Obituaries - Nov. 26, 1999

* Adele Balkan; Movie Costume Designer

Adele Balkan, 92, Hollywood costume designer who dressed such stars as Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich and Marlon Brando. Balkan’s career spanned four decades until her retirement in 1972 to devote full time to art. She costumed many of the original films that inspired recent remakes--”The Bodyguard” in 1948, “Mighty Joe Young” in 1949 and “The Fly” in 1958. Among her other films were “The Boy With Green Hair,” “The Blue Angel” and the biblical epics “The Ten Commandments” and “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Balkan recently had helped create an oral history of her work in Hollywood for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library. On Saturday in Los Angeles of cancer.

* Robert Belloni; Judge Upheld Indian Fishing Rights

Robert C. Belloni, 80, federal judge who upheld Native Americans’ fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest. In 1969, he ruled that Indian tribes are entitled to a fair share of the salmon harvest under treaties signed in the 1850s. A University of Colorado law professor called Belloni’s ruling “a watershed event” in the succession of Native Americans’ fishing rights cases. The judge’s ruling was made in combined cases on behalf of the Yakima, Nez Perce, Umatilla and Warm Springs tribes of the Columbia River Basin. A later case defined fair share as 50% of the salmon harvest, a figure Belloni made retroactive to the cases he decided. Born in Coos County, Ore., Belloni was educated at the University of Oregon and served as an Army officer in the Pacific during World War II. He practiced law in Portland and served on a state trial court before he was named to the U.S. District Court for Oregon by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Belloni served from 1967 until his retirement in 1995, and was chief judge from 1971 to 1976. On Nov. 3 in San Mateo, Calif.

* Faubion Bowers; Writer, Soldier Helped Save Kabuki

Faubion Bowers, 82, an American writer who helped preserve Japanese Kabuki drama. Bowers was a military aide and then a civilian censor under Gen. Douglas MacArthur immediately after World War II during the American occupation of Japan. In 1948 and 1949, Bowers was the official censor of Japanese theater and came to regard himself as its sponsor as well. Occupation authorities sought to ban Kabuki as a relic of a feudal society. But Bowers said it was an art form worth preserving and was later credited for its survival. Kabuki, which began in the 17th century, involves popular themes, highly ornamented costumes and stylized music, dancing and acting with both male and female roles played by men. Bowers studied piano at the Juilliard School, and went to Tokyo to teach at Hosei University in 1940. During the war, he was a Japanese interpreter for the Army and rose to the rank of major. His subsequent career centered on writing about the arts in Asia and Europe, including a biography, of the Russian composer and pianist Aleksandr Scriabin. Bowers was influential in popularizing the Asian arts in America. On Nov. 16 in New York City of a heart attack.

* Gaby Casadesus; French Pianist, Teacher

Gaby Casadesus, 98, French pianist known for her duets with her husband, Robert. Born Gaby L’Hote in Marseille, she won first prize in piano at the Paris Conservatory when she was 16. At 20 she married Robert Casadesus, a talented pianist from a well-known musical family. The couple were notable for their interpretations of duets he composed, including the 1930 “Concerto for Two Pianos” and the 1938 “Six Pieces.” Madame Casadesus also was known for her teaching career at Princeton University, the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, and the Salzburg Mozarteum. After her husband’s death in 1972, she helped found the Robert Casadesus International Piano Competition based in Ohio and now known as the Cleveland International Piano Competition. She had continued playing piano into her 90s. On Nov. 11 in Paris.

* Howard Ferguson; British Composer

Howard Ferguson, 91, a British composer who produced editions of the works of J.S. Bach, Franz Schubert and others. Born in Belfast, Ferguson studied at the Royal College of Music and taught composition at the Royal Academy of Music from 1948 to 1963. His major compositions included an octet for clarinet, bassoon, horn and string quintet in 1933, a piano concerto in 1951, “Amore Langueo” for tenor, chorus and orchestra in 1956, and “The Dream of the Rood” for soprano, chorus and orchestra in 1959. Then he stopped. Ferguson said he decided he could compose nothing new after that, so he turned his attention to publishing volumes of early music by major European composers. He also supervised the posthumous publication of songs by his friend Gerald Finzi, and unfinished works by Ivor Gurney and by the South African composer Arnold van Wyk. Ferguson even wrote a cookbook, “Entertaining Solo.” He spent World War II in the Royal Air Force playing with the Griller String Quartet to entertain troops. On Oct. 31 in Cambridge, England.

* Thomas L. Lowe; Developer in Newhall, Valencia

Thomas L. Lowe, 90, a Newhall developer, investment executive and civic leader who helped create Valencia. After growing up in Silver City, N.M., Lowe moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and graduated from UCLA. He spent 30 years with Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co., rising to executive vice president for investments and member of the board of directors. Lowe then became chairman and chief executive officer of the Newhall Land & Farming Co., where he helped expand the community of Newhall and initiated development of Valencia. He also served on the boards of the Los Angeles and California chambers of commerce and chaired both the Southern California Automobile Club and the national board of the American Automobile Assn. Lowe maintained a lifelong interest in education. He was a trustee of Claremont McKenna College, which awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1987, and with his family endowed the Lowe Institute of Political Economy. He was named the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce’s “Industrial Man of the Year” in 1971. On Nov. 4 in Los Angeles.

* Louis W. Menk; Led Railroad Merger

Louis W. Menk, 81, a railroad executive who merged three companies to create industry giant Burlington Northern. Menk was born in Colorado, the son of a Union Pacific trainman. One of his first jobs was night as a telegraph messenger for Union Pacific in 1937. A few years later he was hired as a telegrapher for the St. Louis and San Francisco railways. After 22 years he had risen to become president of the San Francisco line, the first of four he would head. He was president and director of Burlington Lines in 1965-66, where he led the company out of the passenger business, and then headed Northern Pacific Railway from 1966 to 1970. He created the world’s largest railroad and the longest single-line route when he led the 1970 merger of the Great Northern, Northern Pacific and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads that created Burlington Northern. He was president and director of Burlington Northern in 1970-71, chairman of the board and chief executive 1971 to 1978, and chairman from 1978 to 1982. He later became chairman of International Harvester, now Navistar. In 1978 he won the Horatio Alger Award. On Tuesday near Phoenix, of cancer.

* Ian Messiter; Game Show Creator

Ian Messiter, 79, creator of Britain’s longest-running game show, “Just a Minute.” Messiter’s brainchild was born in ignominy: When he was a 16-year-old schoolboy in Dorset, he was caught gazing out a window and ordered to repeat what the teacher had been telling the class for the last minute. Messiter could not do so and was hauled in front of the class and caned six times on his bare bottom. The humiliation provided the inspiration for the hugely popular game show that he created for BBC radio in 1949 and sold to American television two years later. The show’s panelists win points for talking on subjects such as the Great Wall of China for 60 seconds “without hesitation, repetition or deviation.” They must still be talking until they hear the whistle, which for many years was blown by Messiter, after a minute is up. The show’s regular panelists for two decades included Derek Nimmo, Clement Freud, Peter Jones and Kenneth Williams. “Just a Minute” was the first British game show to be sold in the United States and was aired nationally, featuring American celebrities alongside the very English Hermione Gingold. After many years on British radio, the show later appeared on the BBC television network and remains the BBC’s longest-running comedy game show, anchored by comedians such as Paul Merton and Tony Slattery. Besides game shows, Messiter wrote several plays for the BBC, one of which was made into the 1950 movie “Mr. Drake’s Duck” starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. On Monday in London after a long illness.

* Sorat Sabprasong; Champion Ballroom Dancer

Sorat “Lek” Sabprasong, 55, national champion ballroom dancer and teacher. A native of Thailand, Sabprasong came to the United States in 1977 and became a naturalized citizen last year. Horrifying his family, Sabprasong decided on a career in dance when he was 14. He studied the intricacies of the beguine, cha-cha, rumba, samba, tango and waltz that he would later teach. But first he competed, winning the National Championship of Ballroom Dancing in Bangkok when he was 19. After emigrating to Los Angeles, he taught his classic dance steps to members of the Thai community and others here. The weekly lessons, including native Thai dances, were conducted at Sabprasong’s Thailand Town Restaurant on Melrose Avenue. He once estimated that he had taught more than 5,000 people how to dance. On Nov. 18 in Los Angeles of a brain hemorrhage.

* Gladys Yang; Translator of Chinese Literature

Gladys Yang, 81, who translated and promoted Chinese literature for an international audience. Yang, a British citizen who spent most of her life in Beijing, was the first student to earn a degree in Chinese literature from St. Anne’s College at Oxford University. With her husband, Yang Xianyi, she devoted herself to a career in translating modern Chinese literature for the Foreign Languages press, the magazine Chinese Literature and other publishing houses. Among her major translations were “A Dream of Red Mansions” and the works of satirist Lu Xun. Like many resident foreign experts, Yang was persecuted and jailed during the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when foreigners and intellectuals were reviled by iconoclastic ultra-leftists. Her only child, a son, died during the violence of that era. On Nov. 18 in Beijing.