Monday, Sep. 10, 1979
MARRIED. Debby Boone, 22, singing daughter of Balladeer Pat Boone; and her personal manager, Gabriel Ferrer, 22, son of Songstress Rosemary Clooney and Actor Jose Ferrer; in Hollywood. Wholesome Debby met the light of her life in a Bible class.
DIVORCED. Luci Johnson Nugent, 32, younger daughter of the late President Lyndon B. Johnson; and Pat Nugent, 36, partner in the firm that publishes the Texas State Directory; after 13 years of marriage, four children; in Austin.
DIED. Stan Kenton, 67, patriarch of progressive jazz; of a stroke; in Los Angeles. When Kenton crashed onto the West Coast jazz scene in 1941, his fortissimo "walls of brass" sound struck some critics as "sheer noise," but his popularity endured long after the demise of swing. He helped introduce Afro-Cuban rhythms to U.S. pop, invented the mellophonium, a trumpet-French horn hybrid, and wed classical music with jazz both in his own dissonant compositions (Artistry in Rhythm) and in unorthodox interpretations of Wagner and Ravel.
DIED. Sally Rand, 75, tart-talking blond fan dancer whose trademark routine--a nude vamp performing behind peekaboo ostrich plumes to the strains of Debussy --wowed 'em for 45 years; of a heart attack; in Glendora, Calif. She started flaunting her feathers and teasing her audiences ("the Rand is quicker than the eye") in the early 1930s, kept her 36-24-37 figure into her 70s by dancing every day, and claimed that over the years she had changed her act "not a whit, not a step, not a feather."
DIED. Louis, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, 79, British war hero, statesman and cousin to Elizabeth II; of injuries suffered when his fishing boat was blown up by Irish Republican Army terrorists; off Mullaghmore, Ireland (see WORLD).
DIED. Samuel I. Newhouse, 84, newspaper publisher who built the U.S.'s third largest chain (daily circ. 3.2 million); of a stroke; in Manhattan. A shy 5 ft. 2 in. dynamo who said that not being noticed "is the advantage of being a shrimp," Newhouse got big in newspapers quietly. Beginning in 1922, he acquired a succession of rundown papers and turned them into a string of profit makers that stretched from Alabama to Oregon. In the 1950s he started buying already lucrative properties, among them Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue. His family-owned dominion (he had all the voting stock) now encompasses 29 newspapers (biggest: the Newark Star-Ledger and the Cleveland Plain Dealer), seven magazines, five radio stations and a score of cable TV systems. Running his empire out of a battered briefcase, Newhouse cared little about his papers' content and read only their bottom lines. Said he: "Only a sound business operation can be a truly independent editorial enterprise."
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