Milestones, Dec. 12, 1960

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Married. Lana Turner, 39, who foreshadowed 3-D as the screen's original Sweater Girl; and California Rancher Fred May, 43; she for the sixth time, he for the second; in Santa Monica, Calif. Miss Turner's previous husbands: Clarinetist Artie Shaw; Restaurateur Steve Crane, whom she married twice ("I was lonely. I have to have someone to love, and there was Steve"); Socialite and Tin-Plate Heir Bob Topping ("This is forever"); Film Tarzan Lex Barker.

Divorced. By Jazz Pianist Hazel Scott, 40: Harlem's fast-stepping, quick-talking Democratic Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr., 52; after 15 years of marriage, one child, and a long estrangement; in Juarez, Mexico.

Divorced. Sir Laurence Olivier, 53 ; and Vivien Leigh, 47 (Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth); after 20 years of marriage, no children; by decree nisi, in London, where in the same court, on the same day, Joan Plowright, 29, droll, saucer-eyed English actress (A Taste of Honey, The Entertainer), was divorced from Actor Roger Gage, 30, after seven years of marriage, no children. Both actions proceeded with classic Noel Cowardy coolness. Miss Leigh admitting adultery in Ceylon, Sir Laurence admitting adultery with Miss Plowright in London, and Gage admitting adultery in Helsinki. Court costs of the fourway, jet-speed split were charged to Sir Laurence, who intends to wed Miss Plowright now that everything is cleared up.

Died. David Hinshaw Yoo, 11 months, great-grandson of the late John Foster Dulles and only child of Dulles' granddaughter Jane Hinshaw and Hyon Yoo, a Columbia-trained Korean economics professor, now at Seoul University; in an accident when the infant became entangled in an electric blanket; in New York.

Died. Richard Wright, 52, whose slashing bestsellers (Native Son, Black Boy) scarred the conscience of white America more deeply than the works of any other Negro writer of his time; of a heart attack; in Paris, where he had lived as an expatriate since 1948. Mississippi plantation-born, Wright grew up "naturally as a weed" in the noisome shadows of saloons and whorehouses, left home at 15 and drifted from one menial job to another until he turned to writing "because I was not prepared to be anything else." A depression-era Communist who broke with the party in the 1940s, Wright took the position: "In America there is no Negro problem but a white problem. Any time the white wants to change it, it will be solved. The Negro is powerless."

Died. Max Pruss, 69, captain of the airships Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, who never fully recovered from burns suffered as he leaped from the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg when it exploded in Lakehurst, N.J. in 1937 (killing 36 people), but who steadfastly argued to the end that helium-filled dirigibles were the cheapest, safest and most comfortable form of air travel; of pneumonia; in Frankfort, West Germany.

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