Ailing
Walk this way: Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler, 50, underwent surgery on May 14 after he twisted his knee during a gig in Anchorage on April 29. He now faces several weeks of rehabilitation, and the band has had to postpone the remaining 33 dates on its North American and European tour....
Movie mogul Robert Evans, 67, who produced Chinatown and counts Ali MacGraw and Phyllis George as ex-wives, suffered a mild stroke on May 6 in Los Angeles. He was hospitalized there and is expected to make a complete recovery.
Deaths
Hollywood leading lady Alice Faye, who sang her way through such screen gems as Alexander's Ragtime Band and Tin Pan Alley before walking out of 20th-century Fox in 1945 at the peak of her career, died of cancer on May 9 in Rancho Mirage, Calif. The star kept her age a closely guarded secret but was somewhere in her mid-80s. As for her decision to live out of the public eye, she once said, "It didn't bother me, because there were so many things I hadn't done. I had never learned to run a house. I didn't know how to cook. I didn't know how to shop. So all these things filled all those gaps."....
Logo specialist J. Gordon Lippincott, 89, who helped create the emblems for many familiar American consumer goods, died of heart disease on April 29 in North Haven, Conn. His firm ladled up Betty Crocker's spoon, drafted General Mills's cursive G and stamped the Campbell's signature on the red-and-white soup can that artist Andy Warhol elevated to a pop icon....
Welshborn designer Sybil Connolly, 77, who often used the linen and lace of her adopted home of Ireland to confect her fashions, including the pleated sheath First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy wore for an official White House portrait, died of a heart attack on May 6 in Dublin. Connolly also applied the sophisticated simplicity of her creations to the modern habits of three orders of Catholic nuns....
Former Sen. Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, who wrote the 26th constitutional amendment, which in 1971 gave 18-year-olds the right to vote, died in St. Louis on May 8. He was 96....
Banker Bebe Rebozo, 85, golfing, boating and traveling buddy of Richard Nixon, died of an aneurysm on May 8 in Miami. During the dark days of the Watergate scandal, the late President frequently sought the unflagging friendship of Rebozo, his neighbor at the winter White House in Key Biscayne, Fla....
Strong-willed actress Maidie Norman, who strove to squash the stereotypical portrayal of African-Americans in films, died of lung cancer on May 2 in San Jose, Calif. She was 85. Although she did take roles as a domestic (including the memorable maid in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), she refused to capitulate to screenwriters who dictated a dialect of yessums and double negatives, and she often changed her lines.
In the Works
The city of Paris okayed a plan on May 5 for a memorial to Princess Diana at the site of her fatal accident. If the British government and the royal family approve, the 12-foot Diana Memorial Column, fashioned from concrete and translucent resin, will rise aboveground as a continuation of the 13th pillar in the traffic tunnel where Dodi Fayed's Mercedes crashed last August. Currently the gilded Flame of Liberty sculpture, close to the underpass, serves as a makeshift shrine to the late princess.
Your Reaction
