PASSINGS: Gil McDougald, Mario Monicelli, Frank William Lynch, Willard E. Badham III, Bella Akhmadulina, Kevin Parry

GIL McDOUGALD

Yankees All-Star was 1951’s Rookie of the Year

Gil McDougald, 82, the American League Rookie of the Year in 1951 and a versatile member of dominant New York Yankees teams for 10 seasons, died Sunday of cancer at his home in New Jersey, the Yankees announced.

McDougald, who played second base, shortstop and third base, was an All-Star in five seasons for the Yankees. He played on five World Series champions from 1951 to 1960.

Gilbert James McDougald was born May 19, 1928, in San Francisco and signed with the Yankees in 1948.

In 1951, he hit .306 with 14 home runs. He drove in six runs in one inning of a game that season, with a two-run triple and a grand slam against the St. Louis Browns.

In 1955, he was struck on the head by a ball during batting practice and gradually lost hearing in both ears. His hearing was restored in 1995 after surgery to insert a cochlear implant.

McDougald retired after the 1960 season.

MARIO MONICELLI

Director introduced top Italian stars

Mario Monicelli, 95, who directed some of postwar Italy’s most famous films and launched the careers of some of the country’s greatest actors, jumped to his death from a Rome hospital window Monday, Italian media said.

He was being treated at Rome’s San Giovanni hospital for pancreatic problems, said Anna Scoltore, who heads the hospital’s media office. She said he had been admitted a few days ago and that it appeared his condition was terminal.

Monicelli directed such Italian film classics as 1958’s “Big Deal on Madonna Street,” which starred Marcello Mastroianni; “ The Great War” of 1959, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival; “For Love and Gold,” and the “My Friends” series with Ugo Tognazzi and Philippe Noiret.

He also worked with some of postwar Italy’s greatest actors, including Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Anna Magnani, Claudia Cardinale and Monica Vitti.

Monicelli shared Academy Award nominations for screenwriting for “The Organizer” (1964) and “Casanova ‘70” (1965).

A native of Tuscany, he made his first short film when he was 19 and made his directorial debut in 1949 by directing the Italian comic genius Toto, a partnership that would help make them both famous.

Monicelli remained active into old age and had cameo appearances in numerous films that he did not direct, including “Under the Tuscan Sun” in 2003.

FRANK WILLIAM LYNCH

Northrop president; arts patron

Frank William Lynch, 88, who joined Northrop Corp. in 1950 as a research engineer and served as the company’s president from 1982 to 1987, died Nov. 21 at his Corona del Mar home, his family said.

As Lynch rose through the ranks at Northrop, he held several key management positions, mainly in the company’s expanding electronics business.

He was one of several Northrop executives to testify before Congress in the late 1980s during hearings that investigated defense-industry fraud. In 1988, he told Congress that test results on the company’s MX missile had been falsified. Two years later, the Los Angeles-based company pleaded guilty to 34 criminal fraud charges and agreed to pay the government a $17-million fine to end the case.

In 1987, Lynch was named vice chairman of the Northrop board; he retired from the company in 1989.

Born Nov. 26, 1921, in San Francisco, Lynch received a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1943 from Stanford University. After serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II, he earned another bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Stanford.

He went to work for the Boeing Co. in Seattle but returned to California in 1950 to marry his college sweetheart, Marilyn Hopwood. She died in 1998.

In retirement, Lynch earned another bachelor’s, in economics, from UC Irvine, and was a major supporter of the arts in Orange County. He directed several nonprofit corporations, including Ballet Pacifica, an Irvine-based company of which his daughter, Molly, was artistic director. His other daughter, Kathryn, is an English professor at Wellesley College.

Lynch joked in 1990 in The Times: “I’ve gone from the B-2 to the tutu.”

WILLARD E. BADHAM III

Longtime headmaster of the Curtis School

Willard E. Badham III, 87, who for nearly three decades was headmaster of the Curtis School, a private elementary school in Los Angeles, died Nov. 21 at his Encino home, the school announced.

After graduating from USC in 1948, Badham joined the Curtis School as a physical education instructor. In 1964, he became the third headmaster of the school, which was founded in 1925.

He played an integral role in the school’s growth and its 1983 move to a 27-acre campus on Mulholland Drive near the San Diego Freeway, according to a statement by the school. He retired in 1992.

Born Oct. 21, 1923, in Los Angeles, Badham majored in physical education at USC but left school during World War II to serve as a pharmacist’s mate on a Navy destroyer in the Pacific.

For many years, the father of two ran summer day camps in Los Angeles and a summer camp in the Sierra Nevada.

BELLA AKHMADULINA

Contemporary Russian poet supported Sakharov

Bella Akhmadulina, 73, a poet whose verses have been described as among the best in contemporary Russian literature, died Monday at her home near Moscow. Her husband, Boris Meserer, told the ITAR-Tass news agency that she had a heart condition.

Akhmadulina published her first poems in 1955 and quickly won nationwide popularity. Her poetry was praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky once described her verses as a “treasure of Russian poetry” and placed her above other poets of her generation.

In the 1960s, Akhmadulina and other poets drew large audiences striving for intellectual freedom in the brief thaw after Stalin’s death. Her books of poems included “The String,” “Fever,” “The Candle,” “Dreams of Georgia,” “The Secret” and many others.

Akhmadulina often challenged Soviet authorities by defending poets, writers and others who were facing official persecution. She took part in the Metropol literary almanac that was published abroad in 1979 and angered the Soviet government. She published an open letter in support of dissident physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov when the Soviet government sent him into internal exile.

Akhmadulina’s first husband, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, also a prominent Russian poet, said on Rossiya 24 television that she was an example of “civic nobleness.” “She fearlessly defended all those who were in trouble,” he said.

On his blog, President Dmitry Medvedev described her poetry as “classic of Russian literature.”

Kevin Parry, a businessman who funded the Australian yacht Kookaburra III, which lost to Dennis Conner’s Stars and Stripes in the 1987 America’s Cup sailing competition, died Friday of injuries suffered when the vehicle he was driving rolled near his home north of Perth in West Australia. He was 77.

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