PASSINGS

Mireille Marokvia

French author of war memoirs

Mireille Marokvia, 99, a French author of two critically acclaimed memoirs that describe her experiences in wartime Europe, died Oct. 19 in Las Cruces, N.M., where she had lived for 30 years.

In her memoirs -- “Immortelles: Memoir of a Will o’ the Wisp” (1996) and “Sins of the Innocent” (2006) -- Marokvia described her childhood in a French village and her wartime ordeals in Nazi Germany.

The daughter of a teacher, Mireille Journet grew up in Manou, a village near Chartres. She studied French literature and philology at the Sorbonne. In 1939, she married Artur Marokvia, a German painter.

Although he was opposed to the Nazi movement, he spent the war years serving as an illustrator for the armed forces, the New York Times reported in its obituary. While her husband was in the service, she lived in Germany and, on occasion, helped Polish prisoners of war to the Swiss border.

After the war she and her husband immigrated to the United States, where he did magazine illustrations and she worked as an assistant designer for a theatrical costumer. She also wrote a series of children’s books that had French animals as their main characters. The books were illustrated by her husband.

After his death in 1986, she turned her attention to her memoirs, a project her husband had discouraged because they brought up bad memories of the war, the New York Times obituary noted.

Lou Dorfsman

Longtime CBS design director

Lou Dorfsman, 90, the design director who helped enhance the strong image of CBS for more than four decades, died Oct. 22 of congestive heart failure in Roslyn, N.Y.

After starting as a staff designer for the CBS Radio Network in 1946, Dorfsman eventually became design director for the entire company.

In that capacity, he designed the set for “The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite” and the floor set for the network’s political convention coverage. According to the New York Times obituary, Dorfsman “maintained tight creative control, which ensured design continuity from the CBS logo to its proprietary typeface, called CBS Didot.”

According to the New York Times, his designs featured clear typography, simple slogans and smart illustrations, which was not the norm when he started at CBS.

The son of a sign painter, Dorfsman was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1918. He studied art and design at Cooper Union and graduated in 1939. He served in the Army during World War II.

At CBS, he was also involved in fashioning advertisements for the network. To promote Cronkite’s coverage of election night in 1972, he came up with the slogan “Re-elected the Most Trusted Man in America.” To promote a four-part series on the Warren Report, he created a newspaper ad that read, “This is the bullet that hit both President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Or did it?” The full-page ad showed a close-up photograph of a hand holding a bullet.

He retired from the network in 1991.

-- Times staff and wire reports