Obituaries : William Fadiman; Hollywood Producer

William J. Fadiman, 90, longtime Hollywood story editor, literary critic and producer. Fadiman, younger brother of the late essayist Clifton Fadiman who died in June, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and educated at the University of Wisconsin and the Sorbonne. While still in college he wrote a literary game called “Poetic Posers” that was published regularly in the New York Herald. From the 1940s to the 1970s, he supervised script development and story editors at several major studios, including MGM, RKO and Columbia. In 1970 he was hired as a literary consultant at Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. He contributed book reviews to the New York Times Book Review, the New York Herald Tribune, Saturday Review and the Nation. His producing credits included “Bad for Each Other” in 1953, “Jubal” in 1956, “The Last Frontier” in 1956 and “Rampage” in 1963. Fadiman taught screenwriting at UCLA and the American Film Institute and wrote three books, “Hollywood Now,” “Shivering in the Sun” and “The Clay Oscar.” On Friday at his Bel-Air home of injuries sustained in a fall.

* Viktor Posuvalyuk; Russian Diplomat

Viktor Posuvalyuk, 59, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and main envoy to the Middle East. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Posuvalyuk joined the Russian diplomatic corps in 1964. He served in embassies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria before becoming Russia’s ambassador to Oman in 1988 and Iraq in 1990. After returning to Moscow in 1992 to head the Foreign Ministry’s Department of Africa and the Near East, he shuttled between Baghdad and Moscow in efforts to defuse several crises around the issues of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. He also took part in negotiations to advance the Mideast peace process. In his free time, Posuvalyuk wrote and performed songs, and in 1996 he recorded a compact disc, Russian television reported. On Sunday in Moscow, Russian news agencies reported, after a long illness.

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* Bastiaan Meeuse; Voodoo Lily Expert

Bastiaan J.D. Meeuse, 83, former University of Washington botanist noted for his research on the malodorous voodoo lily. Meeuse was an avid investigator of a putrid plant called the voodoo lily, which has intrigued botanists for 200 years. The Southeast Asian flower with a fleshy purple spike emits waves of heat and an odor like rotting meat when it flowers. A relative of the so-called corpse flower that recently bloomed at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, the voodoo lily inspired Meeuse to write 200 articles over 50 years. He once called the plant a “wonderful botanical guinea pig” because its processes were fairly easy to observe, compared to other plants. “These plants work like mad. They respire and respire and respire,” he once said. Meeuse wrote a classic paper in 1987 that identified the substance behind the lily’s heat-producing “respiratory explosion” as salicylic acid, the metabolic end product of aspirin, which may help regulate growth in many plants. Scientists believe that unlocking the secrets of the voodoo lily and other thermogenic plants could advance understanding of pollination and the development of herbicides and tools to combat frost damage. Meeuse, who was born to Dutch teachers in Indonesia, was the author of “The Story of Pollination,” published in 1961, and coauthor with Sean Morris of “The Sex Life of Flowers,” published in 1985. The latter book was based on the PBS program “Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind,” on which Meeuse served as consultant. On Tuesday in Kirkland, Wash., of pneumonia.

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* Gilbert B. Mustin; Fleer Gum Chief

Gilbert Barclay Mustin, 78, the chairman of the Fleer Corp. who successfully challenged the domination of Topps Chewing Gum in the multimillion-dollar baseball card business. Mustin was a grandson of Frank Fleer, who founded the gum company in the 1880s. Mustin became the president of Fleer in 1959 after 10 years with the company. Fleer was in a highly competitive market with Topps Chewing Gum, which had cornered the baseball card business because of a Federal Trade Commission ruling that had come down in favor of Topps’ agreement with major league baseball players to use their images on baseball cards that it packaged with gum. In 1975, Fleer filed an antitrust suit against Topps in what was the beginning of a series of legal skirmishes. In 1980 a federal court ruled in favor of Fleer, and the firm started offering player cards with its gum in 1981. The same year, Topps won an appeal of the federal court ruling. After more legal maneuvers, Topps and Fleer settled out of court in 1983. The agreement gave Topps the sole right to sell baseball cards with gum, but Fleer was able to sell baseball cards. Fleer was sold to Marvel Entertainment in 1989, the same year that Mustin retired. On Wednesday in Bryn Mawr, Pa., of pneumonia.