Obituaries - Aug. 30, 1999

Martin Jacques Arrouge; Married Norma Shearer

Martin Jacques “Marti” Arrouge, 85, the ski instructor who married screen legend Norma Shearer. Born in San Francisco, Arrouge met Shearer in 1938, two years after the death of her first husband, producer Irving Thalberg Sr., when he taught her and her two children to ski. The widowed Shearer had affairs with James Stewart, George Raft, Howard Hughes and a teenage Mickey Rooney, but in 1942 married Arrouge, 12 years her junior. She faded from films after that, but the marriage lasted until her death in 1983. Arrouge was a Navy aviator during World War II and later became a real estate developer and entrepreneur. He remarried in 1985. On Aug. 8 in Los Angeles.

Max L. Gillam; Antitrust Lawyer, Consultant

Max L. Gillam, 73, federal antitrust consultant and litigator and respected antitrust lawyer with the Los Angeles firm Latham & Watkins. A Cleveland native, Gillam joined the firm in 1956 after graduating from Harvard Law School. He helped create Latham & Watkins’ antitrust practice and was a pioneer defense lawyer in California criminal antitrust cases. Gillam won the law firm’s first Supreme Court victory in a ruling that protected the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. After he retired, he became a senior litigation counsel and consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division. The Western Center on Law and Poverty named Gillam its citizen of the year in 1985. In 1997 colleagues named him lawyer of the year for the antitrust section of the State Bar of California. On Tuesday in Los Angeles of complications of a stroke.

Joseph Gold; Thought to Be Nation’s Oldest Marine

Joseph Gold, 107, who was believed to be the nation’s oldest Marine. Gold, who served with the American Expeditionary Force in the Battle of Belleau Wood in June 1918, received France’s Legion of Honor last month. A native of Cleveland, Gold owned a wholesale meat company in Manhattan when World War I broke out, according to a recent story in the Record, a newspaper in Bergen County, N.J. He enlisted in the Marines, served in one of the first units sent overseas, and was stabbed through the hand with a bayonet in one battle. After the war, he returned to his New York business, which he ran until he was 75 and retired to Florida. He returned to New Jersey at age 99 to be near family. A Marine Corps archivist who interviewed Gold recently said that although he couldn’t remember too many dates, “he was very clear on his feelings about the war.” On Wednesday in a nursing home in Tenafly, N.J., of pneumonia.

Charles F. Hall; Directed Early NASA Space Missions

Charles F. Hall, 79, a NASA engineer who directed some of the agency’s earliest and most successful space missions. A San Francisco native, Hall graduated from UC Berkeley with a mechanical engineering degree in 1942 and a short time later joined the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In 1962, he established the Pioneer Project Office at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View and managed it for 18 years. As project officer, he helped launch several missions, including the first spacecraft to fly past Saturn and Jupiter, and the first spacecraft to investigate the intense heat of Venus. Hall retired in 1980 but was often asked to take on consulting assignments for the agency. A funeral Mass is scheduled for noon Tuesday at St. Simon’s Church in Los Altos. On Thursday in Mountain View after a brief illness.

Spiegle Willcox; Trombonist With Beiderbecke

Spiegle Willcox, 96, a jazz trombonist who in the 1920s played with cornetist Bix Beiderbecke in the Jean Goldkette Orchestra. Willcox, whose real name was Newell Lynn Willcox, was born in Sherburne, N.Y., in 1903. His father played the valve trombone in community bands and Willcox grew to love the instrument. After enrolling in the Manlius Military Academy in 1918, he changed to slide trombone. He got his nickname Spiegle at the academy and quit the school in 1920 to begin his professional playing career. In 1922, an Ithaca, N.Y., band he played with was discovered by jazz musician Paul Whiteman. Whiteman renamed the band the Paul Whiteman Collegians and brought the group to New York City for gigs and recording dates. By 1925, Willcox had joined the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, where he played briefly with Beiderbecke, whom he later called a “genius.” After 1927, Willcox went into the family coal business in upstate New York. He led a successful band in the Syracuse area for many years but basically stayed out of the limelight until the 1970s, when he appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall along with five other members of the Goldkette Orchestra in a concert tribute to Beiderbecke. Since then, Willcox had taken part in many festivals and concerts throughout the United States and Europe, and often appeared at the annual jazz jubilee in Sacramento. When asked how he was able to play trombone so long, he replied: “You gotta have wind and you gotta have teeth.” On Wednesday in German, N.Y.