Passages

Veteran character actor Elisha Cook Jr., 91, who played Wilmer, the furious gunman baited by Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), died on May 18 at a nursing home in Big Pine, Calif., five years after being disabled by a stroke. Cook’s movie roles included 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby (as the devil-worshipping apartment-house manager) and 1953’s Shane (as a homesteader shot dead by Jack Palance)….

Former British prime minister Harold Wilson, 79, a member of the Labour party who served as head of England’s government from 1964 to ’70 and from ’74 to ’76, died in London on May 24. He had suffered for some years from Alzheimer’s disease.

With nearly 500 friends and all four of his fellow Eagle bandmates present, rocker Don Henley, 47, wed model Sharon Summerall, 33, on May 20 in Malibu. It is the first marriage for both.

NYPD Blue’s Gail O’Grady, 32, who plays precinct secretary Donna Abandando, said yes when her manager and beau, Steven Fenton, 27, proposed over the May 19 weekend in Salt Lake City. He presented her with a diamond ring weighing in at 4 carats. A wedding date has yet to be set. This will be O’Grady’s third marriage and Fenton’s first.

Actress Peg Phillips, 77, who plays crotchety shop owner Ruth-Anne on Northern Exposure, suffered a ruptured aneurysm of the aorta during surgery on May 16. Doctors at her Seattle hospital expect her to make a full recovery.

Comic David Brenner, 50, and his steady, artist Elizabeth Bryan Slater, 33, on May 18 welcomed son Slade Lucas Moby (6 lbs., 6 ozs.), born in New York City. Brenner has a son Cole, 13, from an earlier relationship.

On May 12, rocker Axl Rose, 33, filed in L.A. superior court for a restraining order against Karen McNeil, 34, a fan charged with trespassing at his Malibu house on April 27….

L.A. police beating victim Rodney King, 30, was arrested on May 21 near New Castle, Pa., where he was attending his father-in-law’s funeral, and charged with drunk driving. A hearing was scheduled for May 30….

A Manhattan surrogate court judge on May 22 removed Bernard Lafferty, 50, Doris Duke’s former butler, as coexecutor of her $1.3 billion estate (PEOPLE, 5/22/95). The judge criticized Lafferty’s “profligate” spending of estate money—$1 million-plus in the 19 months since Duke’s death….

Mechanic Bart Torpey, 35, and his employer, Recreational Concepts, of Sag Harbor, N.Y., were charged on May 22 with criminally negligent homicide in the death last fall of Vitas Gerulaitis, 40. The tennis star, napping in a cottage in Southampton, N.Y., died of carbon monoxide poisoning after a pool heating system, serviced by Torpey, malfunctioned.