Milestones: Oct. 25, 1968

• Share

Married. Laurence Harvey, 40, the movies' handsome heel (Room at the Top, Darling); and Joan Cohn, 54, widow of Cinemogul Harry Cohn, ex-wife of Shoe Manufacturer Harry Karl, and Laurence's constant companion for the past eight years; he for the second time (he was divorced by British Actress Margaret Leighton in 1961), she for the third; in Nassau.

Died. Tribbie Chafee, 14, third of Rhode Island Governor John H. Chafee's six children; of injuries suffered when she was kicked in the head by a horse after performing in a horse show; in Providence.

Died. Gerald L. Phillippe, 59, president (1961-63) and board chairman (1963-68) of General Electric Co.; of a heart attack; in Greenwich, Conn. As G.E.'s comptroller in the 1950s, Phillippe cut costs to cope with foreign competition, and also simplified many of the company's procedures. So successful were his programs that he was jumped over five senior vice presidents to the top of the firm that today is the fourth largest in the U.S. (after General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford Motor Co.).

Died. Bea Benaderet, 62, character actress, who starred as the folksy, warmhearted Kate Bradley in TV's Petticoat Junction; of lung cancer; in Los Angeles. After years of bending her voice on radio into every accent from Brooklyn to the Ozarks as a comic foil for Fibber McGee and Molly, and Jack Benny, Bea finally got a chance to show her face on TV. In 1950, she appeared as Blanche Morton on The George Burns-Gracie Allen Show and in 1962, as Cousin Pearl on The Beverly Hillbillies, before graduating to Petticoat Junction in 1963.

Died. Lee Tracy, 70, veteran actor, who came to epitomize the fast-talking, wisecracking newsman during a career that spanned nearly half a century; of cancer; in Santa Monica, Calif. After a successful start in 1928 as a brash reporter in Broadway's The Front Page, Tracy played variations on the same role in Clear All Wires (1933) and Power of the Press (1943). He reached the top in 1964, when he played the aging ex-President in The Best Man.

Died. Michael Angelo Musmanno, 71, U.S. lawyer who won worldwide notice in a succession of spectacular causes from the 1920s on; after a stroke; in Pittsburgh. Musmanno was one of the lawyers who defended Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, the judge who sentenced 14 Nazis to death at one of the Nurnberg trials in 1948, the witness who traveled to Israel to testify against Eichmann in 1961.