Died. Hsieh Fuchih, 63, former secret police chief of China; in Peking. Hsieh commanded 150,000 troops in the Korean War, and later aided Ho Chi Minh's forces at Dienbienphu. As Minister of Public Security in the mid-'60s he played an ambiguous role in the Cultural Revolution. He clashed with army commanders opposed to Red Guard excesses, then he violently quelled the Red Guard activists in Peking. Hsieh thus made enemies on both sides but survived them to remain a Maoist in good standing to the end.

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Died. Maurits Cornelis Escher, 73, Dutch artist known for his surrealistic woodcuts and lithographs; in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Escher worked in almost complete obscurity for 30 years, until, in the early 1950s, his vivid sense of fantasy and unusual uses of perspective won recognition in the U.S. His creations over half a century, about 270 works, now appear in museums on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Died. Gabriel Heatter, 81, radio commentator whose famous opener, "Ah, there's good news tonight," brightened the dark days of World War II; of pneumonia; in Miami Beach. After getting his first journalistic experience on the old New York American, Heatter switched to the young field of radio news in the early '30s. He won national attention in 1936 with 53 minutes of dramatic, adlibbed commentary from outside the death house the night Kidnaper Bruno Hauptmann was executed. For the next quarter-century, Heatter's mellifluous baritone carried good news and bad to huge network audiences.

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Died. Lord Rank, 83, Britain's foremost moviemaker; in Winchester, England. A devout Methodist with a family fortune derived from flour mills, J. (for Joseph) Arthur Rank entered the film business in the '30s to produce pictures that would compete with Hollywood and be morally uplifting. "I believe the best way we can spread the gospel of Christ," he said, "is through films." He made such classics as Great Expectations, Hamlet and In Which We Serve, and increased his fortune to an estimated $250 million.

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Died. Francis Bowes Sayre, 86, U.S. High Commissioner to the Philippines at the time of the Japanese invasion; in Washington, D.C. A career diplomat, Sayre first served in Asia as an adviser to the Siamese government. In 1933 he was named assistant secretary of state, and six years later went to the Philippines, then a U.S. possession. Sayre's appointment ended abruptly when, after enduring two months of Japanese bombing in a Corregidor tunnel, he fled the island by submarine.

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