Famous In Life, Noted In Passing

Anna Nicole Smith, 39 For a while there, it was a fabulous life: Playboy model, widow of a billionaire, reality-TV star, mother of two. It all ended in a fog of pills and dueling paternity claims in a Florida hotel. Maybe Vickie Lynn Hogan shouldn't have left Mexia,Texas.

Walter Schirra Jr., 84 Of NASA's original seven astronauts, only Schirra flew in all three of the first programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. On the 1962 Mercury mission he told the world, "I'm having a ball up here drifting." Two decades later he said, "It's mostly lousy out there. It's a hostile environment, and it's trying to kill you."

Ira Levin, 78 Unprolific? Maybe. But his seven novels include "Rosemary's Baby" (1967), "The Stepford Wives" (1972) and "The Boys From Brazil" (1976), all best sellers, all hit films, all tapping into deep personal fears and cultural anxieties. And his 1978 play "Deathtrap" was a Broadway smash.

Henry Hyde, 83 As a six-term congressman and House Judiciary Committee chairman from 1995 to 2001, the Illinois Republican led fights to ban federal funding for abortions. He forced through the vote to impeach Bill Clinton. But he supported Clinton in trying to ban assault weapons; would the base support him today?

Lady Bird Johnson, 94 Calm, soft-spoken—and sharp as a tack—she was the ideal helpmate and good-will ambassador for her rough-hewn husband, Lyndon. Her $67,000 inheritance got him started in both politics and business; early on she ran his legislative office, and kept his anarchic energies (mostly) in line. Compare her highway-beautification project with his war: who was the brains of the family?

Jerry Falwell, 73 Hard to believe, but there was a time when evangelical Christians wouldn't go near politics. Then came Falwell. Angered by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Falwell decided to reach out from his pulpit in Lynchburg, Va., to what he believed was a silent majority of like-minded folks—a "moral majority," he called them. Historians still debate whether Ronald Reagan owed his 1980 victory to the Moral Majority, but there's no question that Falwell's political evangelism changed Washington forever.