The following is a list of notable deaths in May 1981.
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.
May 1981 1 Heinosuke Gosho, 79, Japanese film director and screenwriter, his work oscillated between comedy and drama, sometimes mixing the two, which earned his films the reputation of making the viewer "laugh and cry at the same time", he was one of the first film directors to adapt the works of the junbungaku ("pure literature") movement for the screen, which opposed popular literature in favour of serious literature and a more complex handling of its subjects. Barry Jones, 88, Guernsey-born British actor,"Obituary: Barry Jones: Familiar figure in Shaw plays on both sides of Atlantic," The Times, 4 May 1981, p. 10 he was a war veteran of World War I, having served in with both the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry and the Royal Irish Fusiliers until the end of his military service in February 1921,Gaye, pp. 674–675 primarily known for touring Canada and the United States during the interwar period, with a repertory mostly consisting of plays by George Bernard Shaw Marlin Skiles, 74, American film composer, he signed a contract with Republic Pictures in 1943, but he also worked for Columbia Pictures during the 1940s, he was the music director for the Western television series Death Valley Days (1952 –1970),cancer
3 Nargis, 51, Indian actress and politician, she won the Filmfare Award for Best Actress for her role in the epic drama Mother India (1957), she served as a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha from 1980 until her death in 1981,pancreatic cancerUsman, Yasser (2018). Sanjay Dutt: The Crazy Untold Story of Bollywood's Bad Boy. Juggernaut Books. p. 60.
5 Bobby Sands, 27, Irish paramilitary member, he joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1971,he was one of the orchestrators of the 1976 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing, he was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for possession of a revolver in 1977, but he was never charged with explosive offences, while still imprisoned in April 1981, Sands was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, nominated on the label "Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner", Sands became the youngest MP at the time,BBC News,1981: Hunger striker elected MP (April 1981) death by self-starvation while taking part in the 1981 Irish hunger strikeBobby Sands profile, cain.ulst.ac.uk; accessed 20 November 2015.
6 Frank Fitzsimmons, 73, American labor leader. Frank O'Grady, 80, senior Australia public servant, he was appointed Director-General of Posts and Telegraphs, heading the Postmaster-General's Department, in September 1961.
8 Uri Zvi Greenberg, 84, Austrian-born Israeli poet, journalist and politician, following the Israeli independence in 1948, Greenberg joined Menachem Begin's Herut movement, he was elected to the first Knesset, but he lost his seat in the 1951 Israeli legislative election, after the Six-Day War (1967), he joined the ultranationalist political organisation Movement for Greater Israel, which advocated Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, and subscribed to an ideology of Greater Israel, the scholar Dan Tamir considers Greenberg's ideology among the most prominent historical examples of Hebrew fascism.Bergamin, Peter. "Dan Tamir, Hebrew Fascism in Palestine, 1922-1942." Israel Studies Review, vol. 35, no. 1, spring 2020, pp. 115+. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org.proxy.library.georgetown.edu/10.3167/isr.2020.350108. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024. Prince Andrei Alexandrovich of Russia, 84, Russian exiled nobleman, he was a member of the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov and a nephew of Nicholas II of Russia,Romanoff, My Father and His Family, p. 15 he was an artist and had several exhibitions of his works in Paris before World War II, he designed the cover of Let's Light the Candles, a memoir written by his mother-in-law, over the years he came to enjoy his role as an English country squire, opening church fetes and sporting charitable causes, particularly in the English village where he lived.
9 Nelson Algren, 72, American novelist, he was a romantic partner of his fellow writer Simone de Beauvoir,Daniel Simon, "Algren's Question," in Stuart McCarrell, "Nelson Algren's Politics," in his novel The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1950,(With essays by Rachel Kushne and Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.) his works depicted the world of "drunks, pimps, prostitutes, freaks, drug addicts, prize fighters, corrupt politicians, and hoodlums",heart attack Margaret Lindsay, 70, American actress, her roles in the 1940s included a "striking" performance in The House of the Seven Gables (1940), an appearance in the first entry of the Crime Doctor (1943), and her recurring role as Nikki Porter (Queen's secretary and love interest) in the film series Ellery Queen (1940–1942), Lindsay was reportedly the life partner of her fellow actress Mary McCarty and was also a romantic partner for Janet Gaynor,emphysema Rolf Just Nilsen, 49, Norwegian singer, impressionist and actor, he was particularly known for his imitations of famous comedians
11 Hoyt W. Fuller, 57, American journalist, editor, educator, critic, and author during the Black Arts Movement, in 1961, he became the new editor of The Negro Digest, resurrecting the publication after a 10 year hiatus,heart attack Odd Hassel, 83, Norwegian physical chemist, he was a Nobel laureate in ChemistryOdd Hassel - The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1969, nobelprize.org for his contributions to the development of the concept of conformation Bob Marley, 36, Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist, he was a longtime member of the Rastafari movement, whose culture was a key element in the development of reggae, he became an ardent proponent of Rastafari, taking its music out of the socially-deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international music scene, he was a pan-Africanist and believed in the unity of African people worldwide, many of his songs had anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist themes, death due to acral lentiginous melanoma, the most common melanoma in people with dark skin, by the time of his death, the cancer had also spread to his lungs and brain.
12 Henry Formhals, 72, American cartoonist, he continued Freckles and His Friends, and served as an assistant on Ella Cinders and Joe Jinks Francis Hughes, 25, Irish paramilitary member, he briefly joined the Official Irish Republican Armyin 1972, and then joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army's South Derry Brigade in 1973, he was arrested in March 1978, after an exchange of gunfire with the British Army in 1980, he was tried for, and found guilty of, the murder of one British Army soldier, for the wounding of another soldier in the incident which led to his arrest, as well as a series of gun and bomb attacks over a six-year period, he starved himself to death while taking part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. His death led to a surge in rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. Benjamin Sheares, 73, Singaporean obstetrician, gynaecologist, academic, and politician, he served as the president of Singapore from 1971 until his death in 1981, his contributions to obstetrics include the lower Caesarian section, which he standardised, that resulted in a lower mortality and morbidity rate in pregnant women than the upper Caesarian section, death after spending several days in a coma, due to developing a cerebral haemorrhage
13 Joan Weber, 45, American popular music singer, her song Let Me Go, Lover! (1954) was performed on the television show, Studio One and caught the public's fancy, reaching No. 1 in the United States and No. 16 in the United Kingdom in 1955, the song sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc, after her early retirement from her singing career, Weber seemingly disappeared, by 1969, Columbia Records had lost track of her whereabouts: royalty checks mailed to her last known address were returned as undeliverable, the chart program American Top 40 ranked Weber at number one on a special program featuring the "Top 40 Disappearing Acts", which was broadcast in 1975,Durkee, Rob. American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century. . New York City: Schirmer Books, 1999, p. 74-75. Accessed December 10, 2007heart failure
16 Ezra Dotan, 43, Israeli fighter ace, he was credited with five aerial victories, during the early 1970s, he helped to develop unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) within the Israeli Air Force (IAF) Ernie Freeman, 58, American pianist, organist, bandleader, and arranger, he won the Grammy Award for Best Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist or Instrumentalist for his arrangements of Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night (1966) and Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water (1970),heart attack
17 Hugo Friedhofer, 80, American film composer and cellist, he started his Hollywood career in 1929 as a musician for Fox Film, and later served as an orchestrator on more than 50 films for Warner Bros. Pictures, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his music score for the drama film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), death due to complications from an accidental fall Jeannette Piccard, 86, American high-altitude balloonist, and Episcopal priest, she was the first licensed female balloon pilot in the United States, and the first woman to fly to the stratosphere, she held the women's altitude record for nearly three decades, and according to several contemporaneous accounts, she was regarded as the first woman in space.Shayler & Moule, pp. 12, 25–26
18 Eleonore Baur, 95, German nurse, she was an early member of the Nazi Party and was the only woman known to have participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch (1923),The Adelaide Advertiser, "Pioneer Nazi", 2 September 1949, p. 1 she survived the incident with only minor injuries, she was expelled from the Nazi Party in 1923, because she failed to pay her membership fees, she was later hired as a welfare nurse in the Reich Command of the SS, with the privileges of an SS Oberführer, she played a role in both the construction and the administration of the Dachau concentration camp, while there is no evidence that Baur physically harmed prisoners, she was repeatedly accused of bullying the prisoners, the staff, and her neighbours. Richard Hale, 88, American opera singer and character actor, he narrated the American premiere of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, at Symphony Hall, Boston, with Prokofiev himself conducting, ; Hale was also the narrator for Arthur Fiedler's 1953 RCA recording of the same music with the Boston Pops, cardiovascular disease Arthur O'Connell, 73, American actor, he was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in the romance film Picnic (1955) and the legal drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Alzheimer's disease William Saroyan, 72, American novelist, playwright, and short story writer, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play The Time of Your Life (1939) and the Academy Award for Best Story for his plot for the film The Human Comedy (1943),prostate cancer.
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