Milestones, Oct. 31, 1977

MARRIED. Peter Boyle, 42, actor who played the monster in Young Frankenstein and Joe in Joe; and Loraine Alterman, 35, freelance rock journalist; he for the first time, she for the second; at the United Nations chapel in Manhattan.

DIED. Three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, raucous rock group that called its music "Southern raunchy roll"; when their chartered airplane crashed in a swamp near McComb, Miss. Among the six people killed were Lead Singer Ronnie Van Zant, Guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister Cassie, a vocalist with the group. All three were 28. Their latest album, Street Survivors, had just been released.

DIED. Margaret, the Duchess d'Uzès, 44, nee Bedford; in an automobile accident near Paris. Famous for the parties she gave in Manhattan and Paris, the American-born oil heiress and socialite was married in 1968 to her third husband, Duke Emmanuel de Crussol d'Uzès, who holds the oldest title in France.

DIED. Arthur Bernon Tourtellot, 64, vice president and general executive of CBS and noted historian; of a heart attack; in Manhattan. Tourtellot served as associate producer of The March of Time films and adapted General Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe for a TV series. He was the author of Benjamin Franklin: The Shaping of Genius, and William Diamond's Drum, The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution—a widely praised account of the Battle of Lexington and Concord—and other popular histories.

DIED. Marie-Térèse Walter, 68, Pablo Picasso's mistress from 1927 to 1942 and mother of his daughter Maïa; by her own hand (hanging); in Antibes, France. Described by Art Critic John Berger as "sexually the most important" woman in Picasso's life, she appeared in hundreds of his paintings and drawings.

DIED. Cal Hubbard, 76, the only man ever elected to both baseball's and football's halls of fame; of cancer; in St. Petersburg, Fla. While playing tackle for the Green Bay Packers for nearly a decade, Hubbard worked his way up through the minors as an umpire and eventually became umpire in chief of the American League.

DIED. The Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, 96, American-born widow of England's ninth Duke of Marlborough; in Northampton, England. Friend of Degas, Rilke and Proust—who praised her "magnificence and charm"—the Duchess presided over Blenheim Palace until she and her husband separated in 1933. For the past four decades, she had lived reclusively in a farmhouse with dozens of spaniels.