The following is a list of notable deaths in December 1997.

Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:

• Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.

December 1997

1

• Julius Barnathan, 70, American broadcast engineer, lung cancer.^[1]
• Stéphane Grappelli, 89, French-Italian jazz violinist.^[2]
• Władysław Młynek, 67, Polish teacher, writer and poet.
• Jiří Pleskot, 75, Czech actor.
• Khan Ataur Rahman, 68, Bangladeshi film actor, director, and singer.
• Edwin Rosario, 34, Puerto Rican boxer, aneurysm.^[3]

2

• Guido Brunner, 67, Spanish-German diplomat and politician.^[4]
• Silvio Ceccato, 83, Italian philosopher and linguist.^[5]
• Shirley Crabtree, 67, British wrestler known as Big Daddy, stroke.^[6]
• Harald Gelhaus, 82, German U-boat commander during World War II.
• Robert A. Hall, 86, American linguist.^[7]
• Steve Hamilton, 63, American basketball player, colon cancer.^[8]
• Michael Hedges, 43, American composer, guitarist and singer-songwriter, car accident.^[9]
• Marge Kotlisky, 70, American actress (Major League, Thief, Sixteen Candles).
• Endicott Peabody, 77, American gridiron football player and politician, leukemia.^[10]

3

• Stan Anderson, 58, Scottish football player.
• Domenico Enrici, 88, Italian prelate of the Catholic Church.
• Benito Jacovitti, 74, Italian comic artist.^[11]
• Vic Lombardi, 75, American Major League Baseball player.^[12]
• Olaf Pedersen, 77, Danish historian of science.^[13]

4

• Leo August, 83, American philatelist.^[14]
• Morton Bard, 73, American psychologist and author of The Crime Victim's Book.^[15]
• Buck Barry, 80, American actor and radio and television personality.^[16]
• Joe Brown, 71, American boxer.
• Ho Sin Hang, 97, Hong Kong entrepreneur and philanthropist.
• G. S. Jayanath, Sri Lanka Army officer, killed in action.
• Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas, 90, Lithuanian artist.^[17]
• Alberto Manzi, 73, Italian school teacher, writer and television host.^[18]
• K. A. Nizami, 71, Indian historian and diplomat.^[19]
• Richard Vernon, 72, English actor (Goldfinger, Gandhi, The Man in Room 17), complications from Parkinson's disease.^[20]
• Joseph Wolpe, 82, South African psychiatrist.^[21]

5

• Rudolf Bahro, 62, East Germany dissident and politician, cancer.^[22]
• Forrest Burmeister, 84, American gridiron football player.^[23]
• Eugen Cicero, 57, Romanian-German jazz pianist.^[24]
• Frederick Dainton, Baron Dainton, 83, British academic chemist.^[25]
• Ali Forney, 22, American gay and transgender youth, murdered.^[26]
• Lutz Hoffmann, 38, East German gymnast and Olympic silver medalist, suicide.^[27]
• John E. Moss, 82, American politician.^[28]
• Jakob Sverdrup, 78, Norwegian historian.^[29]
• Jan Voigt, 69, Norwegian actor, dancer and museum director.

6

• George Chisholm, 82, Scottish jazz trombonist and vocalist.^[30]
• Lou Clinton, 60, American baseball player, pneumonia.^[31]
• Eliot Daniel, 89, American songwriter and lyricist.^[32]
• Gilbert Delahaye, 74, Belgian author (Martine).^[33]
• Willy den Ouden, 79, Dutch swimmer and Olympic champion.^[34]
• Jagmohan Kaur, 49, Indian singer and actress.
• Peter Leventritt, 82, American bridge player.^[35]
• Eddie Myers, 91, British Army officer and author.
• Willie Pastrano, 62, American boxer, liver cancer.^[36]

7

• Billy Bremner, 54, Scottish footballer and manager, suspected heart attack.^[37]
• Barry S. Brook, 81, American musicologist.^[38]
• Félix Candela, 87, Spanish architect.^[39]
• Torbjörn Caspersson, 87, Swedish cytologist and geneticist.^[40]
• Fernand Cornez, 90, French road bicycle racer.^[41]
• Karl August Folkers, 91, American biochemist.
• George R. Gardiner, 80, Canadian businessman and philanthropist.
• Annette B. Weiner, 64, American anthropologist.
• Woodrow Wyatt, 79, British politician, author and journalist.^[42]

8

• Bob Bell, 75, American actor famous for his alter-ego, Bozo the Clown.^[43]
• Walter Molino, 82, Italian comics artist and illustrator.
• Léon Poliakov, 87, French historian.^[44]
• Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, 84, Cuban communist politician, Parkinson's disease.^[45]
• Laurean Rugambwa, 85, Tanzanian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.^[46]
• Stephen Tredre, 34, English actor and writer, bone cancer.
• Armando Valente, 94, Italian track and field athlete and Olympian.^[47]
• Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, 54, Nigerian army general, politician and Vice President.

9

• Tamara Geva, 91, Russian-American actress, ballet dancer, and choreographer.^[48]
• Angelo Herndon, 84, American labor organizer.^[49]
• K. Shivaram Karanth, 95, Indian polymath.^[50]
• Michael Lee Lockhart, 37, American convicted serial killer, execution by lethal injection.
• Keith W. Piper, 76, American football coach, congestive heart failure.^[51]
• Stefano Ludovico Straneo, 95, Italian entomologist and author.
• John D. Winters, 80, American historian.^[52]

10

• Anatoliy Banishevskiy, 51, Azerbaijani football playerer, diabetic coma attack.
• Kalmen Kaplansky, 85, Canadian human rights and trade union activist.
• Yevgeni Mayorov, 59, Soviet ice hockey player, A.L.S.^[53]
• Eve McVeagh, 78, American actress (High Noon, The Clear Horizon, The Glass Web).^[54]

11

• Roger Brown, 72, American social psychologist.^[55]
• Eddie Chapman, 83, English criminal and spy during World War II.
• Robert Cosmoc, 66, Romanian footballer.
• Jorge Castañeda y Álvarez de la Rosa, 76, Mexican diplomat.
• Simon Jeffes, 48, English classical guitarist, composer and arranger, brain tumor, brain cancer.^[56]
• Paul Scull, 90, American football player.

12

• R. Stanton Avery, 90, American inventor.^[57]
• Wacław Gajewski, 86, Polish geneticist.
• Brian Deneke, 19, American punk musician, murdered.^[58]
• Evgenii Landis, 76, Soviet and Russian mathematician.^[59]
• M. G. Soman, 53, Indian Air Force officer and actor.

13

• Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, 33, Italian businessman and member of the Agnelli family, stomach cancer.
• Martin Carter, 70, Guyanese poet and political activist.
• Paddy DeMarco, 69, American lightweight boxer.
• Don Edward Fehrenbacher, 77, American historian and Pulitzer Prize winner.^[60]
• Harry Glaß, 67, East German ski jumper and Olympian.^[61]
• Jimmy Milne, 86, Scottish football player and manager.
• W. D. Mochtar, 69, Indonesian actor.^[62]
• David Nicholson, 93, Australian politician.
• Alexander Oppenheim, 94, British mathematician.
• David Rousset, 85, French writer and political activist.^[63]
• Claude Roy, 82, French poet and essayist, cancer.^[64]

14

• John Adair, 84, American anthropologist.^[65]
• Owen Barfield, 99, British philosopher, author, critic, and member of the Inklings.^[66]
• Frank Baumholtz, 79, American baseball and basketball player.^[67]
• Marion Bell, 78, American singer and musical theatre performer.^[68]
• Gerald Legge, 9th Earl of Dartmouth, 73, British peer and businessman.
• Stubby Kaye, 79, American actor (Guys and Dolls, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cat Ballou), comedian and singer, lung cancer.^[69]
• Edna F. Kelly, 91, American politician.^[70]
• Emily Cheney Neville, 77, American author.^[71]
• Torsten Nilsson, 92, American politician.
• Kurt Winter, 51, Canadian guitarist and songwriter, kidney failure.^[72]

15

• Karsten Andersen, 77, Norwegian conductor.^[73]
• Cosmo Campoli, 74, American sculptor.
• Siegfried Flügge, 85, German theoretical physicist.^[74]
• Albert Heremans, 91, Belgian football player.^[75]
• Amin Ahsan Islahi, 93, Pakistani Muslim scholar.^[76]
• Borislav Mihajlović Mihiz, 75, Serbian writer and literary critic.^[77]

16

• Lillian Disney, 98, American ink artist and wife of Walt Disney, stroke.
• Ralph Fasanella, 84, American painter.^[78]
• Kim Hak-sun, 73, Korean human rights activist.
• Oksana Ivanenko, 91, Soviet and Ukrainian children's writer and translator.
• Nicolette Larson, 45, American pop singer, cerebral edema.^[79]
• David L. McDonald, 91, American admiral, Chief of Naval Operations.^[80]
• Hu Ning, 81, Chinese physicist and writer.
• William A. Smalley, 74, American linguist, heart attack.^[81]
• Frans Stafleu, 76, Dutch botanist.^[82]
• Richard Warwick, 52, English actor, AIDS-related complications.^[83]

17

• Juan Francisco Barraza, 62, Salvadoran football player and manager, cardiac problems.
• Paul Bindrim, 77, American psychotherapist.
• Ernest Bromley, 85, American minister and civil rights activist.
• Katharine Fowler-Billings, 95, American writer, naturalist, and geologist.^[84]
• Reginald Victor Jones, 86, British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert.^[85]
• Karl Kainberger, 85, Austrian football (soccer) player.
• Marie Gudme Leth, 102, Danish textile printer.
• Mel Mazzera, 83, American baseball player.^[86]
• Uzi Narkiss, 72, Israeli general.^[87]
• Peter Taylor, 75, English film editor (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Summertime, The Taming of the Shrew), Oscar winner (1958).^[88]
• Leo Turner, 69, Australian rules football player.
• Hanna Walz, 79, German politician.

18

• Geoff Campion, 81, British comics artist.^[89]
• Chris Farley, 33, American comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, Tommy Boy, Black Sheep), drug overdose.^[90]
• Harriet Holter, 75, Norwegian social psychologist.
• Michel Quoist, 76, French catholic priest, theologian and writer, pancreatic cancer.^[91]
• George Tsutakawa, 87, American painter and sculptor.
• James Kemsey Wilkinson, founder of Wilko.

19

• Michael Alldredge, 56, American actor (Scarface, Iron Eagle, Shoot the Moon).
• Siegfried Barth, 81, German Luftwaffe bomber pilot during World War.
• David Bradley, 77, American motion picture director and actor.^[92]
• Jack Bruen, 48, American basketball coach, cancer.^[93]
• Bonny Hicks, 29, Singapore model and writer, airplane crash.
• Sara Northrup Hollister, 73, American occultist and second wife of author L. Ron Hubbard.
• Masaru Ibuka, 89, Japanese electronics industrialist and co-founder of Sony, heart failure.^[94]
• Patsy Lawlor, 64, Irish businesswoman and politician.
• Jimmy Rogers, 73, American blues musician, colon cancer.^[95]
• David Schramm, 52, American astrophysicist, airplane crash.^[96]
• Fyodor Simashev, 52, Russian cross-country skier.
• Uldis Ģērmanis, 82, Latvian historian, writer and publicist.^[97]

20

• Jim Gibbons, 73, Irish politician.
• Richard Glazar, 77, Czech-Jewish Holocaust survivor, suicide.
• Jūzō Itami, 64, Japanese actor, screenwriter and film director, alleged suicide.^[98]
• Wenceslas Kalibushi, 78, Rwandan catholic bishop.
• Denise Levertov, 74, American poet, lymphoma.^[99]
• Esther Peterson, 91, American consumer and women's advocate.^[100]
• Dick Spooner, 77, English cricket player.
• Dawn Steel, 51, American film studio executive and producer (Cool Runnings, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid), brain cancer.^[101]

21

• Joseph Ahrens, 94, German composer and organist.^[102]
• Roger Barkley, 61, American radio personality, pancreatic cancer.^[103]
• Blai Bonet, 71, Spanish poet, novelist and art critic.
• Johnny Coles, 71, American jazz trumpeter, cancer.^[104]
• Amie Comeaux, 21, American country music singer, car accident.
• Igor Dmitriev, 56, Russian ice hockey player and coach.
• Sacco van der Made, 79, Dutch actor.^[105]
• Jerry Masucci, 63, American attorney and businessman.^[106]
• Roxbee Cox, Baron Kings Norton, 95, British aeronautical engineer.
• Sholom Schwadron, Israeli Haredi rabbi and orator.
• Józef Stefański, 89, Polish cyclist.^[107]
• Bruce Woodcock, 76, English boxer.^[108]

22

• Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, 66, Cuban human rights activist.^[109]
• Flea Clifton, 89, American baseball player.^[110]
• Francis Haar, 89, Hungarian socio-photographer.
• José Oliva, 26, Dominican baseball player, traffic accident.
• Hal Rice, 73, American baseball player.^[111]
• Clara Lee Tanner, 92, American anthropologist and art historian.

23

• Felix Bwalya, 27, Zambian boxer and Olympian, head injuries sustained in a boxing fight.^[112]
• Stanley Cortez, 89, American cinematographer, heart attack.^[113]
• Les Harrison, American basketball player and coach.^[114]
• Zaur Kaloyev, 66, Soviet and Georgian football player.
• Thomas S. Moorman, 87, United States Air Force officer.^[115]
• Fred Page, 82, Canadian ice hockey referee and administrator.^[116]
• Paula Stone, 85, American actress.^[117]

24

• Fahd Ballan, 64, Syrian druze singer and actor.
• Jacques Fabbri, 72, French actor.^[118]
• Vic Feller, 74, Luxembourgian football player.^[119]
• Kemper Goodwin, 91, American architect.
• Harry Groves, 79, English boxer.
• Andy Kerr, 66, Scottish football player.^[120]
• Charles Roman Koester, 82, American prelate of the Catholic Church.
• James Komack, 73, American television producer and writer (The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Chico and the Man, Welcome Back, Kotter), heart failure.^[121]
• Toshiro Mifune, 77, Japanese actor (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood), multiple organ failure.^[122]
• Lotte Motz, 75, Austrian-American scholar.

25

• Anatoli Boukreev, 39, Russian and Kazakhstani mountaineer, avalanche.^[123]
• Anita Conti, 98, French explorer and photographer.
• Yvonne Cormeau, 88, British SOE agent during World War II.
• Georgi Gavasheli, 50, Soviet/Georgian football player.
• Myriam Marbe, 66, Romanian composer and pianist.^[124]
• Jerry March, 68, American organic chemist.^[125]
• Paul M. O'Leary, 96, American economist and educator.^[126]
• Denver Pyle, 77, American actor (The Dukes of Hazzard, Bonnie and Clyde, The Andy Griffith Show), lung cancer.^[127]
• Kenneth Spring, 76, British Army officer and artist.
• Giorgio Strehler, 76, Italian opera and theatre director, heart attack.^[128]

26

• Cahit Arf, 87, Turkish mathematician.
• Cornelius Castoriadis, 75, Greek-French philosopher, social critic and economist, complications following heart surgery.^[129]
• Simone Duvalier, 84, First Lady of Haiti as wife of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier.^[130]
• John Hinde, 81, English photographer.
• Sergei Mamchur, 25, Russian football player, heart failure.
• Victor Oehrn, 90, German U-boat commander during World War II.
• Karlis Osis, 80, Latvian-American parapsychologist.^[131]
• Kenneth Pitzer, 83, American physical and theoretical chemist.^[132]
• Tommy Price, 86, British speedway rider.
• Mircea Veroiu, 56, Romanian film director and screenwriter.^[133]

27

• Ewart Abner, 74, American record company executive.^[134]
• Yousef Mohamed Alghoul, 61, Libyan football referee.
• Said Brahimi, 66, Algerian-French football player.
• Webster Chikabala, Zambian football player and coach, HIV/AIDS.
• Brendan Gill, 83, American journalist.^[135]
• James Nabrit, Jr., 97, American civil rights attorney.^[136]
• Buxton Orr, 73, British composer and teacher.^[137]
• Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, 70, Indian writer, cartoonist and lawyer.^[138]
• Kent Robbins, 50, American country music songwriter, automobile accident.
• Bess Whitehead Scott, 107, American journalist.
• Tamara Tyshkevich, 66, Soviet shot putter and Olympian.^[139]
• Danny Wagner, 75, American basketball player.^[140]
• Billy Wright, 37, Northern Irish paramilitary leader, shot.^[141][142]

28

• Heikki A. Alikoski, 85, Finnish astronomer and discoverer of minor planets.
• Bill Anderson, 86, American producer, cerebral hemorrhage after falling.^[143]
• Shaikh Ayaz, 74, Pakistani poet, heart attack.^[144]
• Corneliu Baba, 91, Romanian painter.^[145]
• Henry Barraud, 97, French composer.^[146]
• James Lees-Milne, 89, English writer and expert on country houses.^[147]
• William Martínez, 69, Uruguayan footballer.
• Steve Musseau, 74, American football coach and motivational speaker, heart failure.^[148]
• Vassily Solomin, 44, Soviet and Russian boxer and Olympian, lung cancer.^[149]
• Wacław Wójcik, 78, Polish racing cyclist.

29

• J. Richardson Dilworth, 81, American businessman.^[150]
• Helen Kirkpatrick, 88, American war correspondent during World War II.^[151]
• István Kiss, 70, Hungarian sculptor and politician.
• André Marchand, 90, French painter.^[152]
• Robert Walter Steel, 82, British geographer.^[153]

30

• Danilo Dolci, 73, Italian social activist, sociologist and poet, heart attack.^[154]
• Raymond Ericson, 82, American music critic.^[155]
• Bernard Girard, 79, American screenwriter, producer and film director.^[156]
• Shinichi Hoshi, 71, Japanese novelist and science fiction writer.
• Warren Mehrtens, 77, American thoroughbred horse racing jockey.^[157]
• Bernard Soysa, 83, Sri Lankan politician.
• Kim Sun-ja, South Korean serial killer.
• John Howard Yoder, 70, American theologian and ethicist.^[158]

31

• Jim Chambers, 70, Canadian football player.
• Floyd Cramer, 64, American pianist, lung cancer.^[159]
• Dominique de Menil, 89, French-American art collector and philanthropist.^[160]
• Billie Dove, 94, American actress, pneumonia.^[161]
• Richard Elman, 63, American novelist, poet, and journalist.^[162]
• Michael LeMoyne Kennedy, 39, American lawyer, son of Robert F. Kennedy, skiing accident.^[163]
• Liu Lantao, 87, Chinese communist revolutionary and politician.
• Sandy McPeak, 61, American actor.^[164]
• Ken Olfson, 60, American actor.^[165]