Deaths elsewhere

Last update: November 4, 2009 - 8:05 PM

Carl Ballantine, 92, the "amazing" comedy-magician and character actor, died in his sleep of age-related causes Tuesday at his home in Hollywood Hills. As an actor, Ballantine was best known for playing the supporting role of crew member Lester Gruber on "McHale's Navy," the popular 1962-66 series that starred Ernest Borgnine. "He was a natural; everything to him had humor," said Tim Conway, who played the bumbling Ensign Parker on the show. "I only knew him from seeing him on 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' which I thought was the funniest thing I ever saw, the magic act that wasn't working." Indeed, it's as a comically inept magician variously billed as "The Amazing Ballantine," "The Great Ballantine" and "Ballantine: The World's Greatest Magician" that he made his biggest impact as a performer. Beginning in nightclubs in the early 1940s, the lanky Chicago native would walk out on stage in top hat, white tie and tails. "If the act dies, I'm dressed for it," he'd tell his audience, and he was off and running with a satirical magic act that conjured up laughs rather than amazing feats of sleight of hand.

Nien Cheng, 94, whose memoir "Life and Death in Shanghai" was widely praised as one of the most riveting accounts of China's Cultural Revolution, died Monday at her home in Washington. Cheng endured 6 1/2 years of solitary confinement and torture in prison. In simple, exquisite detail, Cheng's 1987 book describes the maddeningly circular reasoning of those caught up in the revolution. NEWS SERVICES

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Deaths elsewhere - November 4, 2009

Deaths elsewhere - Dorothy Rich, 77, an educator, author and lecturer who became one of the nation's best known and most persistent advocates for mobilizing parents' interest in their children's education, died of cancer on Sunday at her home in Washington. Parental involvement in the education of school-age children is largely taken for granted now. But it was not so when Rich was a teacher working in New York and Arlington County, Va., in the late 1950s and early 1960s. During her teacher training, the word "parent" was not even mentioned, she once said. But educational research in the 1960s and 1970s began to show a correlation between home life and students' success or failure, and Rich played a vital role in the movement to raise awareness among parents and students that learning happens before the school bell rings and after class is dismissed. As a columnist on school and home life for the Washington Post, she had the platform to draw attention to the issue. More

Deaths elsewhere - November 4, 2009

Deaths elsewhere - Clifford P. Hansen, 97, a Jackson Hole cattle rancher who became Wyoming's governor and then served two terms as a U.S. senator, died at his home Tuesday. More