Deaths in December 1997

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.

1

 * Julius Barnathan, 70, American broadcast engineer, lung cancer.
 * Stéphane Grappelli, 89, French-Italian jazz violinist.
 * 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.

2

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

3

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

4

 * Leo August, 83, American philatelist.
 * Morton Bard, 73, American psychologist and author of The Crime Victim's Book.
 * Buck Barry, 80, American actor and radio and television personality.
 * 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.
 * Alberto Manzi, 73, Italian school teacher, writer and television host.
 * K. A. Nizami, 71, Indian historian and diplomat.
 * Richard Vernon, 72, English actor (Goldfinger, Gandhi, The Man in Room 17), complications from Parkinson's disease.
 * Joseph Wolpe, 82, South African psychiatrist.

5

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

6

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

7

 * Billy Bremner, 54, Scottish footballer and manager, suspected heart attack.
 * Barry S. Brook, 81, American musicologist.
 * Félix Candela, 87, Spanish architect.
 * Torbjörn Caspersson, 87, Swedish cytologist and geneticist.
 * Fernand Cornez, 90, French road bicycle racer.
 * 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.

8

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

9

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

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.
 * Eve McVeagh, 78, American actress (High Noon, The Clear Horizon, The Glass Web).

11

 * Roger Brown, 72, American social psychologist.
 * 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.
 * Paul Scull, 90, American football player.

12

 * Jim Bob Altizer, 65, American calf and steer roper.
 * R. Stanton Avery, 90, American inventor.
 * Wacław Gajewski, 86, Polish geneticist.
 * Brian Deneke, 19, American punk musician, murdered.
 * Evgenii Landis, 76, Soviet and Russian mathematician.
 * 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.
 * Harry Glaß, 67, East German ski jumper and Olympian.
 * Jimmy Milne, 86, Scottish football player and manager.
 * W. D. Mochtar, 69, Indonesian actor.
 * David Nicholson, 93, Australian politician.
 * Alexander Oppenheim, 94, British mathematician.
 * David Rousset, 85, French writer and political activist.
 * Claude Roy, 82, French poet and essayist, cancer.

14

 * John Adair, 84, American anthropologist.
 * Owen Barfield, 99, British philosopher, author, critic, and member of the Inklings.
 * Frank Baumholtz, 79, American baseball and basketball player.
 * Marion Bell, 78, American singer and musical theatre performer.
 * 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.
 * Edna F. Kelly, 91, American politician.
 * Emily Cheney Neville, 77, American author.
 * Torsten Nilsson, 92, American politician.
 * Kurt Winter, 51, Canadian guitarist and songwriter, kidney failure.

15

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

16

 * Lillian Disney, 98, American ink artist and wife of Walt Disney, stroke.
 * Ralph Fasanella, 84, American painter.
 * 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.
 * David L. McDonald, 91, American admiral, Chief of Naval Operations.
 * Hu Ning, 81, Chinese physicist and writer.
 * William A. Smalley, 74, American linguist, heart attack.
 * Frans Stafleu, 76, Dutch botanist.
 * Richard Warwick, 52, English actor, AIDS-related complications.

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.
 * Reginald Victor Jones, 86, British physicist and scientific military intelligence expert.
 * Karl Kainberger, 85, Austrian football (soccer) player.
 * Marie Gudme Leth, 102, Danish textile printer.
 * Mel Mazzera, 83, American baseball player.
 * Uzi Narkiss, 72, Israeli general.
 * Peter Taylor, 75, English film editor (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Summertime, The Taming of the Shrew), Oscar winner (1958).
 * Leo Turner, 69, Australian rules football player.
 * Hanna Walz, 79, German politician.

18

 * Geoff Campion, 81, British comics artist.
 * Chris Farley, 33, American comedian and actor (Saturday Night Live, Tommy Boy, Black Sheep), drug overdose.
 * Harriet Holter, 75, Norwegian social psychologist.
 * Michel Quoist, 76, French catholic priest, theologian and writer, pancreatic cancer.
 * George Tsutakawa, 87, American painter and sculptor.
 * James Kemsey Wilkinson, founder of Wilko.
 * Kasino Hadiwibowo, 47, Indonesian comedian and actor, a member of Warkop DKI, brain tumor.

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.
 * Jack Bruen, 48, American basketball coach, cancer.
 * 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.
 * Patsy Lawlor, 64, Irish businesswoman and politician.
 * Jimmy Rogers, 73, American blues musician, colon cancer.
 * David Schramm, 52, American astrophysicist, airplane crash.
 * Fyodor Simashev, 52, Russian cross-country skier.
 * Uldis Ģērmanis, 82, Latvian historian, writer and publicist.

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.
 * Wenceslas Kalibushi, 78, Rwandan catholic bishop.
 * Denise Levertov, 74, American poet, lymphoma.
 * Esther Peterson, 91, American consumer and women's advocate.
 * 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.

21

 * Joseph Ahrens, 94, German composer and organist.
 * Roger Barkley, 61, American radio personality, pancreatic cancer.
 * Blai Bonet, 71, Spanish poet, novelist and art critic.
 * Johnny Coles, 71, American jazz trumpeter, cancer.
 * 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.
 * Jerry Masucci, 63, American attorney and businessman.
 * Roxbee Cox, Baron Kings Norton, 95, British aeronautical engineer.
 * Sholom Schwadron, Israeli Haredi rabbi and orator.
 * Józef Stefański, 89, Polish cyclist.
 * Bruce Woodcock, 76, English boxer.

22

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

23

 * Felix Bwalya, 30, Zambian boxer and Olympian, head injuries sustained in a boxing fight.
 * Stanley Cortez, 89, American cinematographer, heart attack.
 * Les Harrison, American basketball player and coach.
 * Zaur Kaloyev, 66, Soviet and Georgian football player.
 * Thomas S. Moorman, 87, United States Air Force officer.
 * Fred Page, 82, Canadian ice hockey referee and administrator.
 * Paula Stone, 85, American actress.

24

 * Fahd Ballan, 64, Syrian druze singer and actor.
 * Jacques Fabbri, 72, French actor.
 * Vic Feller, 74, Luxembourgian football player.
 * Kemper Goodwin, 91, American architect.
 * Harry Groves, 79, English boxer.
 * Andy Kerr, 66, Scottish football player.
 * 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.
 * Toshiro Mifune, 77, Japanese actor (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood), multiple organ failure.
 * Lotte Motz, 75, Austrian-American scholar.

25

 * Anatoli Boukreev, 39, Russian and Kazakhstani mountaineer, avalanche.
 * 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.
 * Jerry March, 68, American organic chemist.
 * Paul M. O'Leary, 96, American economist and educator.
 * Denver Pyle, 77, American actor (The Dukes of Hazzard, Bonnie and Clyde, The Andy Griffith Show), lung cancer.
 * Kenneth Spring, 76, British Army officer and artist.
 * Giorgio Strehler, 76, Italian opera and theatre director, heart attack.

26

 * Cahit Arf, 87, Turkish mathematician.
 * Cornelius Castoriadis, 75, Greek-French philosopher, social critic and economist, complications following heart surgery.
 * Simone Duvalier, 84, First Lady of Haiti as wife of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
 * 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.
 * Kenneth Pitzer, 83, American physical and theoretical chemist.
 * Tommy Price, 86, British speedway rider.
 * Mircea Veroiu, 56, Romanian film director and screenwriter.

27

 * Ewart Abner, 74, American record company executive.
 * 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.
 * James Nabrit, Jr., 97, American civil rights attorney.
 * Buxton Orr, 73, British composer and teacher.
 * Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, 70, Indian writer, cartoonist and lawyer.
 * Kent Robbins, 50, American country music songwriter, automobile accident.
 * Bess Whitehead Scott, 107, American journalist.
 * Tamara Tyshkevich, 66, Soviet shot putter and Olympian.
 * Danny Wagner, 75, American basketball player.
 * Billy Wright, 37, Northern Irish paramilitary leader, shot.

28

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

29

 * J. Richardson Dilworth, 81, American businessman.
 * Helen Kirkpatrick, 88, American war correspondent during World War II.
 * István Kiss, 70, Hungarian sculptor and politician.
 * André Marchand, 90, French painter.
 * Robert Walter Steel, 82, British geographer.

30

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

31

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