The 1950s: The Arts: Deaths

THE 1950s: THE ARTS: DEATHS

Irving Addison Bachelier, 90, novelist, 24 February 1950.

Fred E. Ahlert, 61, popular-song writer (" I'll Get By," "Walkin My Baby Back Home"), president (1948-1952) of American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), 20 October 1953.

Zoë Akins, 72, playwright, poet, novelist, and 1935 Pulitzer Prize winner for her dramatization of The Old Maid, 29 October 1958.

Fred Allen (John Florence Sullivan), 61, comedian, 17 March 1956.

Frederick Lewis Allen, 63, author (Only Yesterday, Since Yesterday), editor in chief of Harpers Magazine (1941-1953), 13 February 1954.

Paul Hastings Allen, 68, composer of operas and symphonies, winner of the 1910 Paderewski Prize, 28 September 1952.

Maxwell Anderson, 70, playwright (Winterset, High Tor, Both Your Houses) who popularized the use of blank verse in modern drama, 28 February 1959.

Henry W. Armstrong, 71, song composer (" Sweet Adeline," "Eyes of Blue"), 28 February 1951.

Edward Arnold (Guenther Schneider), 66, motion-picture actor (Diamond Jim Brady, Command Decision, All That Money Can Buy ), 26 April 1956.

Sholem Asch, 76, Polish-born Yiddish novelist (Three Cities, Mottke the Thief, The Nazarene, The Apostle) 10 July 1957.

Nathaniel (Nat) Davis Ayer, 65, songwriter (" Oh, You Beautiful Doll"), 19 September 1952.

Leonard Bacon, 66, poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1941, 1 January 1954.

Irene Temple Bailey, 80?, novelist, 6 July 1953.

Mildred Bailey, 48, blues singer, 12 December 1950.

Ethel Barrymore, 79, actress of stage, motion pictures, and television, whose career spanned sixty years and who had a New York theater named after her, 18 June 1959.

Lionel Barrymore, 76, stage, motion-picture, and radio actor, 15 November 1954.

Evelyn Beatrice Longman Batchelder, 79, sculptress, the first woman elected to the National Academy of design, 10 March 1954.

Warner Baxter, 58, film actor, winner of 1929 Motion Picture Academy Award, 7 May 1951.

Chester Beach, 75, sculptor (Fountain of Waters, Torch Race ) and medalist, noted for his fluid, impressionistic style, 6 August 1956.

Sidney Bechet, 70, New Orleans-style jazz soprano saxophonist and clarinetist, 14 May 1959.

William Rose Benét, 64, poet, critic, novelist, and editor, winner of the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, 4 May 1950.

Ernest Bloch, 78, composer and conductor of music based on Jewish themes, 15 July 1959.

Maxwell Bodenheim, 63, Greenwich Village poet and novelist of the 1920s, 7 February 1954.

Humphrey Bogart, 57, motion-picture actor, starred in some seventy-five films (The Petrified Forest, The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen), Best Actor Academy Award (1951), 14 January 1957.

Paul Breisach, 56, conductor of the San Francisco Opera Association and former New York Metropolitan Opera conductor, 26 December 1952.

Fanny Brice (Fannie Borach), 59, stage, motion-picture, and radio comedienne and singer, 29 May 1951.

Louis Bromfield, 59, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (Early Autumn, The Green Bay Tree, The Rains Came, Malabar Farm ), 18 March 1956.

Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein), 64, songwriter of many popular hits (" Black Bottom," "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree"), 5 February 1958.

Margaret Wise Brown, 42, writer of children's books, 13 November 1952.

Nigel Bruce, 58, actor, best known as Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes, 8 October 1953.

Katharine Brush, 49, novelist (Young Man of Manhattan, Red-headed Woman), 10 June 1952.

Gelett Burgess, 85, illustrator, humorist, famed for verse about the "purple cow," 18 September 1951.

John Home Burns, 37, novelist (The Gallery), 11 August 1953.

Robert Elliot Burns, 64, author (7 Was a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang), 5 June 1955.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, 74, author (creator of Tarzan), 19 March 1950.

Adolf Georg Wilhelm Busch, 60, violinist, founder of the Busch String Quartet, 9 June 1952.

James Branch Cabell, 79, author (Jurgen, The Way of Ecben, The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck), 5 May 1958.

Louis Calhern (Carl Henry Vogt), 61, actor on the stage (Dinner at Eighty Golden Boy, King Lear) and in motion pictures (Magnificent Yankee, Executive Suite, Asphalt Jungle), 12 May 1956.

Dale Carnegie, 66, teacher of public speaking, author of the bestselling How to Win Friends and Influence People, 1 November 1955.

Edward Childs Carpenter, 78, novelist and playwright, 7 October 1950.

Mady Christians, 51, Broadway star, 28 October 1951.

Robert Peter Tristram Coffin, 62, poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1935 for Strange Holiness, 20 January 1955.

Octavus Roy Cohen, 67, author of books, plays, and motion-picture screenplays, best known for his dialect stories about African-Americans in the South, 6 January 1959.

Constance Collier (Laura Constance Hardie), 75, actress, 25 April 1955.

Ronald Colman, 67, star of stage and motion pictures (Kismet, A Tale of Two Cities, Bulldog Drummond, Lost Horizon, Beau Geste, A Double Life) who won the 1948 Best Actor Academy Award, 19 May 1958.

Jack Conway, 65, motion-picture star, director, and producer (A Tale of Two Cities, Viva Villa, Boom Town, The Hucksters), 11 October 1952.

Madison Cooper, 62, novelist, author of Sironia, Texas, the longest American novel ever published (seventeen hundred pages), 28 September 1956.

Lou Costello, 52, comedian of motion pictures and television, partner in the comedy team of Abbott and Costello, which broke up in 1957, 3 March 1959.

Jane Cowl, 65, actress, famous for her role as Juliet, 22 June 1950.

Rachel Crothers, 79, playwright (Susan and God, When Ladies Meet), 5 July 1958.

Walter Johannes Damrosch, 88, conductor, composer, and pianist, conductor of the New York Symphony Orchestra for forty-one years, 22 December 1950.

Jo Davidson, 68, sculptor, 2 January 1952.

Owen Davis, 82, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Ice-bound, Nellie, Jezebel, Mr. and Mrs. North, No Way Out), 14 October 1956.

James Dean, 24, motion-picture actor (East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause), 30 September 1955.

Cecil B. DeMille, 77, motion-picture pioneer, producer of multimillion-dollar spectacles (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah), 21 January 1959.

Peter De Rose, 53, songwriter (" Wagon Wheels," "Deep Purple"), 23 April 1953.

George Gard (" Buddy") De Sylva, 54, songwriter (" Sonny Boy," "April Showers") and stage and motion-picture producer, 11 July 1950.

Clarence Derwent, 75, actor in more than five hundred plays on the London and New York stages, president of the American National Theatre and Academy (1952-1959), 6 August 1959.

William Hunt Diederich, 69, sculptor, 14 May 1953.

Jimmy Dorsey, 53, dance-band leader, saxophonist, and clarinetist, 12 June 1957.

Tommy Dorsey, 51, trombonist and bandleader, 26 November 1956.

Lloyd Cassel Douglas, 73, novelist (Magnificent Obsession, The Robe), 13 February 1951.

Olin (Edwin) Downes, 69, music critic for the New York Times since 1924, 22 August 1955.

Ruth Draper, 72, monologuist, famed for her one-woman shows, 30 December 1956.

Katherine Drier, 75, painter and writer, 20 March 1952.

Edwin (Eddy) Frank Duchin, 41, dance-orchestra leader, 9 February 1951.

Rosetta Duncan, 58, stage star, one of the famed vaudeville comedy team of the Duncan sisters, 4 December 1959.

Emma Eames, 84, New York Metropolitan Opera soprano (1891-1909), 13 June 1952.

Paul Eisler, 76, composer, conductor of New York Metropolitan Opera (1904-1929), 16 October 1951.

Gertrude Elliott, 76, actress, 24 December 1950.

Sir Jacob Epstein, 78, American-born sculptor whose stormy career in modern art was eventually crowned by worldwide recognition and knighthood, 19 August 1959.

Philip G. Epstein, 42, film-scenario writer (Casablanca, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Male Animal, Arsenic and Old Lace), 7 February 1952.

John Erskine, 71, novelist (The Private Life of Helen of Troy ), pianist, president of the Juilliard School of Music (1928-1937), 2 June 1951.

Janet Ayer Fairbank, 73, novelist (The Smiths, Rich Man-Poor Man ), 28 December 1951.

William Farnum, 76, motion-picture actor (highest paid in the silent era), 5 June 1953.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 79, author, educator, and authority on Vermont, 9 November 1958.

John Gould Fletcher, 64, writer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1939, 10 May 1950.

Anne Crawford Flexner, 80, playwright (Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Marriage Game), 11 January 1955.

Errol Flynn, 50, motion-picture actor whose swashbuckling roles put him among the top ten moneymaking stars in the industry, 14 October 1959.

William Fox, 73, motion-picture pioneer, founder of Fox Film Corporation, which he lost in the Depression, 8 May 1952.

Richard S. (" Skeets") Gallagher, 64, stage and motion-picture comedian, 22 May 1955.

Albert Eugene Gallatin, 70, painter, art collector, and author, 15 June 1952.

John Garfield (Julius Garfinkle), 39, stage and motion-picture star, 21 May 1952.

Robert Garland, 60, drama critic of the New York Journal-American (1943-1951), 27 December 1955.

Eleanor Gates, 75, novelist, playwright (The Poor Little Rich Girl ), 7 March 1951.

Norman Bel Geddes, 65, stage and industrial designer, noted for the 1939 New York World's Fair Futurama, 8 May 1958.

Charles William Goddard, 71, writer of popular movie serial Perils of Pauline, 11 January 1951.

John Golden, 80, Broadway producer of over 150 plays, a founder of ASCAP, 17 June 1955.

Charles Grapewin, 86, motion-picture character actor (Tobacco Road, Grapes of Wrath ), 2 February 1956.

Gilda Gray (Marianne Michalski), 58, singer and dancer who created the "shimmy" dance of the Roaring Twenties, 22 December 1959.

Maria Grever, 57, composer (" What a Difference a Day Makes," "Besame"), 15 December 1951.

Edmund Gwenn, 83, actor of stage and motion pictures, 1948 Academy Award winner for his supporting role in Miracle on 34th Street, 6 September 1959.

James Norman Hall, 64, novelist, co-author with Charles B. Nordhoff of Mutiny on the Bounty, 5 July 1951.

Walter Hampden (Walter Dougherty), 75, actor noted for Shakespearean roles, 11 June 1955.

W. C. Handy (William Christopher), 84, composer of "St. Louis Blues" and called "father of the blues," 28 March 1958.

Oliver Hardy, 65, motion-picture actor, comedy partner of Stan Laurel, 7 October 1957.

Fletcher H. Henderson, 55, jazz bandleader, arranger, pianist, and composer, 29 December 1952.

Hugh Herbert, 66, motion-picture comedian, 12 March 1952.

Joseph Hergesheimer, 74, author (Three Black Pennys, Java Head ), 25 April 1954.

Jean Hersholt, 69, motion-picture actor (Greed, Stella Dallas, The Mask of Fu Manchu ), creator of the film and radio role of Dr. Christian, 2 June 1956.

Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan McKay), 44, blues singer, 17 July 1959.

Buddy Holly, 22, rock 'n' roll musician, in a plane crash, 3 February 1959.

Charles R. Hopkins, 69, theatrical producer, director, and actor, 1 January 1953.

Edna Wallace Hopper, 85(?), actress, star of Floradora and other hits of the early 1900s, who prided herself on her perpetual youth, 14 December 1959.

Tom Howard, 69, radio, television, and motion-picture comedian, 27 February 1955.

Rupert Hughes, 84, author and historian (noted for his often-misunderstood biography of George Washington), playwright, screenwriter, and historical novelist, 9 September 1956.

Josephine Hull, 71, actress (Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, The Solid Gold Cadillac ) and 1951 Academy Award winner as supporting actress, 12 March 1957.

Doris Humphrey, 63, dancer and choreographer, winner of the 1954 Capezio award, 29 December 1958.

Walter Huston, 66, stage and motion-picture actor, 7 April 1950.

Rex Ingram, 58, motion-picture director, 21 July 1950.

Charles Edward Ives, 79, composer whose Third Sym-phony won a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, 19 May 1954.

Dr. Herbert Eugene Ives, 71, pioneer in research on television and 3-D movies, 13 November 1953.

Emil Jannings, 63, motion-picture actor, winner of the Motion Picture Academy's first "Oscar," 2 January 1950.

Charles Jehlinger, 86, actor, dean of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 29 July 1952.

James Price Johnson, 61, jazz pianist and composer (" Charleston"), 17 November 1955.

Owen McMahon Johnson, 73, novelist (Stover at Yale ) and playwright, 27 January 1952.

Al Jolson (Asa Yoelson), 67, stage, motion-picture, and radio singer, 23 October 1950.

Margo Jones, 42, Broadway producer and founder of the Theatre in the Round in Dallas, Texas, 24 July 1955.

Robert Edmond Jones, 67, stage designer, noted for his sets for many of Eugene O'Neill's plays and the New York Metropolitan Opera, 26 November 1954.

William Kapell, 31, concert pianist, 29 October 1953.

Guy Bridges Kibbee, 74, motion-picture actor (Babbitt, Captain Bloody Power of the Press, Scattergood Baines series), 24 May 1956.

Fiske Kimball, 66, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1925-1955), 14 August 1955.

Erich W. Korngold, 60, Austrian-born composer, winner of an Academy Award in 1936 for the Anthony Adverse score and in 1938 for Adventures of Robin Hood score, 29 November 1957.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, 59, Japanese-born American artist, 15 May 1953.

Howard Kyle (Kyle Anderson Vandergrift), 89, actor, 1 December 1950.

Jacquin Leonard (" Jack") Lait, 71, editor of the New York Mirror since 1936, playwright, and author (with Lee Mortimer of the Confidential series on New York, Chicago, the United States, and so on), 1 April 1954.

Mario Lanza, 38, singer, motion-picture star (The Great Caruso), and recording artist (" Be My Love"), 7 October 1959.

Canada Lee (Leonard Lionel Cornelius Canegatao), 45, African-American actor, 9 May 1952.

Lewis C. (" Lew") Lehr, 54, motion-picture comedian, 6 March 1950.

Sinclair Lewis, 65, novelist (Mam Street, Babbitt, Elmer Gantry), first American winner of the 1930 Nobel Prize for Literature, 10 January 1951.

Ludwig Lewisohn, 72, author (The Case of Mr. Crump, The Island Within, Mid-Channel), 31 December 1955.

Elmo Lincoln (Otto E. Linkenhelt), 63, motion-picture actor, the screen's first Tarzan, 27 June 1952.

Stanley Logan, 67, stage and motion-picture actor, producer, and director, 30 January 1953.

Walter H. Long, 70, motion-picture actor, 5 July 1952.

Pauline Lord, 60, actress, 11 October 1950.

Bela Lugosi, 71, stage and motion-picture actor (Dracula), 16 August 1956.

Charles G. MacArthur, 60, playwright, screenwriter, and co-author with Ben Hecht of Front Page (1928) and other plays, 21 April 1956.

Betty MacDonald, 49, novelist whose The Egg and I became a record-breaking best-seller and was made into a film, 7 February 1958.

Edward Madden, 75, songwriter (" By the Light of the Silvery Moon," "Moonlight Bay"), 11 March 1952.

Herman J. Mankiewicz, 55, screenwriter, film producer, and playwright, 5 March 1953.

John Marin, 80, watercolor artist, 1 October 1953.

Julia Marlowe (Sarah Frances Frost), 85, Shakespearean actress, 12 November 1950.

Reginald Marsh, 56, painter who specialized in New York scenes, 3 July 1954.

Riccardo Martin, 77, opera and concert tenor, first American tenor to sing at the New York Metropolitan Opera, 11 August 1952.

Edgar Lee Masters, 81, poet (Spoon River Anthology ), 5 March 1950.

Louis B. Mayer, 72, Russian-born movie producer (Ben Hur, Dinner at Eight, Grand Hotel ) and vice-president of M-G-M, 29 October 1957.

Hattie McDaniel, 57, African-American actress, winner of an Academy Award for best supporting actress (1940) for her role in Gone With the Wind, starred as Beulah on radio and television, 26 October 1952.

John McNulty, 60, writer of short stories and articles for New Yorker and other magazines, 29 July 1956.

Henry Louis Mencken, 75, author, editor, lexicographer, and critic (The American Language), 29 January 1956.

Gaetano Merola, 72, founder and director of the San Francisco Opera Company, 30 August 1953.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 58, poet, Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry in 1923, 19 October 1950.

Hortense Monath, 52, concert pianist, program director for the New Friends of Music (1936-1952), 21 May 1956.

Harry Moore, 70, comedian, best known for his role as Kingfish on the "Amos 'n Andy" television show, 13 December 1958.

Polly Moran (Pauline Therese Moran), 78, motion-picture comedienne, 24 January 1952.

Harry Mountfbrt, 79, actor, playwright, and editor of Vanity Fair, 4 June 1950.

Gerald Nailor, 36, Navajo artist whose murals decorate the Interior Building in Washington, D.C., 12 August 1952.

Florence Nash, 60, comedienne, 2 April 1950.

George Jean Nathan, 76, drama critic and magazine editor, 8 April 1958.

Spencer Baird Nichols, 75, muralist and portrait painter, 27 August 1950.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, 65, American playwright, 27 November 1953.

Helen Fuller Orton, 82, author of children's books (Cloverdale Farm), 16 February 1955.

Charles Fulton Oursler, 59, editor and author (The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Greatest Book Ever Written ), 24 May 1952.

Oran (" Hot Lips") Page, 46, jazz trumpeter, 5 November 1954.

Frank A. Panella, 75, bandleader, composer of "The Old Gray Mare" and other songs, 10 May 1953.

Brock Pemberton, 64, New York theatrical producer, 11 March 1950.

Ezio Pinza, 64, Italian-born singer, left New York Metropolitan Opera in 1948 for Broadway musicals, died 9 May 1957.

Walter Boughton Pitkin, 74, author (Life Begins at Forty), 25 January 1953.

Jackson Pollock, 44, abstract-expressionist painter, 11 August 1956.

Ernest Poole, 69, author and correspondent, winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for fiction (His Family, 1918), 10 January 1950.

Tyrone Power, 44, actor of stage and motion pictures, 15 November 1958.

George Palmer Putnam, 63, publisher and author, husband of the late Amelia Earhart, 4 January 1950.

Samuel Putnam, 57, author, critic, and founder-editor of the New Review, 15 January 1950.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 57, novelist (The Yearling), winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for literature, 14 December 1953.

Irving Reis, 47, motion-picture director (The Fourposter, All My Sons), 3 July 1953.

J. P. Richardson, rock 'n' roll musician, killed in a plane crash, 3 February 1959.

Lynn Riggs, 54, playwright (Green Grow the Lilacs, which was adapted as the popular musical Oklahoma!), 30 June 1954.

Mary Roberts Rinehart, 82, mystery novelist, 23 September 1958.

Artur Rodzinski, 64, conductor who assembled the New York Philharmonic and directed, among other orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago Sym-phony, 27 November 1958.

Sigmund Romberg, 64, composer of musicals and operettas (The Student Prince, Blossom Time), 9 November 1951.

Jerry Ross (Jerold Rosenberg), 29, songwriter (" Pajama Game," "Damn Yankees"), 11 November 1955.

Léon Rothier, 76, opera star, a leading bass at the New York Metropolitan Opera (1910-1942), 6 December 1951.

Homer S. Saint-Gaudens, 79, art authority and stage director (What Every Woman Knows, Beyond the Horizon), 8 December 1958.

Lawrence Schwab, 57, theatrical producer, 29 May 1951.

Edward Seiler, 40, lyricist (" When the Lights Go On Again All over the World," "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire"), 1 January 1952.

John J. Sheehan, 66, stage and motion-picture actor, 15 February 1952.

Ruth Shepley, 59, Broadway theatrical star, 15 October 1951.

Harry Sherman, 67, producer of original Hopalong Cassidy movies, 25 September 1952.

Robert Emmet Sherwood, 59, playwright and author, 14 November 1955.

Lawrence James Shields, 60, pioneer jazz musician, co-writer of "Tiger Rag," 21 November 1953.

Lee Shubert, 78?, prominent theater owner and producer; Shubert Alley, in New York's theater district, is named for him and his brother; 25 December 1953.

John Sloan, 80, painter, 8 September 1951.

Albert Spalding, 64, violinist, 26 May 1953.

Andrew B. Sterlin, 80, songwriter (" Wait Till the Sun" Shines," "Nellie," "When My Baby Smiles at Me," "Meet Me in St. Louis"), 11 August 1955.

Wallace Stevens, 75, poet, winner of the 1955 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, 2 August 1955.

Belle Stoddard (Mrs. Paul M. Johnstone), 81, stage and motion-picture actress, 13 December 1950.

Fred Stone, 85, actor, onetime vaudeville comedian of the team of Montgomery and Stone, best known as creator of the Scarecrow role in The Wizard of Oz (1903), 6 March 1959.

Michael Strange (Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs), 60, author and actress, wife of John Barrymore (1920-1928), 5 November 1950.

Erich von Stroheim, 71, Austrian-born motion-picture actor and director, 12 May 1957.

Austin Strong, 71, playwright (Seventh Heaven, Three Wise Fools), 17 September 1952.

Preston Sturges, 60, motion-picture director and producer who won a 1940 Oscar for writing and directing The Great McGinty, 6 August 1959.

Norma Talmadge, 60, silent-film actress (The Dixie Mother, The Battle Cry of Peace, Kiki), 24 December, 1957.

Art Tatum, 46, jazz pianist, 5 November 1956.

Francis Henry Taylor, 54, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1939-1954) and director of the Worcester Art Museum, 22 November 1957.

Michael Todd (Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen), 50, theatrical and motion-picture producer (Around the World in 80 Days ), 22 March 1958.

Ridgely Torrence, 75, poet, winner of the Shelley Memorial Award in 1941, 25 December 1950.

Arturo Toscanini, 89, Italian conductor, former music director of La Scala Opera, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, 16 January 1957,

Lamar Trotti, 54, film-scenario writer and producer (Wilson, The Ox Bow Incident ), 28 August 1952.

Ritchie Valens, rock 'n' roll musician, in a plane crash, 3 February 1959.

Egbert Van Alstyne, 73, composer of more than five hundred popular songs, 9 July 1951.

Carl Van Doren, 64, literary figure and educator, winner of the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for biography (Benjamin Franklin ), 18 July 1950.

Albert (Gumra) Von Tilzer, 78, songwriter (" Take Me Out to the Ball Game," "Put Your Arms Around Me Honey," "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time"), 1 October 1956.

Robert Walker, 32, motion-picture star, 28 August 1951.

Edwin Walter, 81, actor who performed over twenty-six hundred times in Tobacco Road, 23 November 1953.

Harry M. Warner, 76, motion-picture pioneer and cofounder with his two brothers of Warner Bros, film studio, 25 July 1958.

Percival Wilde, 66, playwright, novelist, 19 September 1953.

Ben Ames Williams, 63, novelist (House Divided, The Strange Woman), 4 February 1953.

Frances Williams, 57, musical-comedy actress, blues singer, and dancer who is credited with having introduced the Charleston in the 1920s, 27 January 1959.

Hank Williams, 29, hillbilly singer and composer (" Cold, Cold Heart," "Jambalaya"), 1 January 1953.

Frank H. Wilson, 70, actor (Porgy, The Green Pastures) 16 February 1956.

Clement Wood, 62, poet, 26 October 1950.

William E. Woodward, 75, novelist, biographer, and historian, creator of the word debunk, 27 September 19

Frank Lloyd Wright, 89, architect, author, teacher, and pioneer in functional and organic architecture, 9 April 1959.