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Died. William C. Bullitt, 76, U.S. diplomat who left his imprint on history between the great wars; of leukemia; in Neuilly, France. Born into a wealthy Philadelphia family, he was a man of adrenal energy and immense flair, headstrong in his personal relationships (two marriages), fierce in his ambitions, spectacular in his causes and dissents. At 28, he was at the Versailles peace table with Woodrow Wilson, then returned in disenchantment to tell the Senate that Wilson's treaty would only deliver the world to "a new century of war." In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him first U.S. Ambassador to Soviet Russia —and Bullitt swiftly told off his hosts with sharp criticisms of the police state. From 1936 to 1941, he was in Paris, now "the champagne ambassador," cutting a social swath unequaled before or since—and deluging Washington with memos warning against the rise of Nazi Germany and the dry rot in France. Largely retired after World War II, he spoke out for a U.S. naval blockade of Red China during the Korean War, sought support for invasion by Chiang Kaishek. Only last month his name was in the headlines with the publication of Thomas Woodrow Wilson—A Psychological Study, a sharply critical analysis written in 1939 with Sigmund Freud. He was, as a biographer once noted, "a man who never tastes the peace of indifference."
Died. The Rev. A. J. Muste, 82, militant U.S. pacifist, a tall, deceptively soft-spoken Protestant clergyman who was noted for saying in 1940, "If I can't love Hitler, I can't love at all," later, in 1958, for sailing through the U.S. Pacific nuclear zone while tests were under way, and most recently as one of three clergymen received by Ho Chi Minh during their January "peace mission" to Hanoi; of a heart attack; in Manhattan.
Died. Sig Ruman, 82, German-born character actor whose fate it was to be come Hollywood's idea of the typical "Kraut," the beefy, blustering, blundering seriocomic German, a role he played in endless films, most notably as Sergeant Schultz in 1953's Stalag 17; of a heart attack; in Julian, Calif.
Died. Frank J. Scholl, 83, a name to ease the pain for uncounted millions of becorned, bunioned and otherwise footsore folk, who in 1904, with his brother William, a physician and inventor, started peddling the line of plasters, pads and Foot-Eazer supports that now sells around the world at the rate of $30 million annually; of pneumonia; in Chicago.
Died. J. Frank Duryea, 97, co-designer with his brother Charles of the U.S.'s first gasoline-powered automobile, who in 1893 contrived a horseless carriage powered by a single-cylinder engine hooked up to the wheels by a leather belt, bucked and bumped 200 ft. down the street in Springfield, Mass., before the contraption broke; of arteriosclerosis; in Old Saybrook, Conn.