Milestones, Dec. 8, 1980

MARRIED. Harold Pinter, 50, English playwright (The Homecoming, Betrayal); and Lady Antonia Fraser, 48, socialite and biographer (Mary Queen of Scots, Royal Charles); both for the second time; in London. Lady Antonia has six children from her marriage to Tory M.P. Hugh Fraser; Pinter has one son from his marriage to Actress Vivien Merchant.

DIED. Rachel Roberts, 53, Welsh-born actress who rose to international prominence through her portrayals of working-class women in such English films as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and This Sporting Life (1963); of as yet undetermined causes; in Los Angeles. After divorcing Actor Rex Harrison in 1971, she appeared in films like Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

DIED. John S. Pennington, 56, who as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal revealed vote fraud in a 1962 Georgia state senate race and turned the apparent loser into a winner, giving Jimmy Carter his first political victory; of cancer; in St. Petersburg, Fla. Only two months ago, Carter told Pennington, who moved to the St. Petersburg Times in 1977: "I never would have gone for office again if I had lost that one."

DIED. Herbert Agar, 83, historian and newspaper editor who championed democratic ideals in books like the Pulitzer-prizewinning The People's Choice (1933), and Land of the Free (1935) and A Time for Greatness (1942), and served during World War II as the director of the British division of the Office of War Information; in Sussex, England.

DIED. George Raft, 85, actor who epitomized the tightlipped, coolly menacing tough guy in such films as Each Dawn I Die (1939) and Mr. Ace (1946); of emphysema; in Los Angeles. A grade-school dropout who grew up in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, Raft took jobs as a prizefighter, a baseball player and an exhibition dancer before he was discovered by a director at Hollywood's Brown Derby restaurant and won the movie roles that led to his breakthrough in Scarface (1932). In his later years his career lagged, and he was barred from re-entering England because of associations with real-life mobsters including Bugsy Siegel and Dutch Schultz. He maintained that the unsavory underworld image that clung to him was "my gimmick—it was the only way the public would accept me."