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Died. Chester Conklin, 85, silent-screen zany known to a generation of filmgoers as the Keystone Kop with the walrus mustache; of emphysema; in Hollywood. He went to work for Mack Sennett in 1913 and was soon thriving on pratfalls and pies in the face. While at the top, he earned $3,500 a week appearing in scores of films, including Tillie's Punctured Romance, The Pullman Bride and Modern Times. "Moviemaking was great fun then," recalled Conklin. "A picture consisted of a lot of chases and a plot that was tacked on when we finished shooting." All but wiped out by the advent of talkies and the 1929 stock market crash, Conklin wound up in a Los Angeles department store playing yet another lovable hirsute character: Santa Claus.
Died. J. David Stern, 85, former publisher of the Philadelphia Record, the New York Post and the Camden, N.J., Evening Courier and Morning Post; in Palm Beach, Fla. A crusading New Dealer, Stern in 1934 became the first newspaper owner to recognize the infant American Newspaper Guild—a decision that he lived to regret. He called his early support of the union a "grave mistake" after a 1946-47 Guild strike against the Record and the Camden papers. Fed up with labor's unyielding demands, Stern sold his papers, bringing a bitter end to 36 years in publishing.
Died. Sergei Konenkov, 97, patriarch of Soviet sculpture; in Moscow. Already an accomplished artist by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Konenkov visited New York in 1924 and decided to settle in Greenwich Village. There this disciple of Russian realism continued to create figures in marble, stone, ceramics and wood that were unabashedly heroic. Before returning to the Soviet Union for good in 1945, Konenkov, winner of both the Lenin and Stalin prizes, sculpted studies of many great men of both nations.