Milestones May 8, 1995

DIED. OTTO FRIEDRICH, 66, writer; of lung cancer; in Manhasset, New York. Boston-born Friedrich first hit his stride during his 1960s tenure at the Saturday Evening Post. During his subsequent years in the pages of Time and in his own nimbly crafted nonfiction, Friedrich emerged as an elegant explicator of just about everything: Superman, insanity, the pop art of Hollywood, the high art of pianist Glenn Gould, the collapse of German democracy, the demise of a rose garden.

DIED. ART FLEMING, 70, TV-game-show host; of pancreatic cancer; in Crystal River, Florida. Had his life been summed up in a Final Jeopardy answer, it would have gone something like this: "Though he appeared in close to 50 films, two TV series and one music video, he remains best known as the original host of this program." The son of parents who performed together as a dance team in Europe, Fleming helmed TV's toughest nonrigged game show from 1964 to 1975 and again in the 1978-79 season.

DIED. HOWARD COSELL, 77, TV and radio sportscaster; in New York City. In the '70s, TV Guide asked its readers to name their favorite and least favorite sportscasters. One man aced both categories: Howard Cosell. For a generation, his nasal drone-abrasive, unmistakable, too easily imitated by bad comedians-was the premiere guide to the nation's professional playing fields. Though he entered sportscasting in 1953 through the unglamorous venue of Little League baseball, by the '60s Cosell was a fixture at abc Sports, gaining a measure of attention because of his controversial support for Muhammad Ali when the boxer was stripped of his title for resisting the Vietnam draft. Cosell reached the peak of his influence with the Monday Night Football broadcasts of the '70s; his self-promoted willingness to "tell it like it is" brought a refreshing skepticism to the traditionally bland idolatry of "color" commentary. Ultimately, however, Cosell was immolated by his own verbal fire: slashing at colleagues, denouncing American sport itself, the Mouth That Roared talked itself into an embittered retirement in the '80s.

DIED. GINGER ROGERS, 83, movie star; Rancho Mirage, California. She was a young but scrappy veteran of more than 20 films and shorts, he a neophyte with one movie and a screen test behind him when they first danced together in 1933's Flying Down to Rio. Before the decade was over, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire had become the most famous pair of dancers that would ever cut their way across a high-gloss floor or up a spiral staircase. In the memorable words of Katharine Hepburn, the pairing gave him sex and her class-yet Rogers' own singular combination of pathos and spunk would make itself evident in non-Astaire efforts like 1937's Stage Door. In the years following the screen couple's parting of the ways in 1939, she scored such triumphs as her Academy Award-winning work in the tearjerker Kitty Foyle (1940). A Christian Scientist, Rogers believed in the avoidance of tobacco and alcohol. She also believed in marriage: she did it five times; all ended in divorce.