Married. Robert Merrill (real name: Robert Miller), 34, Brooklyn-born Metropolitan Opera baritone; and Marion Machno, 27, Manhattan piano teacher; he for the second time (a previous go-day marriage to Met Soprano Roberta Peters ended in divorce in 1952), she for the first; in Manhattan.

Married. Kirk Douglas (real name: Issur Danielovitch), 37, jut-jawed cinema tough guy (Champion, Detective Story); and Anne Buydens, 31, onetime press-agent in Paris; each for the second time; in Las Vegas, Nev.

Married. Robert Taylor (real name: Spangler Arlington Brugh), 42, cinemactor (Ivanhoe, Knights of the Round Table); and Ursula Thiess, 30, German-born cine-masiren (Monsoon); each for the second time; near Jackson, Wyo.

Died. Lionel ("The Big Train") Conacher, 52, Canada's greatest all-round athlete (football, baseball, boxing, hockey) of the half-century, best known to U.S. fans as a star hockey defenseman during the '30s for the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Maroons; of a heart attack; in Ottawa.

Died. Roy Best, 54, keg-shaped, iron-fisted,warden of Colorado's Canon City penitentiary; of a heart attack; near Colorado Springs. A onetime cowpuncher, he took charge of the penitentiary in 1932, quickly became the boy wonder of U.S. wardens. Discarding traditional convicts' stripes, he served good food, set up shops to keep prisoners busy and make the prison pay. Fond of the whip and the lash, he boasted that he was tougher than any convict, two years ago was indicted (but never convicted) for flogging five would-be escapees.

Died. Anne O'Hare McCormick, 72, Pulitzer Prizewinning New York Times commentator on foreign affairs and (since 1936) the first woman member of the Times's governing editorial board; of cancer; in Manhattan. Born in England, reared in Ohio, she made numberless trips to Europe (often with her husband, a Dayton importer) for first-hand interviews. A writer of clear, unexcited prose, she cut through much of the nonsense in her field, constantly urged the U.S. to treat its allies with consideration and develop its foreign policy from strength.

Died. Poultney Bigelow, 98, wealthy, globetrotting author-journalist; after long illness; in Saugerties, N.Y. A lifelong crony of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II, Author Bigelow was easily quoted on dictatorship, boating, war and nudism ("To go naked is wholesome, especially for nervous women"), once urged the U.S. to make F.D.R. President for life, and before Pearl Harbor, predicted Axis victory in World War II.

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