BORN. To Meryl Streep, 30, high-cheek-boned actress (The Deer Hunter, Manhattan), and her husband, Sculptor Don Gummer, 32: a son, their first child; in New York City. Name: Henry.

DIED. Ralph Thompson, 75, editor, book critic and, for 23 years, secretary of the Book-of-the-Month Club; of cancer; in New York City. An Army intelligence staffer during World War II, Thompson wrote the "Books of The Times" column for the New York Times before becoming a contributing editor at TIME in 1946.

DIED. Jed Harris, 79, irascible, flamboyant theatrical producer and director, whom Noel Coward dubbed "destiny's tot" when, at the age of 28, Harris had had four hits on Broadway (Coquette, The Royal Family, The Front Page, Broadway); in New York City. Born Jacob Horowitz in Vienna, Harris dropped out of Yale and toiled briefly as a press agent for the Shubert brothers before emerging as a theatrical Wunderkind by producing Broadway. Though financially crippled by the stock market crash in 1929, he produced or directed some of the more notable Broadway efforts of the 1930s, including Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-prizewinning Our Town, A Doll's House with Ruth Gordon and The Green Bay Tree with Laurence Olivier. Harris' memoirs, A Dance on the High Wire (Crown; $10) were published early this month.

DIED. Major General Ernest N. Harmon, 85, one of World War IIs most decorated commanders; of pneumonia; in White River Junction, Vt. A West Point graduate, Harmon, better known to his troops as "Old Gravel Voice," commanded the "Hell on Wheels" 2nd Armored Division during the Allied invasion of French North Africa in 1942; the division later halted the Germans' westward plunge in the Battle of the Bulge.

DIED. Dimitri Tiomkin, 85, Russian-born composer who won three Oscars for his soaring scores for The High and the Mighty, The Old Man and the Sea and High Noon, and another for High Noon's memorable theme song, Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'; after fracturing his pelvis in a fall; in London. Intent on pursuing a career as a concert pianist, Tiomkin left Russia after the 1917 Revolution, made his Paris concert debut in 1924 and two years later performed for the first time in the U.S. Caught in the rush of talent to Hollywood in the early '30s, he went on to write more than 160 film scores, including those for the original Lost Horizon, Giant, The Guns of Navarone and 55 Days at Peking. Accepting his Oscar in 1955 for his score for The High and the Mighty, Tiomkin, good-humored and self-effacing, won the hearts of his audience when he thanked his four collaborators: "Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Debussy."

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