Sister Rebecca Doan; Headed Mount St. Mary’s

Sister Rebecca Doan, 89, a former president of Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles. A native of Kennewick, Wash., she came to Los Angeles as a young nurse, joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and then began her nursing career at St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson. After earning a master’s degree in nursing from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in 1949, she returned to Los Angeles to chair the newly created nursing department at Mount St. Mary’s. There, in 1950, Doan established Southern California’s first baccalaureate degree program in nursing. Doan was president of Mount St. Mary’s from 1961 to 1967, During her tenure, she had to cope with the destruction of several campus buildings by the 1961 Bel-Air fire and direct their reconstruction. She also helped develop a two-year program for the college’s downtown campus on the historic Doheny estate. Doan chaired the nursing program from 1967 to 1971 and taught until her retirement in 1981. On Saturday in Inglewood.

Frank Taylor; Book Publisher, Movie Producer

Frank E. Taylor, 83, book publisher who produced the memorable film “The Misfits” in 1961. Taylor, former editor in chief and general manager of McGraw Hill Book Co.’s trade book division and publisher of Avon Books for the Hearst Corp., had few brushes with Hollywood. But one was stellar. A friend and publisher of playwright Arthur Miller, he assembled the amazing combination of Miller as writer, John Huston as director, Marilyn Monroe (then Miller’s wife), Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter to do the motion picture “The Misfits.” Then Miller told Taylor he should produce the picture. It was a hit, and Taylor’s only hit film. He had tried his hand at major studios more than a decade earlier. In the late 1940s he was to produce F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender Is the Night” for MGM, but that was tabled. He also worked with writer James Agee at 20th Century on an original script, but that never came to fruition either. Taylor’s only other film was the low-budget “Mystery Street” in 1949. After “The Misfits,” he published a paperback of Miller’s screenplay. Born in Malone, N.Y., and educated at Hamilton College, Taylor worked for a series of New York publishing houses and at one time had his own publishing company, Frank E. Taylor Books. He was known for refusing to interfere with the work of his writers, who included such well-known names as Miller, Eldridge Cleaver, Marshall McLuhan, Leo Rosten and George Orwell. On Nov. 16 in Key West, Fla.