Born. To Benson Ford, 31, vice president of the Ford Motor Co. and general manager of its Lincoln-Mercury Division, and Edith McNaughton Ford, 31: their second child, first daughter; in Detroit. Name: Lynn McNaughton. Weight: 5 Ibs. 100z.
Born. To Burt Lancaster, 37, carnival acrobat turned cinema tough guy (The Flame and the Arrow, The Killers) and Norma Anderson Lancaster, 34: their fourth child, second daughter; in Santa Monica, Calif. Name: Joanna Mari. Weight: 9 Ibs., 2½ oz.
Married. Clyde Beatty, 45, the big top's No. 11ion & tiger trainer; and Mrs. Lorraine Abel, 29, nightclub singer; he for the third time, she for the second; in Bellingham, Wash.
Divorced. Robert Nathan, 57, poet and novelist (Portrait of Jennie, One More Spring); by Janet Bingham Nathan, 40, his fourth wife; in Reno.
Killed in Action. Colonel Karl Lewis Polifka, 40, pioneer in military aerial reconnaissance, veteran of 347 combat missions in World War II; when his plane, hit by enemy small arms fire, crashed in Korea.
Died. Sam Cobean, 34, The New Yorker cartoonist known for his X-ray-eyed heroes' "thought balloons" in which passing women got undraped; in a motor accident; near Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Died. Hugh Casey, 38, burly onetime relief pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, who set a record in the 1947 World Series when he was called from the bullpen in six of the seven games; by his own hand; in Atlanta, Ga. Depressed by his fall from big-league to semi-pro ball, by a messy paternity suit, a $6,759 tax lien and a reported heart ailment, the onetime "Fat Fireman of Flatbush" telephoned to his estranged wife, told her "I'm all dead inside," then, as she listened, shot and killed himself.
Died. Francis Adams Truslow, 45, former head of the New York Curb Exchange, recently appointed by President Truman to the U.S.-Brazil Joint Commission for Economic Development, with the rank of minister; of a heart attack; at sea, en route to Rio de Janeiro.
Died. James Norman Hall, 64, author, best known for his collaborations with Charles Nordhoff on romantic adventure stories of the South Seas (Mutiny on the Bounty, Botany Bay, The Hurricane); of a heart attack; in Papeete, Tahiti. After flying in World War I's famed Lafayette Escadrille, Hall and his partner traveled to the South Seas to write, settled permanently on Tahiti, where Hall felt that he had "a grandstand seat to view the workings of a mad machine age."
Died. Lord Inverchapel of Loch Eck (Archibald John Kerr Clark Kerr), 69, one of Britain's top career diplomats (42 years of service) and a chief adviser to the British representatives at the Potsdam, Yalta, Teheran and Cairo Conferences; of a heart attack; in Greenock, Scotland. Following four years as ambassador to Nationalist China's wartime capital, Chungking, he was sent to Moscow in 1942 for the war years, once spent two congenial hours with Stalin in a Kremlin bomb shelter during a Nazi air raid. His last assignment before retiring to his farm in Scotland: Ambassador to the U.S. (1946-48).