List of Famous people who born in 1917

Maya Deren, born Eleonora Derenkowska, was a Ukrainian-born American experimental filmmaker and important promoter of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.

Eiji Sawamura was a Japanese professional baseball player. A right-handed pitcher, he played in Japan for the Yomiuri Giants.

Jack Valentine Woolams (1917–1946) - was the senior experimental test pilot and later chief test pilot at Bell Aircraft during the introduction of the P-39, P-63, P-59, and X-1 aircraft. He set a world record for altitude and was the first person to fly a fighter jet non-stop across the United States.

Charlotte Salomon was a German-Jewish artist born in Berlin. She is primarily remembered as the creator of an autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1941 and 1943 in the south of France, while Salomon was in hiding from the Nazis. In October 1943 she was captured and deported to Auschwitz, where she and her unborn child were gassed to death by the Nazis soon after her arrival. In 2015, a stunning nineteen-page confession by Salomon to the fatal poisoning of her grandfather, kept secret for decades, was released by a Parisian publisher.

Roekiah, often credited as Miss Roekiah, was an Indonesian kroncong singer and film actress. The daughter of two stage performers, she began her career at the age of seven; by 1932 she had become well known in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, as a singer and stage actress. Around this time she met Kartolo, whom she married in 1934. The two acted in the 1937 hit film Terang Boelan, in which Roekiah and Rd Mochtar played young lovers.

Arnold Meyer Spielberg was an American electrical engineer instrumental in contributions "to real-time data acquisition and recording that significantly contributed to the definition of modern feedback and control processes". For General Electric he designed, with his colleague Charles Propster, the GE-225 in 1959. He cited the first computer-controlled "point of sale" cash register as his greatest contribution. He was the father of film director Steven Spielberg.

Earlston Jewitt Cameron, CBE was a Bermudian actor who lived and worked in the United Kingdom. Along with Cy Grant, he was one of the first black actors to break the "colour bar" in the United Kingdom. With his appearance in 1951's Pool of London, Cameron became one of the first black actors to take up a starring role in a British film after Paul Robeson, Nina Mae McKinney and Elisabeth Welch in the 1930s.

Louis Thomas Spence, DFC & Bar was a fighter pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). During World War II, he flew with No. 3 Squadron, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), and commanded No. 452 Squadron, receiving a Mention in Despatches. He led No. 77 Squadron in the opening months of the Korean War, and was awarded a bar to his DFC, the US Legion of Merit, and the US Air Medal, for his leadership.

Sameera Moussa was the first female Egyptian nuclear physicist. Sameera held a doctorate in atomic radiation. She hoped her work would one day lead to affordable medical treatments and the peaceful use of atomic energy. She organized the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference and sponsored a call that set an international conference under the banner "Atoms for Peace." She was the first woman to work at Cairo University.

Steve Cochran was an American film, television and stage actor. He attended the University of Wyoming. After a stint working as a cowboy, Cochran developed his acting skills in local theatre and gradually progressed to Broadway, film and television.