Milestones: Jan. 27, 1986

BORN. To Jessica Lange, 36, Oscar-winning actress (for 1982's Tootsie) whose latest film is Sweet Dreams; and her companion of four years, Sam Shepard, 42, Pulitzer prizewinning playwright (for 1978's Buried Child) whose latest play is the critically acclaimed A Lie of the Mind: a daughter, their first child; in Santa Fe. Name: Hannah Jane. Weight: 7 lbs. 4 oz.

BORN. To Olivia Newton-John, 37, pop singer who has shed her perky PG image in recent albums (Physical, Soul Kiss); and her husband of a year, Matt Lattanzi, 27, teen-hunk actor (Grease 2): a daughter, their first child; in Los Angeles. Name: Chloe. Weight: 6 lbs. 8 oz.

HOSPITALIZED. Yelena Bonner, 62, wife of Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov, who had campaigned for 18 months by letters and with repeated hunger strikes so that she would be allowed to visit the West for medical treatment; in good condition, after surgery to bypass six of her coronary arteries, a number her doctors called unusually high; in Boston.

DIED. Donna Reed, 64, hazel-eyed, sweetly pretty actress who came to symbolize the heartland virtues of American womanhood in films like It's a Wonderful Life (1946) but who won a supporting-actress Oscar when she played against type as a prostitute in 1953's From Here to Eternity; of cancer; in Beverly Hills. Best known as the warmhearted wife and mother in her weekly comedy television series The Donna Reed Show (1958-66), she once insisted that "the public really does want to see a healthy woman, not a girl, not a neurotic, not a sexpot." Her last role was the long-suffering Miss Ellie on Dallas, a show whose popularity indicates the opposite.

DIED. James H. ("Sleepy Jim") Crowley, 83, last of the great "Four Horsemen" backfield that led Notre Dame to a 19-1 record in the 1923-24 seasons; in Scranton, Pa. The small (160 lbs.), swift Crowley was immortalized with his teammates by Sportswriter Grantland Rice: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden."

DIED. Herbert W. Armstrong, 93, autocratic founder-leader of the 75,000-member Worldwide Church of God; in Pasadena, Calif. Forsaking an advertising career in 1934 to become a radio preacher and self-proclaimed "Chosen Apostle" of God, Armstrong taught that Christians should deny the Trinity, shun medical care (though he used it as his own health deteriorated) and that remarried members should divorce their second spouses and rejoin their first (though he repealed that dictum in 1976 and a year later married a divorcée). Fanatically loyal members, many of them poor, tithed as much as $75 million a year to his church.