali.

    DIED. MARTHA SCOTT, 90, actress who originated the role of Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town onstage and repeated it in the 1940 film, for which she received an Oscar nomination; in Los Angeles. She also played Charlton Heston's mother in two biblical epics, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur.

    DIED. JANET COLLINS, 86, elegant, electric prima ballerina for the Metropolitan Opera House, and the first black artist to perform at the Met; in Fort Worth, Texas. She won acclaim on Broadway in Cole Porter's 1950 musical Out of This World, and after her Met debut in 1951--four years before Marian Anderson's celebrated debut there — went on to principal roles in such operas as Aida and Carmen.

    DIED. RACHEL KEMPSON, 92, matriarch of the Redgrave acting family; at her home in Millbrook, N.Y. Best known in the U.S. as the wife of actor Michael Redgrave and mother of actors Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave, she stood on her own in Britain, where she was much admired for her Shakespearean roles (below, as Ariel in The Tempest in 1934).