Connie kay, 67, a drummer who joined the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1955, died in his sleep Wednesday in New York. He played or recorded with Miles Davis, Lester Young's group, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderley and others.
Lionel Stander, 86, the gravelly voiced actor whose career included the screwball comedies of the 1930s and the chauffeur Max on TV's "Hart to Hart," died Wednesday of cancer in Los Angeles. He was among the actors blacklisted in the 1950s as Communist sympathizers by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Barred from Hollywood, he acted in theater and worked as a broker on Wall Street.
Irwin Kostal, 83, an orchestrator and conductor who won Academy Awards for his work on "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music," died Nov. 23 of a heart attack in Los Angeles.
Janet Smith, 79, the wife of Rhodesia's last prime minister, Ian Smith, died of cancer yesterday in Harare, Zimbabwe. A schoolteacher from Britstown, South Africa, she was said to be the dynamic force behind her husband in his 14-year fight to prolong white-minority rule in Rhodesia, which came under black rule in 1980 and was renamed Zimbabwe.