The following is a list of notable deaths in December 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.
December 1981 1 Russ Manning, 52, American comic book artist, he created the series Magnus, Robot Fighter and illustrated such newspaper comic strips as Tarzan and Star Wars,Manning biography at Lambiek.net's Comiclopedia. Accessed November 8, 2008.Steve Holland, Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History. Lewes: ILEX, 2009. . .pp. 102–103. cancer
2 Wallace Harrison, 86, American modernist architect, he served as a designer and architectural adviser for Nelson Rockefeller,Goldberger, Paul. "Wallace Harrison Dead at 86; Rockefeller Center Architect " The New York Times, December 3, 1981. Article retrieved May 27, 2014. he participated with the architectural teams involved in the construction of Rockefeller Center in New York City,Icons of American Architecture: From the Alamo to the World Trade Center By Donald Langmead his architectural works include the Socony-Mobil Building (1956), the Fish Church (1958), and the Time-Life Building (1959)Caroline Rob Zaleski, Long Island Modernism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2012): Pg. 26 Duke Mitchell, 55, American actor, slapstick comedian, crooner and independent film director of 1970s gangster films, he teamed up with his fellow comedian Sammy Petrillo in a comedy act imitating Martin and Lewis, in part based on the physical resemblance of Mitchell and Petrillo to the original comedy duo,Sammy Petrillo obituary, The New York Times, August 24, 2009; accessed July 2, 2017. he was one of the lead stars of the jungle-themed comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952),Bill Warren, Keep Watching The Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the 1950s, Vol. 2, 1958-1962 (New York: McFarland & Co, 1986), pg 410 lung cancer
4 Jovette Bernier, 81, Canadian journalist and scriptwriter, from 1963 until 1965, she wrote scripts for the Quebec-based soap opera Rue de l'Anse
5 Darien Angadi, 32, English singer and actor, he recorded Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde with the Wandsworth School Boys' Choir,Argo Records 1961 he had roles in several television dramas, including I, Claudius and Blake's 7, suicide by hangingThe date of 1981 is supported by the obituary of his mother in The Guardian, and ancestry.co.uk gives his date of death as 5 December 1981 – supported by a photocopy of his entry in the National Probate Calendar Charles Barton, 79, American actor and film director, he was the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Assistant Director in 1933, primarily known for directing popular comedy films, he directed 9 films for the comedy duo of Abbott and Costello, including their last film appearance as a duo, Dance with Me, Henry (1956), heart attack
6 Harry Harlow, 76, American psychologist, he is primarily known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development. The importance of these findings is that they contradicted both the traditional pedagogic advice of limiting or avoiding bodily contact in an attempt to avoid spoiling children, and the insistence of the predominant behaviorist school of psychology that emotions were negligible.
7 Noel Drayton, 68, South African-born American actorWilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 25047-25048). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
8 Big Walter Horton, 60, American blues harmonica player, he was regarded as one of the three great harmonica soloists of the genre, his technique and tone continue to be studied and emulated by harmonica players around the world, he accompanied John Lee Hooker in the film The Blues Brothers (1980), but he found the cinematic process to be tedious and abandoned the set, death by heart failureEagle and LeBlanc, p. 193. , with acute alcoholism as a contributing factor Ferruccio Parri, 91, Italian partisan and anti-fascist politician, he served as the prime minister of Italy for a few months in 1945, since Parri was a centrist, he was chosen as the compromise leader in a coalition government,"Split", Time, 3 December 1945. in 1958, he initiated a failed proposal to form a parliamentary inquiry committee to investigate the activities of the Sicilian Mafia. L'istituzione della prima Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sulla mafia in: L'art. 41-bis l. 354/75 come strumento di lotta contro la mafia, by Elisa Fontanelli, bachelor's degree dissertation, Florence University, 2005 Rocky Shahan, 62, American actor and stuntman, he was a regular cast member in the Western television series Rawhide
11 Zoya Fyodorova, 73, Russian actress, sentenced for a number of years to work camp imprisonment in Siberia due to her affair with the American Navy captain Jackson Tate, and due to rejecting the advances of her would-be lover Lavrentiy Beria, the then-head of the NKVD, murdered in her own apartment, shot in the back of the head
13 Cornelius Cardew, 45, English composer of experimental music, co-founder of the Scratch Orchestra,Taylor, Timothy D., (Author). "Moving in Decency: The Music And Radical Politics of Cornelius Cardew." Music & Letters 79.4 (1998): 555. RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. Web. 13 March 2013.Stefan Szczelkun Ph.D. thesis killed in a hit-and-run accident, attributed to a drunken driver who drove off to avoid arrest.Harris, The Legacy of Cornelius Cardew, p..121 Since Cardew was a prominent Marxist-Leninist activist, his death has also been described as a probable part of MI5's policy of assassinations.Tilbury 2008, 1022. Pigmeat Markham, 77, American comedian, actor, singer, and dancer, his 1968 single "Here Comes the Judge" is often considered to be the earliest hip hop record, he reportedly appeared at New York's famed Apollo Theater more often than any other performer, he played his signature Judge character as a regular cast member of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In during the 1968–69 television season, stroke Anne-Lise Tangstad, 46, Norwegian actress, she provided the voice of Maid Marian in the Norwegian-language version of the animated film Robin Hood (1973)
14 Nathaniel Benchley, 66, American novelist, biographer, and children's writer, he previously served for a few years in the United States Navy, and he was a veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945) Marian Shockley, 73, American actress, she was selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1932, she was the first person to play Nikki Porter, Ellery Queen's secretary, in the radio show The Adventures of Ellery Queen, filling that role from 1939 to 1944
15 Catherine T. MacArthur, 73, American philanthropist, she was a co-founder of the MacArthur Foundation and a director of Bankers Life and Casualty,Learning to Give - John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation cancer Mikhail Zharov, 82, Russian actor and director, he was named a People's Artist of the USSR (1949) and a Hero of Socialist Labour (1974)
17 Franz Dahlem, 89, German communist politician, leading official of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Mehmet Shehu, 68, Albanian communist politician, Prime Minister of Albania from 1954 until 1981.
23 Reg Ansett, 72, Australian businessman and aviator, eponymous founder of the Ansett Transport Industries, death after several months of poor health and a period of hospitalization Luther H. Evans, 79, American political scientistEvans, Luther Harris and Library of Congress. 1982. Luther Harris Evans 1902–1981 a Memorial Tribute to the Tenth Librarian of Congress. Washington: Library of Congress. , he served as the Librarian of Congress from 1944 until 1953, and as the Director-General of UNESCO from 1953 until 1958, during the era of McCarthyism, he voluntarily instituted the Federal Loyalty Program at the Library of Congress, creating a loyalty board to examine current and potential employees regarding communism and homosexuality. Evans' program resulted in numerous employees being fired or resigning for their political or sexual orientation
24 James Murdock, 50, American actor, he portrayed the assistant cook Mushy in the Western television series Rawhide lung cancer
26 Savitri, 47, Indian actress and filmmaker, she was among the highest-paid professionals in the South Indian cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, and she was regarded as the "Queen of Telugu cinema", death attributed to complications from diabetes and high blood pressure, she had been comatose for 19 months at the time of her death Suat Hayri Ürgüplü, 78, Turkish politician, he briefly served as the prime minister of Turkey in 1965, heading a caretaker government, he was the last prime minister to have been born outside the territory of present-day Turkey, as his birthplace was Damascus
27 Hoagy Carmichael, 82, American composer, songwriter, actor, and lawyer, he is considered to be one of the most successful representatives of the Tin Pan Alley group of songwriters of the 1930s, he was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to exploit new communication technologies, such as television and the use of electronic microphones and sound recordings,heart attack Mollie King, 86, American actress, she began working professionally on stage at the age of 7, and she was appearing at the Winter Garden Theatre and at other Broadway venues by age 16, stroke Natalia Pavlovna Paley, 76, Russian aristocrat and non-dynastic member of the Romanov family, she was a daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia from a morganatic marriage,Vassiliev, Beauty in Exile, p. 435 she was a favorite model for the great photographers of her time during the 1920s,Coudert, Cafe Society, p.58 she worked as a film actress in the 1930s, having a small role in George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett (1935),Vassiliev, Beauty in Exile, p. 440 starting in the 1940s, she worked for many years in the public relations department of the fashion house Mainbocher,Vassiliev, Beauty in Exile, p. 441 death caused by an accidental fall in her bathroom and a fracture of the femoral neckVassiliev, Beauty in Exile, pp. 443
29 Harry "A" Chesler, 83-84, Lithuanian-born American entrepreneurHarry Chesler at the United States Social Security Death Index. Archived from the original on January 18, 2012., he established the first comic book packager of the late-1930s to 1940s Golden Age of Comic Books, supplying comics features and complete comic books to publishers, his studio reportedly "[p]roduced the early issues of MLJ Publications Zip Comics, Pep Comics and Top-Notch Comics, Captain Marvel, Master Comics," as well as features for Centaur Comics, Quotes from print edition: Volume One (1973), p. 31. in 1976, Chesler donated over 4,000 pieces of original comic book and comic strip art, much of it dating from the turn of the 20th century, to Fairleigh Dickinson University's Friendship Library Abstract accessed on January 17, 2012. Miroslav Krleža, 88, Croatian writer, regarded as the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century, his works often include the themes of bourgeois hypocrisy and conformism in Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, death at home, after a number of years in "ill health"Death of Miroslav Krleža , mgz.hr; accessed 19 June 2015.
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