NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

117-year-old Italian, world's oldest person

ROME -- Emma Morano, who at 117 was the world's oldest person and also was believed to have been the last surviving person born in the 1800s, died Saturday at her home in northern Italy, her physician said.

Dr. Carlo Bava said by phone that Morano's caretaker had called him to say she had stopped breathing in the afternoon while sitting in an armchair at her home in Verbania, a town on Italy's Lake Maggiore.

Bava said he had last seen his patient Friday when "she thanked me and held my hand," as she did every time he called on her. While Morano had been increasingly spending more time sleeping and less time speaking in recent weeks, she had eaten her daily raw egg and biscuits that day, he said.

Bava also lives in Verbania and had been her physician for nearly a quarter of a century.

Morano, born on Nov. 29, 1899, had been living in a one-room apartment, where she was kept company by her caregiver and two elderly nieces.

"She didn't suffer. I'm happy she didn't suffer but passed away that way, tranquilly," Bava said.

He said she had been her usual chatterbox self until a few weeks ago.

"She was slowly fading away," Bava said.

Bava has previously said that Morano lost a son to crib death when he was 6 months old and left her husband in the first half of the last century after he beat her.

Morano went on to support herself by working in a factory making woven bags, then at a hotel, working way beyond the usual retirement age.

She also defied health advice, Bava said Saturday. Some doctors had warned her against eating three eggs daily, which she did for years, but she ignored their advice.

Southern sheriff in two 1970s Bond films

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Clifton James, best known for his portrayal of a Southern sheriff in two James Bond films but who was most proud of his work on the stage, has died. He was 96.

His daughter, Lynn James, said he died Saturday at another daughter's home in Gladstone, Ore., from diabetes complications.

James, born May 29, 1920, in Spokane, Wash., grew up in Washington state and Oregon. He fought with the U.S. Army in the South Pacific in World War II and received two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star.

Lynn James said one of the Purple Hearts came when a bullet pierced his helmet and zipped around the inside to burst out and split his nose. The second Purple Heart, she said, came from shrapnel that knocked out many of his teeth.

She said her father rarely spoke about the war and never described events leading to his receiving the Silver Star.

After the war, he started acting in plays in college at the University of Oregon then moved to New York to start his career.

One of his first significant roles was as a prison floor-walker in the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke.

His long list of roles also includes swaggering, tobacco-spitting Louisiana Sheriff J.W. Pepper in the Bond films, first appearing in 1973's Live and Let Die alongside Roger Moore's portrayal of Bond.

James was such a hit that writers carved a role for him in the next Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun, in 1974, playing the same sheriff on vacation in Thailand as the epitome of the ugly American abroad.

His daughter said he was surprised that people remembered him most for that role.

A Section on 04/16/2017

Upcoming Events