DIED:

01/06/1998 at 12:00 AM EST

Character actor William Benedict, 82, best known as Whitey in the "Bowery Boys" comedies, from complications of heart surgery, Wednesday, in Los Angeles . . . Anthropologist Ashley Montagu, 94, author of "The Natural Superiority of Women" (which made him a popular TV talk-show fixture in the 1960s), after a long illness, Friday, at his home in Princeton, N.J. . . . Hsing-Hsing, 28, the last of the panda pair that China gave the United States to mark President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 visit, Sunday, in Washington D.C., after his kidneys failed.