Milestones, Aug. 13, 1973

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Died. Julio ("Big Julio") Adalberto Rivera, 52, President of El Salvador from 1962 to 1967 and recently Ambassador to the United States; of a heart attack; in El Salvador. As an army colonel, Rivera engineered a bloodless barracks coup in 1961 and became President the following year. He broke the grip of the coffee-plantation owners on the country's economy and instituted reforms that resulted in a higher standard of living for El Salvador's peasants.

Died. Jean-Pierre Melville, 55, film director and patron saint of the nouvelle vague of French cinema; of a heart attack; in Paris. Melville changed his name from Grumbach in honor of the American novelist Herman Melville, sported a cowboy hat, and was celebrated for his Gallic exercises in gangster melodramas. His best-known film, Les Enfants Terribles (1948), was made in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, author of the novel.

Died. Eddie Condon, 67, jazz guitarist, bandleader and elder statesman of the Dixieland style, who was often called the father of the improvisational "Chicago school" of jazz; after a long bout with cancer; in Manhattan.

Died. Henri Charrière, 67, alias "Papillon" (Butterfly), whose 1969 book of the same name chronicled his nine hair-raising escape attempts from France's antiquated dungeons in French Guiana; of throat cancer; in Madrid. Charrière, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1931 for murder, finally broke out of Devil's Island in 1941 and found asylum in Caracas, where he became a gold prospector, shrimp fisherman, bar owner and eventually a best-selling author, with 14 million book sales worldwide.

Died. Walter Ulbricht, 80, the East German Communist leader and builder of the Berlin Wall (see THE WORLD).

Died. Mary Ellen Chase, 86, best-selling novelist (Windswept, Mary Peters, Silas Crockett) who wrote largely about the Maine seacoast where she lived as a child; in Northampton, Mass. A professor of English at Smith College for 29 years, she also taught and wrote about the Bible.

Died. Gian Francesco Malipiero, 91, Italian composer of 40 operas (Julius Caesar, Metamorphoses of Bonaventura) and eight major symphonies; of a heart attack; in Treviso, Italy. A descendant of Venetian doges, Malipiero was influenced by early Italian composers like Monteverdi but was also an innovator, writing atonal music at a time when Puccini was turning out his sweetly melodic opera scores.