Milestones, May 16, 1949

Divorced. By Michele Morgan (real name: Simone Roussel), 29, green-eyed French cinemactress (Port of Shadows, Symphonic Pastorale): William Marshall, 31, cinema director, after six years of marriage, one child; in Paris.

Died. Henry James O’Brien Bedford-Jones, 62, Canadian-born pulp fic-tioneer; of a heart ailment; in Beverly Hills, Calif. Able to keep five manuscripts boiling at the same time, Bedford-Jones ground out 100 novels, countless short stories, estimated that by writing fast, instead of well, he had earned $1,000,000.

Died. Wyndham Raymond Portal,* First Viscount Portal of Laverstoke, 64, Britain’s Minister of Works and Planning (1942-44) and president of the ’48 Olympic games held in London; of a cerebral hemorrhage; in Hampshire, England.

Died. Joseph Paul DiMaggio Sr., 77, retired Italian immigrant fisherman who became baseball’s most famous father (sons: Joe of the Yankees, Dominic of the Red Sox, and onetime Major-Leaguer Vincent, now player-manager of the Class D Pittsburg, Calif. Diamonds); of a heart ailment; in San Francisco.

Died. Prince Louis Honoré Charles Antoine II, 78, since 1922 ruler of pocket-sized Monaco (370 acres), whose chief sources of income are postage stamps and Monte Carlo’s gambling casino (the 24,000 Monegasques pay no income taxes); four days after he abdicated in favor of his grandson, 25-year-old Prince Rainier; in Monaco.

Died. Miguel Cruchaga Tocornal, 80, onetime Chilean Ambassador to the U.S. (1926-27, 1931-32) and Foreign Minister (1932-37); after long illness; in Santiago, Chile. Cruchaga earned the nickname “Don Palomo” (Mr. Dove) for his peace efforts (he helped settle the Chaco War in 1935, arranged the resumption of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Vatican after the religious persecutions of the late ’20s).

Died. Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, 86, Belgian Nobel Prizewinning (1911) litterateur, best-known for his allegorical fantasy, The Blue Bird (1909); of a heart attack; in Nice, France (see INTERNATIONAL).

Died. William H. Luden, 90, whose modest homemade candymaking boomed into big business when, in 1900, he mixed a menthol formula into his candy and made the first menthol cough drop (he sold out 27 years later for $6,500,000); of a heart attack; in Atlantic City, N.J.

* Not to be confused with Marshal of the R.A.F. Viscount Portal of Hungerford, chief of Britain’s Air Staff (1940-45).