Obituaries - Feb. 14, 1999
* Neil Compton; Led Effort to Designate First Federally Protected River
Dr. Neil Compton, 86, who led the effort to secure federal protection for the Buffalo River, the first U.S. river to be included in the national park system. Compton grew up on a remote farm in Arkansas and went on to study zoology, geology and medicine at the University of Arkansas. After finishing medical school, he served as a medic in the Pacific theater during World War I and became a general practitioner when he reentered civilian life. In 1962, Compton was a leader in forming the Ozark Society and waged an unprecedented fight against the plans of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build two dams on the Buffalo River in northwest Arkansas. After a 10-year fight, in which the Ozark Society succeeding in changing the positions of key government officials, including Sen. J. William Fulbright, the Buffalo became the first U.S. river to be designated a national river. There are now six national rivers in the national park system. Compton acknowledged that the two dams might have helped the economic climate in northwest Arkansas but said that “economics ought not to be the main issue. . . . Maybe the issue is whether this beautiful country should be changed forever.” In addition to serving as Ozark Society president for 10 years, Compton wrote two books, “The Battle for the Buffalo River” and “The Buffalo River in Black and White.” In Bentonville, Ark. on Wednesday.
* William Ludwig: Screenwriter Was Active in Forming Writers Guild
William Ludwig, 87, a screenwriter primarily for Metro Goldwyn Mayer and a writer of four Academy Award-winning movies in the 1970s. Born and educated in New York, Ludwig came west and joined MGM as a junior writer. He stayed under contract with the studio for 20 years, garnering credits for 28 major motion pictures, including several of the Andy Hardy films made between 1938 and 1944. In 1955, he shared an Academy Award with writer Sonya Levien for the screenplay for “Interrupted Melody,” a movie in which an opera singer, played by Eleanor Parker, is stricken with polio, but with the help of her doctor, played by Glenn Ford, she makes a comeback and sings at the Met. Ludwig was also active in the formation of the Screen Writers Guild, now the Writers Guild of America, serving as secretary-treasurer for nearly two decades. In the 1960s, he was a force in the development of the guild’s pension fund. On Feb. 7 at the Motion Picture and Television Fund hospital of complications resulting from Parkinson’s disease.
* Nicholas Krushenick: Abstract Pop Painter
Nicholas Krushenick, 70, a noted painter of the 1960s and ‘70s whose poster-like works were referred to as abstract pop. Krushenick was born in New York and after high school studied art there in classes with the abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann. By the early 1960s, Krushenick had developed a style that became hard-edged, using bold colors and black stripes or outlines to portray rich, overlapping patterns in acrylic. Krushenick’s work was similar to the cartoon-like paintings of Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein, but he stayed away from images of commercial art. Krushenick also designed the production of Haydn’s “Man in the Moon” at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 1968. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1967 and taught at UC Berkeley and Cal State Long Beach in 1973. His work was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of a group show in 1964, and a show of his work was presented at the 18th Street Gallery in Santa Monica in 1984. His works are in the collections of several institutions, including LACMA; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Bibliotheque National in Paris. On Feb. 5 at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York of liver cancer.