Bill Williams, 76, star of the '50s TV series The Adventures of Kit Carson, died Sept. 21 in Burbank. Calif., of a brain tumor. Before portraying the frontier scout, the Brooklyn-born actor appeared in some 50 movies, including Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. He was married for 46 years to actress Barbara Hale (Della Street on Perry Mason); among their three children is actor William (The Greatest American Hero) Katt....
Pro baseball's first female umpire, Bernice Gera, 61, died Sept. 23 in Pembroke Pines, Fla., of cancer. Gera quit after just one game—a 1972 contest between the minor league Auburn Phillies and Geneva Rangers—partly because Auburn manager Nolan Campbell volunteered that she "should have been home peeling potatoes."
Martial-arts are Jean-Claude Van Damme, 30, has been less successful in the marital arts: His body-builder wife, Gladys Portugues Van Varenberg, 35, filed for divorce in Los Angeles on Sept. 22. Citing "irreconcilable differences," Van Varenberg is asking for joint custody of their children, Kristopher, 5 and Bianca, 2. The couple has been married for nearly seven years.
Unretired: Eleven months after revealing that he was HIV positive and hanging up his Los Angeles Laker jersey—and two months after helping America's Dream Team win a gold medal in Barcelona—Earvin "Magic" Johnson, 33, announced Sept. 29 in Inglewood, Calif., that he is rejoining the team. Johnson hopes to play from 50 to 60 of the Lakers' 82 games, his health permitting. Four days before his announcement, Johnson had quit President Bush's National Commission on AIDS. citing a lack of support from the Administration, and subsequently endorsed Bill Clinton for President.
Cheers costar Kelsey Grammer, 37, who plays pretentious shrink Frasier Crane on the NBC sitcom, wed exotic dancer Leigh-Anne Csuhany, 22, in Lovelock, Nev., on Sept. 11. Grammer says it was love "at first sight" when the couple met last February in a Calabasas, Calif., restaurant. This is the second marriage for Grammer and the first for Csuhany. Grammer has two daughters: Spencer, 8, and Greer, 3 months.
Actress Daryl Hannah, 32, was reportedly injured Sept. 23 in a scuffle with her former boyfriend, musician Jackson Browne, 44, at the Santa Monica home they both own. Browne's manager, Donald Miller, denys the dispute took place, although Hannah's spokesperson, Alan Nierob, said that the police were called and that his client was treated at a local hospital for "serious injuries."
In February, Baroness Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, 34, daughter of renowned German-Hungarian art collector Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, will wed Archduke Karl von Hapsburg", 31, whose grandfather's manifold titles included Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and King of Bohemia. Their romance began last year in the besieged Croatian village of Karlovac, where she was trying to save art treasures and he was on a humanitarian mission.
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