Obituaries

It's time to take a look at some recent deaths of people who are said to be notable:

Otto von Habsburg, 98, the oldest son of Austria-Hungary's last emperor, in his sleep.
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Child star Edith Fellows, who was the subject of a bitter custody battle in the 1930s, of natural causes.  She was 88 years old.

Over time, her grandmother cut her off from anyone who might be a malign influence, which by her reckoning appeared to be nearly everyone. Even Edith’s father, who had joined them in California, was eventually deemed superfluous and sent packing.

One day in the mid-1930s, there was a knock at the door. On the doorstep was Edith’s mother, come for her daughter — or, more precisely, for her daughter’s earnings.

A bitter custody battle ensued, and accounts of it saturated newspapers nationwide in the summer of 1936. Edith’s mother claimed that the girl had been abducted by her grandmother, a charge that the authorities of the period took seriously in the wake of the Lindbergh kidnapping four years before.

She also asserted that Edith’s father had once tried to sell her to a dancing school for $5,000.

She had absolutely nothing to show for her years in Hollywood. Her "trust" had under $1,000 when she tried to collect.
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Actress Elaine Stewart, star of 1950s films like Brigadoon, 81.  She died after a long illness.

Ms. Stewart married the Emmy Award-winning game show creator Merrill Heatter in 1964. In 1972, she became hostess of the Heatter-Quigley game show “Gambit,” with Wink Martindale as M.C. She was later the hostess of the company’s nighttime production “High Rollers,” working with Alex Trebek.

I remember those game shows.
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Cable sportscaster Nick Charles, 64, of bladder cancer.
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Soap opera actor Anthony Herrera, 67, died in Argentina a couple of weeks ago following a long battle with cancer.

He played the role of James Stenbeck on and off for some thirty years on As the World Turns.  He also wrote a book about his fight against cancer.
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