Born. To Thomas Dubois Hormel, 24, heir to the Hormel (meat packing) millions, and Simone Mostovoy, 21, onetime Parisian ballerina: their first child, a daughter, first grandchild of the late Jay Hormel (see below); in Hollywood. Name: Michelle Victoria. Weight: 5 Ibs. 5 oz.
Died. Geraldine Carr, 37, the gabby Mabel of TV's popular I Married Joan; in a midnight automobile crash on Laurel Canyon Boulevard; in Hollywood.
Died. Burnet Rhett Maybank, 55, genial, aristocratic onetime (1939-41) governor of South Carolina, longtime (1941-54) U.S. Senator; of a heart ailment; in Flat Rock, N.C. (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).
Died. Irwin Edman, 57, witty, erudite chairman (1945-53) of Columbia University's philosophy department (a critic called him a "blend of Plato, Santayana and Manhattan") and frequent panelist on radio's Invitation to Learning and TV's Author Meets the Critics; of a heart ailment; in Manhattan.
Died. Bert Acosta, 59, pilot of the historic multi-engined flight across the Atlantic (1927) with Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Bernt Balchen; of tuberculosis; in Denver. At 14 (in 1910), Acosta built and flew his own plane, went on to establish a world's speed record (176.7 m.p.h.) at 26 and endurance record (51 hr. 11 min. 25 sec.) at 32; in later life, despite hard times and family problems, wound up with a legendary reputation for skillful piloting and artful risk-taking (e.g., he once buzzed Manhattan's Metropolitan Life tower to see what time it was).
Died. Jay Catherwood Hormel, 61, board chairman of George A. Hormel & Co.; of a heart ailment; in Austin, Minn. As a World War I lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps, Hormel won the plaudits of the brass by showing meat packers how to bone beef before it was shipped overseas (saving 40% in cargo space), came home to make a fortune for his father's meat-packing company and fame of a different sort in World War II by inventing Spam, a canned pork product, which became the ubiquitous item on Allied military menus the world over. In 1931 Iconoclast Hormel shocked fellow packers by initiating a radical annual-wage plan to help his employees ride out seasonal employment fluctuations, later expanded benefit programs to include joint-earnings systems and a profit-sharing trust, took unceasing pride in his claim that no Hormel executive ever lived more than a block away from a Hormel C.I.O. worker.
Died. Eugene Pallette, 65, rotund (285 Ibs.), sandpaper-voiced Hollywood character actor; of cancer; in Los Angeles. Born in Winfield, Kans., where his actor-parents were playing a one-night stand in East Lynne, Actor Pallette made more than 1200 films, first as a juvenile lead in the Norma Talmadge era, later as an archetypical funny fatman (The Ghost Goes West, Heaven Can Wait).
Died. Struthers Burt, 71, Baltimore-born novelist (Along These Streets), lecturer and loving chronicler of Americana; after long illness; in Jackson, Wyo.