Born. To George Henry Hubert Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, 27, music critic, nephew of King George VI, and the Countess of Harewood (nee Stein), 23, Austrian-born pianist: their first child, a son; in London. Name: undecided. Title: Viscount Lascelles. Weight: 7 lbs. 4 oz. Position in line of succession to the British throne: 13th.
Married. Morton Downey, 48, wealthy radio & TV tenor; and Margaret Boyce ("Peggy") Schulze Hohenlohe, 29, daughter of $85 million (copper) Heiress Margaret Thompson Schulze Biddle; both for the second time; in Hot Springs, Va.
Died. Edna St. Vincent Milky, 58, fragile, elf-eyed poet laureate of the Golden Twenties; of a heart attack; in Austerlitz, N.Y. Daughter of a poor schoolteacher, Edna Millay was put through Vassar by a patron who admired her youthful verse. After graduation (at 25) she lived among the very poor, "very merry" bohemians of Greenwich Village, had a" fling at acting (she was briefly a Provincetown Player), wrote short stories (for Vanity Fair under the name Nancy Boyd). With the bittersweet impudence of her second book of verse, A Few Figs from Thistles ("Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!"), she caught the popular ear, tasted fame. In 1923 she won a Pulitzer Prize and married Eugen Jan Boissevain, a wealthy importer. As her fame and royalties grew, her verse became milder, milkier and more conventionally romantic. In 1927, her The King's Henchman (score by Deems Taylor) was the Met's opera of the year and her published libretto went through four editions in a few weeks. She wrote less & less. In her mid-40s, stirred by rumblings of World War II, she called her muse to the colors, but seldom got beyond the rear areas. The respectable versifying of her last years never recaptured the fine girlish frenzy of the '20s:
I cannot say what loves have come and
gone,
1 only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Died. Al Jolson, 64, black-faced, mammy-shouting musicomedy star (Sinbad, Bombo, Big Boy), whose brassy voice in The Jazz Singer for Warner Brothers in 1927 gave talking pictures their first real start; of coronary occlusion; in San Francisco. After a successful movie and radio career and then semi-retirement in the thirties, Jolson (real name Asa Yoelson) started a second career during World War II, when he entertained troops in Europe, Africa, India and the South Pacific. In 1946 his dubbed-in singing of his old favorites (My Mammy, Sonny Boy, Swanee, April Showers) in The Jolson Story, a motion picture version of his life, brought him new fame and fortune. Last summer Jolson went on the road again and had only recently returned from singing for the soldiers in Korea.
Died. Dr. Fritz Wittels, 69, Vienna-born psychoanalyst, disciple of Sigmund Freud; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan. After clashing with the master in the '20s ("It is difficult to live in the shadow of a great genius"), Wittels recanted, wrote a eulogistic biography (Freud and His Time, 1931).