List of Famous people who died at 54

James Robbins "Bob" Gardiner was a multi-talented artist, painter, cartoonist, animator, holographer, musician, storyteller and comedy writer, who invented the stop-motion 3-D clay animation technique that Will Vinton would later market as Claymation although Bob preferred the term Sculptimation for his frame-by-frame method of sculpting plasticine clay characters and sets. Closed Mondays was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Yekutiel "Kuti" Adam was an Israeli general and former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.

William Harrison Gunn was an American playwright, novelist, actor and film director. His 1973 cult classic horror film Ganja and Hess was chosen as one of ten best American films of the decade at the Cannes Film Festival, 1973. In The New Yorker, film critic Richard Brody described him as being "a visionary filmmaker left on the sidelines of the most ostensibly liberated period of American filmmaking." Filmmaker Spike Lee had said that Gunn is "one of the most under-appreciated filmmakers of his time." Gunn's drama Johnnas won an Emmy Award in 1972.

Thomas Joseph Wolf Jr. was an American composer and piano player. He was best known for his songwriting collaboration with Fran Landesman.

Michael George Farr, known professionally as Mike Leander, was an English arranger, songwriter and record producer.

Larry Jeffery "Mutt" Black was an American sprinter, winner of the gold medal in the 4 × 100 m relay and silver medal in the 200 m at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.