The following is a list of notable deaths in February 1979. 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.
February 1979
1 Abdi İpekçi, 49, Turkish journalist, intellectual and human rights activist, he served as the editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Milliyet which then had a centre-left political stance, murdered in his own car by two members of the ultra-nationalist organization Grey Wolves, with the killers identified as and Mehmet Ali Ağca.Ganser, Daniele, NATO's secret armies: operation Gladio and terrorism in Western Europe, (Routledge, 2005), 238. A contradictory narrative about the murder reported that the clandestine Counter-Guerrilla (a Turkish branch of Operation Gladio) murdered İpekçi at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s station chief in Turkey."İpekçi cinayetinde 18 yıl sonra yeni bir iddia", Yeni Yüzyıl, 16 January 1997: Abdi vurulduktan bir süre sonra gazeteye uğradım. O sırada gazeteye yazılar da yazan emekli amiral Sezai Orkunt’la rastlaştık. “Paşam bizim Abdi’yi niye vurdular” dedim. O da bana, “Abdi, askerlerin geniş arazilerde bazı sivillere kontrgerilla eğitimi verdiğini öğrenmiş. Sonra da Ankara’ya gidip CIA şefiyle bunu konuşmuş. Ardından da vuruldu. Halbuki Genelkurmayın haberi olmadan böyle talimlerin yapılamayacağını bilmesi lazımdı” dedi. Abdi’nin böyle bir tarafı da vardı. Rahmetli bir şey öğrendiğinde önce yazmak yerine, düzeltilsin diye gidip ilgililerle konuşurdu. Quoted in
2 Sid Vicious, 21, English musician, he served as the second bassist for the punk rock band Sex Pistols, he was posthumously regarded as an icon of the punk subculture, and in particular thought to reprent its dark, decadent, and nihilistic aspects, death by drug overdose, on the day following his release from Rikers Island. There were claims that his death was an intentional suicide within a suicide pact, as Vicious reportedly left behind a handwritten suicide note with information about the pact and instructions for his own funeral."
3 Betty Danko, 75, American stuntwoman and stunt double, she started her career as a stunt double at the Hal Roach Studios in 1927, she doubled for the actresses Jean Arthur, Binnie Barnes, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, Madge Evans, Jean Harlow, Patsy Kelly, Elissa Landi, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan, Marie Prevost, Thelma Todd, Marie Windsor, and Blanche Yurka,her best-known job was doubling for Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in the fantasy film The Wizard of Oz (1939), Danko's career was permanently cut short by an accident outside of her stunt work, when she was struck by a car that jumped the curb while she stood at a bus stop. Jody Gilbert, 62, American actress, she appeared frequently in both films and television, often in humorous supporting parts as "sizeable" but confident women, her best-known radio roles were as Marie Wilson's partner in My Friend Irma, and as Rosa in Life with Luigi, she was blacklisted in the early 1950s, because a screenwriter testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that Gilbert was a communist, when she was summoned before the committee in March 1953, she made light of the proceedings by invoking the Nineteenth Amendment, and joking that it gave women "equal rights to decline" to answer questions, death from complications in long-term injuries which she had received in a car accident during the autumn of 1978. Nikolai Plotnikov, 81, Soviet and Russian actor, he was named as one of the People's Artists of the USSR in 1966Большая советская энциклопедия. Гл. ред. А. М. Прохоров, 3-е изд. Т. 21. Проба — Ременсы. 1975. 640 стр., илл.; 23 л. илл. и карт. Joan Standing, 75, English actress, she portrayed Nurse Briggs in the horror film Dracula (1931),DVD Documentary The Road to Dracula (1999) and audio commentary by David J. Skal, Dracula: The Legacy Collection (2004), Universal Home Entertainment catalog # 24455 the first entry of Universal's Dracula film series, her last film appearance was in the comic strip adaptation Li'l Abner (1940), death from cancer
6 Issa Pliyev, 75, Soviet military commander, he was the premier cavalry general of the Soviet Army, described by military historians as successfully leading cavalry operations in "adverse terrain", having fought in several battles and operations during World War II, Pliyev towards the end of the war was in command of the Soviet-Mongolian cavalry mechanized group of the Transbaikal Front in Manchuria, fighting against Japan's Kwantung Army. during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Pliyev was the commander of a Group of Soviet forces taking part in Operation Anadyr in Cuba from July 1962 to May 1963.
7 Josef Mengele, 67, German military officer and physician during World War II, he conducted research and experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be murdered in the gas chambers, he set up his research facility in the Romani family camp, he was particularly interested in identical twins, people with heterochromia iridum (eyes of two different colors), people with dwarfism, and people with physical abnormalities, he also studied blood proteins, did anthropological studies of the Romani population, and collected specimens for forwarding to the SS Medical Academy in Graz,he suffered a stroke while swimming and drowned in the coastal resort of Bertioga, São Paulo.
9 Dennis Gabor, 78, Hungarian-British physicist, he is credited with inventing holography, and he published his theories on this topic in a series of papers between 1946 and 1951, in 1958, Gabor patented a flat-screen CRT which was similar to Wiliam Ross Aiken's Aiken tube, and this led to a years-long patent battle between the two inventors. By the time the lawsuits were complete, with Aiken's patent applying in the United States and Gabor's in the United Kingdom, the commercial aspects of their designs had long lapsed, and the two became friends.
10 Karl von Eberstein, 85, German nobleman and early member of the Schutzstaffel (SS number: 1,386),following several years of service, Eberstein was dismissed from all his posts on 20 April 1945, punished for "defeatism" by the Gauleiter Paul Giesler, on orders from Martin Bormann, Eberstein was later a witness at the Nuremberg Trials, in his testimony, Eberstein gave organizational and historical information about the SS, the Sturmabteilung (SA), their relationship with the German nobility, the Nazi Party, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, Security Service) and the Gestapo (Secret State Police). Edvard Kardelj, 69, Yugoslav politician and economist, he played a major role in Yugoslavia's foreign policy by designing the fundamental ideological basis for the Yugoslav policy of nonalignment in the 1950s and the 1960s,Silvio Pons and Robert Service, eds. A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism (2010) p 438. during the 1950s, Kardelj rose to become the main theorist of Titoism and the Yugoslav workers' self-management, he died after spending 20 hours in a coma. His health had deteriorated due to colon cancer since 1977, and the cancer had spread to his lungs and liver.
12 Jean Renoir, 84, French filmmaker, actor, producer and author, his films La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made,heart attack.
13 Yuri Merkulov, 77, Soviet animation and film director, conservator-restorer,Solomon Kipnis (1995). Novodevichy Memorial. Necropolis of the Novodevichy Cemetery. — Moscow: Propilei, p. 93 he is credited as one of the founders of the Soviet school of traditional and stop motion animation.Giannalberto Bendazzi (2016). Animation: A World History: Volume I: Foundations - The Golden Age at Google Books, p. 76—79Sergey Kapkov (2006). Encyclopedia of Domestic Animation, p. 433-434, 14 he worked on the satirical film China in Flames (1925), which was critical of European interference in the Chinese economy; with 1000 meters of film and 14 frames per second, it ran over 50 minutes at the time of completion, which made it the first Soviet animated feature film and one of the first animated feature films in the world.
14 Reginald Maudling, 61, British politician, he served as the President of the Board of Trade from 1959 until 1961, as the Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1961 until 1962, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1962 until 1964, and as the Home Secretary from 1970 until 1972,The Papers of Reginald Maudling Churchill Archives Centre, Archivesearch. Retrieved 29 October 2021 he led two unsuccessful leadership bids in 1963Howard 1987, p. 316-21 and 1965, he was slightly injured in a failed assassination attempt in 1974, when an IRA member sent him a letter bomb.
15 George Dunning, 58, Canadian filmmaker and animator, during the mid-1950s, he accepted a post with the studio United Productions of America (UPA) and spent a year as an animator on the series The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show,; in 1956, he was tasked with managing UPA's office in London,; after that office shut-down, Dunning and his new partner John Coates co-founded the production company TV Cartoons Ltd. in 1957, from 1965 to 1967, Dunning was the main producer of the cartoon series The Beatles, he was then tasked with directing the animated feature film Yellow Submarine (1968),; in order to meet the deadline of one year, Dunning quadrupled his staff and, aided by Coates and art director Heinz Edelmann, supervised as many as 200 artists,; he quarreled with his client, Al Brodax at King Features Syndicate, and the film's featured band The Beatles weren't interested in being involved, only agreeing at the last minute to take part in a live-action epilogue,; Dunning made the film for a flat fee, and made up budget over-runs with his own funds; Yellow Submarine was a smash hit, bringing Dunning a New York Film Critics Circle award and immense prestige.
16 Louise Allbritton, 58, American actress, a former contract player for Universal Pictures, she portrayed the student of the occult Katherine Caldwell in the film Son of Dracula (1943), the third entry of Universal's Dracula film series, on television, she played the title role in the NBC series Concerning Miss Marlowe (1954–1955), death due to cancer in her residence in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico William Gargan, 73, American actor, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Joe in the romantic drama They Knew What They Wanted (1940), he won the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1967, he portrayed the fictional detective Ellery Queen in the film A Close Call for Ellery Queen (1942), and its sequels A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen (1942) and Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen (1942), he then portrayed another detective as the title character in Martin Kane, Private Eye (1949–1954), the first "successful" detective series on network television, Gargan suffered a fatal heart attack during a flight from New York City to San Diego, he was pronounced dead upon arrival to the San Diego Center City Hospital.
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