Monday, Feb. 14, 1972
Divorced. George C. Scott, 44, the gifted, moody actor who last year declined an Oscar for his role in Patton (TIME cover, March 22); and Colleen Dewhurst, 47, Broadway star; on grounds of incompatibility; after nine years of marriage and one previous divorce from each other, two children; in Santo Domingo.
Died. Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva, 51, King of the Himalayan state of Nepal and the world's only Hindu monarch; of a heart attack; in Bharatpur, Nepal. Though he was a member of Nepal's royal dynasty, Mahendra was kept a palace prisoner for the first 30 years of his life because real power in his country had long since fallen to the aristocratic Rana family. In 1951, Mahendra and his father King Tribhuvan led a popular revolution that ousted the Ranas, and four years later Mahendra succeeded to both the throne and control of the government. He proved to be adept at foreign affairs and kept Nepal in wary nonalignment between its two powerful neighbors, India and China.
Died. Jessie Royce Landis, 67, veteran actress who appeared in more than 50 plays, 20 films and a variety of television shows; of cancer; in Danbury, Conn. "Most actresses won't play mothers because they think they won't be offered any more glamour parts," she said after turning 50. "That leaves me a clear field." While many of her contemporaries disappeared from public view in middle age, Landis kept busy by mothering the likes of Grace Kelly, Susan Hayward, Montgomery Clift and Gary Grant. -
Died. Marianne Moore, 84, America's premier poetess and baseball fan; in Manhattan. Born in suburban St. Louis, Miss Moore graduated from Bryn Mawr, taught for a time, but soon discovered her vocation: writing meticulously crafted poems in which, as she once said, "the words simply cluster like chromosomes." A consummate alchemist at turning trivia into metaphysical gold, Miss Moore was once described by Robert Lowell quite simply as "the best woman poet in English." She often celebrated in verse the serendipitous loves of her active life: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, animals, plants, tricorn hats, health foods, the subway. Sprightly, independent, gregarious, she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1952 for her Collected Poems, but perhaps valued more highly throwing out the first ball to open the 1968 baseball season in Yankee Stadium. As she once wrote, "Satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy./ This is mortality./ This is eternity."
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