PASSINGS: Rose Kaufman, Herbert J. Miller Jr., Robert Allan Crane, Edmund Lindop

Rose Kaufman

Screenwriter worked with her husband

Rose Kaufman, 70, who co-wrote the screenplays for “The Wanderers” and “Henry & June” with her writer-director husband, Philip, died of cancer Monday at her home in San Francisco.

The Kaufmans first collaborated on “The Wanderers,” a 1979 coming-of-age gang drama set in the Bronx in the early 1960s. Based on the Richard Price novel, it was directed by Philip Kaufman.

“Henry & June,” an adaptation of Anaïs Nin’s memoir of her love affair with Henry Miller and his wife, June, was the first movie to carry the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s NC-17 rating.

It was directed by Philip Kaufman and produced by the couple’s son, Peter.

Born March 30, 1939, in Saugus, Mass., Rose Kaufman attended the University of Chicago, where she met her future husband of 51 years. They began making independent films in Chicago in the early 1960s.

Rose Kaufman was an actor and script supervisor on her husband’s film “Goldstein,” which shared the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. She also had small acting roles in her husband’s 1978 film “Invasion of the Bodysnatchers” and “Henry & June.”

Herbert J. Miller Jr.

Lawyer brokered Nixon’s pardon

Herbert J. “Jack” Miller Jr., 85, who led the Justice Department’s war on organized crime in the 1960s and later brokered the pardon of President Nixon and prevented the release of Nixon’s White House tapes after the Watergate scandal, died Nov. 14 at a Rockville, Md., hospital of renal failure after being treated for influenza.

Since the 1950s, Miller had been a top Washington lawyer and was among the first to specialize in white-collar criminal defense. Early in his career, as chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division under Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1965, he directed the successful prosecutions of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa and members of organized crime families.

Miller began representing Nixon soon after the president resigned Aug. 9, 1974, and he continued to argue cases on his behalf for more than 20 years. Working closely with the White House and special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, Miller was the key negotiator in arranging for Nixon’s unconditional pardon by his successor, Gerald R. Ford. Nixon wanted to fight the pending corruption charges in court, but Miller convinced him that a legal battle over Watergate would not be in his or the country’s best interests.

The final arrangement sent Nixon’s tapes to the National Archives, with the provision that neither Nixon nor officials at the archives could open the documents without the other’s permission. Other court battles went on for years and were not entirely resolved until 2000, when the complete tapes were made public.

After a late-night meeting at Nixon’s home in San Clemente, Miller got Nixon to sign a statement admitting he had made mistakes in dealing with Watergate. On Sept. 8, 1974, Ford issued the pardon.

Robert Allan Crane, 81, founder of the property management firm Crane Realty & Management Co., died Dec. 3 of an infection related to a blood disease at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach. When his firm was acquired by Grubb & Ellis Co. in 1998, it managed 3.5 million square feet of space in the Southland.

Edmund Lindop, 84, who wrote more than 30 history books for high school and middle school students, died Dec. 3 of complications related to old age at the Santa Monica Health Center. From 1957 to 1986, Lindop taught history and government at University High in Los Angeles.

-- times staff and wire reports news.obits@latimes.com