List of Famous people who died at 72

Hélène Boschi was a Franco-Swiss pianist, born in Lausanne. She studied with Yvonne Lefébure and Alfred Cortot at the Ecole normale de musique in Paris. Throughout her life she led a dual career as a teacher and as a performer.

Edna Anhalt was an American screenwriter, television writer, and film producer. Together with then husband Edward Anhalt, she enjoyed some considerable success in a 10-year stretch from 1947 to her retirement in 1957. This stretch was capped with an Academy Award for Best Story win for Elia Kazan's 1950 film Panic in the Streets, and another nomination two years later for The Sniper. She also wrote the screenplays to The Member of the Wedding (1952), Not as a Stranger (1955) and The Pride and the Passion (1957), before hanging up her pen after her divorce.

Anne Bushnell was an Irish jazz and blues singer and cabaret performer.

Heinrich Josef Konietzny was a German musician, professor and composer.

Villy Sørensen was a Danish short story writer, philosopher and literary critic of the Modernist tradition. His fiction was heavily influenced by his philosophical ideas, and he has been compared to Franz Kafka in this regard.