March 2

— Armando Trovajoli, 95, an Italian who composed music for some 300 films and whose lush and playful serenade to Rome is a much-requested romantic standby for tourists, in Rome. His wife said his death occurred a few days earlier but did not give the exact date. No cause of death was given.

March 4

— Jerome Savary, 70, a director who broadened the appeal of theatre to French audiences and helped popularize musicals, in Paris. He had cancer.

— Fran Warren, 87, whose 1947 recording of "A Sunday Kind of Love" was one of the classic hits of the big band era and who had a career that spanned more than 50 years, in Brookfield, Connecticut, of natural causes.

March 5

— Robert Relyea, 82, a film producer and director whose credits included "The Magnificent Seven" and "West Side Story" in Los Angeles of natural causes.

— Nathan Safferstein 92, who was suddenly propelled from his job as a supermarket manager into the stealth world of a counterintelligence agent on the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb dropped on Japan in World War II, in New York after a long illness.

March 6

— Tom Connors, 77, a Canadian country-folk singer known as Stompin' Tom whose toe-tapping musical spirit and fierce patriotism established him as one of Canada's biggest cultural figures, in Peterborough, Ontario, of natural causes.

— Alvin Lee, a British rock guitarist and founder of the band Ten Years After who burst to stardom with a memorable Woodstock performance in 1969, in Spain of complications from a routine surgical procedure.

— Dirk Coetzee, 57, a former commander of a covert police unit in apartheid-era South Africa who confessed to involvement in the extra-judicial killings of black activists, in Pretoria, of kidney failure.

March 7

— Claude King, 90, a country singer-songwriter who was best known for the 1962 hit "Wolverton Mountain," in Shreveport, Louisiana. No cause of death was given.

— Willy Switkes, 83, a character actor who had minor roles in "Tootsie," ''Taxi Driver" and dozens of other films and appeared in Broadway productions, in Rockville, Maryland. He had colon cancer.

Sybil Christoper, 83, the Welsh-born woman Richard Burton left to marry Elizabeth Taylor, and who became a theatre producer and nightclub founder, in New York. No cause of death was given.

March 8

— Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, 90, the last surviving member of a group of German officers who tried and failed to kill Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944, in Munich. No cause of death was given.

March 9

— Max Jakobson, 89, a former Finnish diplomat who helped shape his country's policy of neutrality during the Cold War, in Helsinki. No cause of death was given.

March 10

Princess Lillian, 97, a Welsh-born commoner and divorcee whose relationship with Sweden's Prince Bertil was seen as a threat to the Bernadotte dynasty and who kept their love unofficial for decades until they were in their 60s and finally got married, in Stockholm. No cause of death was given but she had Alzheimer's disease and had been in poor health for several years.

March 11

— Jacquelin Perry, 84, a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon who pioneered treatments to help polio patients regain movement, in Downey, California. No cause of death was given but she had Parkinson's disease.

March 12

— Clive Burr, 56, former drummer with heavy metal band Iron Maiden, in London. He had multiple sclerosis.

March 13

— Ieng Sary, 87, who co-founded Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge movement in 1970s, was its public face abroad and decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, in Phnom Penh. No cause of death was given but he had high blood pressure and heart problems.

March 14— Jack Greene, 83, a longtime country music star who earned fame with the hit "There Goes My Everything," in Nashville of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

— James Barrett, 86, a vintner whose chardonnay beat the French in a 1976 tasting that propelled California wines to international prominence, in California. No cause of death was given.

March 16

— Frank Thornton, 92, a British actor best known as Captain Peacock, a mustachioed, pompous department store floor manager in the long-running television comedy "Are You Being Served?" in London apparently of natural causes.

— Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz, 87, a former Argentine economy minister from 1976 to 1981 while awaiting sentencing for human rights abuses during the military dictatorship, in Buenos Aires. No cause of death was given.

March 17

— Mariam Farhat, 64, a Palestinian lawmaker known as the "mother of martyrs" who praised and supported three of her sons who were killed while carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis in Gaza city of health complications including lung ailments and kidney failure.

— Michael Rhodes, 89 an American opera singer and highly sought-after vocal coach who trained stars including German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, in Trier, Germany. No cause of death was given.

A.B.C. "Cal" Whipple, 94, man who helped get a groundbreaking photograph of dead American soldiers published during World War II, in Greenwich, Connecticut. He had pneumonia.

March 19

— Harry Reems, 65, the male star of the 1972 cultural phenomenon "Deep Throat," which brought pornography to mainstream audiences, in Salt Lake City, Utah. No cause of death was given but he had had multiple health issues, including pancreatic cancer.

March 20

— Rise Stevens, 99, a mezzo-soprano who sang with the Metropolitan Opera for more than 20 years spanning the 1940s and 1950s, in New York. No cause of death was given.

— George Lowe, 89, the last surviving climber from the team that made the first successful ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, in Ripley, England. No cause of death was given.

— Zillur Rahman, 84, Bangladesh's figurehead president who was instrumental the creation of his country in 1971 and helped establish it as a parliamentary democracy, in Singapore. No cause of death was given but he was being treated for respiratory problems.

— James Herbert, 69, a British horror writer whose bestselling spine-tinglers included "The Rats" and "The Fog," in Sussex, England. No cause of death was given.

March 21

— Chinua Achebe, 82, an internationally-celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident who lived through and helped define traumatic change in West Africa's most populous country from independence to dictatorship to the disastrous war between Nigeria and the breakaway country of Biafra in the 1960s, in Boston after a brief illness.

March 23

— Boris Berezovsky, 67, a self-exiled and outspoken Russian tycoon who had a bitter falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Ascot, England, an apparent suicide.

— Joe Weider, 93, a legendary figure in bodybuilding who helped popularize the sport worldwide and played a key role in introducing a charismatic young weightlifter named Arnold Schwarzenegger to the world, in Los Angeles of heart failure.

March 24

— Deke Richards, 68, a Motown songwriter-producer Deke Richards who wrote hits for the Jackson 5 and Diana Ross, in Bellingham, Washington. He had esophageal cancer.

March 25

Anthony Lewis, 85, a prize-winning columnist for The New York Times who championed liberal causes for three decades, in Massachusetts of complications from heart and renal failure.

March 27

— Gordon Stoker, 88, a member of The Jordanaires vocal group that backed Elvis Presley, in Brentwood,Tennessee, after a long illness.

— Paul Williams, 64, a pioneering rock music journalist whose Crawdaddy! magazine is considered the first U.S. publication to write seriously about rock 'n roll, in Encinitas, California of complications from dementia triggered by head injuries from a 1995 bicycle accident.

March 28

— Richard Griffiths, 65, one of the great British stage actors of his generation, a heavy man with a light touch, whether in Shakespeare or Neil Simon but best remembered by movie fans for being grumpy Uncle Vernon in the "Harry Potter" movies, in Coventry, England, of complications following heart surgery.

March 30

— Phil Ramone, 79, the masterful award-winning engineer, arranger and producer whose platinum touch included recordings with Ray Charles, Billy Joel and Paul Simon, in New York of complications stemming from heart surgery.

News from © The Associated Press, 2013