List of Famous people who died in 1949

Perce Blackborow was a Welsh sailor and a stowaway on Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917.

James Searle Dawley was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, stage actor, and playwright. Between 1907 and the mid-1920s, while working for Edison, Rex Motion Picture Company, Famous Players, Fox, and other studios, he directed more than 300 short films and 56 features, which include many of the early releases of stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Pearl White, Marguerite Clark, Harold Lloyd, and John Barrymore. He also wrote scenarios for many of his productions, including one for his 1910 horror film Frankenstein, the earliest known screen adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. While film direction and screenwriting comprised the bulk of Dawley's career, he also had earlier working experience in theater, performing on stage for more than a decade and managing every aspect of stagecraft. Dawley wrote at least 18 plays as well for repertory companies and for several Broadway productions.

Jaddanbai Hussain was an Indian singer, music composer, dancer, actress, filmmaker, and one of the pioneers of Indian cinema. She along with Saraswati Devi was one of the first female music composers in Indian cinema. She was the mother of Akhtar Hussain, Anwar Hussain, and the well-known Hindi actress Nargis, and maternal grandmother of Priya Dutt and Sanjay Dutt.

Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe was the final sovereign of the Principality of Lippe. Succeeding to the throne in 1905 he had been governing the state since 1904 as regent.

James George Anson Butler, 5th Marquess of Ormonde was the son of James Arthur Wellington Foley Butler, 4th Marquess of Ormonde and American heiress Ellen Stager, daughter of Union General Anson Stager.

Josephus Theodorus Joannes Cuypers was a Dutch architect; primarily known for his Catholic churches.

John Edward Lovelock was a New Zealand athlete who became the world 1500m and mile record holder and 1936 Olympic champion in the 1500 metres.

Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson was a prominent jazz trumpeter in New Orleans. Johnson gave the year of his birth as 1879, although there is speculation that he may have been younger by as much as a decade.

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also known as Count Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations". The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life. He was a leading member of La Jeune Belgique group and his plays form an important part of the Symbolist movement.