1960 deaths

Rafael Gómez Ortega, (1882 – 1960) also known as El Gallo ("the rooster") was an early twentieth century bullfighter. He came from a family of famous bullfighters, including his matador father, Fernando Gómez García and matador younger brother, José Gómez Ortega. He is today remembered for several of his unique fighting techniques such as the espantada - or "sudden flight", which simply consisted of him fleeing when the bull entered the ring. Other techniques included fighting bulls from a chair.
His fights were considered amusing to audiences, and he was brought out of retirement seven times because of this "sportsmanship". He finally retired on October 4, 1936. Commentators find that his intermittent fear of the bulls was characteristic of his style, noting that he was often brave when it suited him, and gave in to panic when it did not.Ortega later wasted his fortune, and was supported by Juan Belmonte. He was briefly married to Pastora Imperio, a famous flamenco dancer.He died on 25 May 1960 at the age of 77.

Karl Klüsner (1905–1960) was a German film actor.

Aimé Clariond (10 May 1894 – 31 December 1959) was a French stage and film actor.
Clariond was born in Périgueux, Dordogne, France and died in Paris.

Bernard Ogilvie Dodge (18 April 1872 – 9 August 1960) was an American botanist and pioneer researcher on heredity in fungi. Dodge was the author of over 150 papers dealing with the life histories, cytology, morphology, pathology and genetics of fungi, and with insects and other animal pests of plants. He made the first studies of sexual reproduction in the common bread mold, Neurospora.Dodge's work on the genetics of Neurospora laid the groundwork for the discoveries that earned George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum the Nobel Prize in 1958.

Maurice Marinot (born 20 March 1882 in Troyes, France, died 1960, Troyes) was a French artist. He was a painter considered a member of Les Fauves, and then a major artist in glass.
Marinot's father was a bonnet maker. Maurice did poorly in school, but convinced his parents to send him to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1901 to train as a painter under French painter, Fernand Cormon. He left art school after his work wasn't accepted by the standards of the day. In 1905 he returned to Troyes, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
In 1911 he visited his first glass shop, owned by his friends, the Viard brothers. He fell in love with the contrasts between colors, hot and cold, the play of light and fire. He began designing bowls, vases and bottles which his friends made, then he painted enamels on the surface.
In 1912 he had his first exhibition and by 1913 critics were praising his work, saying “It has been a long time since an innovation of such great importance has come to enrich the art of glass” (Leon Rosenthal, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1913). From that year he stopped exhibiting his paintings.
The Viard brothers give Marinot his own bench and a set of tools, so he learned quickly how to blow glass. In 1923 he stopped using enamels, and explored the use of bubbles, metal leaf, and colored glass. His production process was “Long and fraught with danger” and one piece could take as long as a year to reach his standards.
The Viard Glassworks closed in 1937. Marinot was ill, and never touched glass again, though he did continue to paint. In the 1944 Allied bombing of Troyes there was direct hit on his studio, destroying over 2,500 paintings, thousands of drawings, and much of his glass. His sister's extensive collection was not damaged.
Major donation of Maurice Marinot (glass and paintings) was made by Pierre and Denise Levy to the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes in 1976. Florence, Marinot's daughter also gave major Maurice Marinot pieces of art to the city of Rennes Museum of Art.
A 20 piece glass collection by Marinot including vases, goblets and stoppered bottles dating to 1926-27 was gifted to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1970.

Pierre Véry (17 November 1900 in Bellon, Charente – 12 October 1960 in Paris) was a French novelist and screenwriter.

Domingo Marrero Navarro (1909–1960) was a Puerto Rican educator, writer, and speaker.

Benno Elkan OBE (2 December 1877, Dortmund, Westphalia – 10 January 1960, London) was a German-born British sculptor and medallist. His work includes the big Menorah standing in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem and also numerous monuments, busts and medals in Germany and England.

Piet Oege Bakker (10 August 1897 – 1 April 1960) was a Dutch journalist and writer. He was joint editor for many years of the weekly magazine Elseviers Weekblad.
His most famous work was the trilogy written between 1941 and 1946 dealing with the experiences of the street urchin Ciske Vrijmoeth, alias Ciske the Rat. These novels sold in their hundreds of thousands, and later appeared in translation in more than ten other countries. The story has been filmed twice, in 1955 and 1984, and a musical version ran from October 2007 to November 2009.

Jesse Lorenzo Belvin (December 15, 1932 – February 6, 1960) was an American singer, pianist and songwriter popular in the 1950s. Belvin co-wrote the 1954 Penguins' doo-wop classic "Earth Angel", which sold more than 10 million copies, while his top recording was the 1956 single "Goodnight My Love", a song that reached No. 7 on Billboard's R&B chart.Belvin's success was cut short by his death in a car crash at the age of 27. The accident, which also claimed the lives of his wife Jo Ann and their driver, occurred after a concert in Little Rock, Arkansas that had been disrupted at least twice by white supremacists. According to an Arkansas state trooper at the scene of the accident, the tires of Belvin's 1959 Cadillac had "obviously been tampered with".After his death, legendary blues singer Etta James referred to Belvin as the "most gifted of us all. Even now I consider him the greatest singer of my generation. Rhythm and Blues, Rock and Roll, crooner, you name it, he was going to be bigger than Sam Cooke, bigger than Nat Cole."