Died. Commodore John W. Anderson, 77, affable master mariner who captained the world's fastest passenger liner, the United States, on 494 safe Atlantic crossings during an 11 1/2-year span; after a long illness; in Tenafly, N.J.

Died. Eddie Dowling, 81, Pulitzer-prizewinning producer and virtuoso of such other theatrical arts as playwrighting, songwriting, directing, dancing and acting; in Smithfield, R.I. Young Eddie, the 14th of 17 children, supplemented the family treasury with pennies earned doing a song-and-dance act in barroom doorways and in prizefight rings between bouts in Woonsocket and Lincoln, R.I. In 1919 he made his Broadway debut in The Velvet Lady, quickly followed by the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919, starring Will Rogers and Fannie Brice. Eventually turning to producing, Dowling in 1937 won acclaim for Shakespeare's Richard II, with Maurice Evans and Margaret Webster. After his prizewinning production of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life in 1939, Dowling went on to his greatest triumph. In 1945, he turned down a surefire commercial play to take a chance with an unknown playwright, Tennessee Williams. The Glass Menagerie, which Dowling coproduced, co-directed, narrated and acted in with Laurette Taylor, made U.S. theatrical history.

Died. Frank Sullivan, 83, gentle humorist and supreme authority on American cliches who for 50 years gave the benefit of his amiable wit to the readers of the old New York World, The New Yorker magazine and his twelve books; after a long illness; in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. A native of Saratoga Springs, Sullivan knuckled down to work at age ten, pumping water for thirsty bettors at the nearby race track. He graduated from Cornell in 1914, and headed home to report for the local Saratogian at $7 a week. After World War I, Sullivan moved on to New York City and the eminence of a job on the World, then perhaps the most highly regarded U.S. newspaper. It was there that he switched from news to humor and created his famed Mr. Arbuthnot, whose straight-faced conversation consisted of flawlessly crafted strings of cliches. ("When I'm not playing second fiddle, I'm off to Newcastle with coals, or burying the hatchet.") When the World died in 1931, Sullivan became a fixture at The New Yorker, to which he contributed from 1932 to 1974 an unfailingly cheery, name-dropping Christmas greeting in verse. Buring the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the natty, expansively girthed Sullivan was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a legendary luncheon club of such Manhattan wits as Robert Benchley and Borothy Parker.

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