Milestones: Mar. 8, 1963

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Married. Desi Arnaz, 46, TV ex-tycoon (Desilu Productions Inc.) and ex-husband (Lucille Ball); and Edith Mack Hirsch, 45, wife until earlier last week of Millionaire Sportsman Clement Hirsch, and like Lucy a redhead; both for the second time; in Las Vegas.

Divorced. By Rita Gam, 34, occasional cinemactress (The Thief): Thomas Guinzburg, 36, touchy Viking Press executive, who, according to Rita, started all their trouble when he gave up smoking; after nearly seven years of marriage, two children; in Juárez, Mexico.

Died. Lee Mortimer, 56, New York Mirror columnist who for years as second-slinger to Walter Winchell covered Manhattan like it was something under a rock, then broke into the nonbook world as co author (with the late Jack Lait) of such penny dreadfuls as New York Confidential, Washington Confidential, Chicago Confidential, and U.S.A. Confidential, all of which earned him more libel suits than fame; of a heart attack; in Manhattan.

Died. Anthony ("Tough Tony") Anastasio, 57, boss of the Brooklyn docks, a ship-jumping Italian immigrant who shrewdly used the muscle of his brother, Murder Inc.'s Chief Executioner Albert Anastasia, to get to the top, then surprised everyone by staying there (and staying alive) even after Al's gangland murder in 1957; after a long illness; in Brooklyn. Charged with everything up to and including murder but never convicted, Tough Tony gained the grudging respect of dock employers as well as union men by getting the work done and increasing pay, fringe benefits and job opportunities.

Died. Melville Jean Herskovits, 67, founder-director of the U.S.'s first program of African studies at Northwestern University, a brilliant anthropologist (The Human Factor in Changing Africa) whose 40 years of research led him to counsel "that Africans could best form working governments based on tribal law and custom rather than on unnatural systems borrowed from outside; of a heart attack; in Evanston, Ill.

Died. Eppa Rixey Jr., 71, self-effacing 266-game winner during 21 years of major-league pitching with the Philadelphia Phillies and the Cincinnati Reds, whose last-month nomination to the Hall of Fame moved him to remark: "I guess they're scraping at the bottom of the barrel"; of a heart attack; in Cincinnati.

Died. Herbert Asbury, 71, alert recorder of the U.S.'s seamy side and impious descendant of the first Methodist bishop ordained in America, who gloriously related his own determined fall from the faith of his fathers in Up from Methodism,* went on with equal verve to chronicle underworld doings and undoings (The Gangs of New York, The Barbary Coast), the U.S. fascination with gambling (Sucker's Progress), and a history of prohibition (The Great Illusion); after a long illness; in Manhattan.

Died. Rajendra Prasad, 78, India's first President (1950-62) and devoted disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, who gave up a law career in 1917 to join Gandhi's nonviolent independence movement, endure 4½ years of British imprisonment, and ever after led a rigidly Spartan life of vegetarianism, 3 a.m. yoga exercises, and daily sessions spinning cotton, the symbolic task that characterizes a Gandhian follower; of pneumonia; in Patna, India.