List of Famous people who died in 1973

Ted de Corsia was an American radio, film, and television actor best remembered for his roles as the ex-wrestler murderer Willie Garzah in the film The Naked City (1948) and as a gangster who turned state's evidence in the film The Enforcer (1951).

Irna Phillips was an American scriptwriter, screenwriter, casting agent and actress. Known by several publications as the "Queen of the Soaps", she created, produced, and wrote several of the first American daytime radio and television soap operas. As a result of creating some of the best known series in the genre, including Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World, Phillips is credited with creating and innovating a daytime serial format with programming geared specifically toward women. She was also a mentor to several other pioneers of the daytime soap opera, including Agnes Nixon and William J. Bell.

Aleksandr Lukich Ptushko was a Soviet animation and fantasy film director, and a People's Artist of the USSR (1969). Ptushko is frequently referred to as "the Soviet Walt Disney," due to his prominent early role in animation in the Soviet Union, though a more accurate comparison would be to Willis O'Brien or Ray Harryhausen. Some critics, such as Tim Lucas and Alan Upchurch, have also compared Ptushko to Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, who made fantasy and horror films with similarities to Ptushko's work and made similarly innovative use of color cinematography and special effects. He began his film career as a director and animator of stop-motion short films, and became a director of feature-length films combining live-action, stop-motion, creative special effects, and Russian mythology. Along the way he would be responsible for a number of firsts in Russian film history, and would make several extremely popular and internationally praised films full of visual flair and spectacle.

Shirali Farzali Muslimov was an Azerbaijani shepherd with Talysh ethnicity from the village of Barzavu in the Lerik region of Azerbaijan, a mountainous area near the Iranian border. He claimed to be the oldest person who ever lived when he died on September 2, 1973 at the alleged age of 168. Shirali Muslumov was married 3 times and had 23 children. In 1966 Azerbaijani film studio shot a documentary film about him “Shirali descended from the mountain”. He became a father of his daughter when he was 136 years old. He was included into Guinness Book Records for longevity.

Fritz Neumayer was a German politician. He was Federal Minister of Building from 1952 to 1953, and Federal Minister of Justice from 1953 to 1956.

Kurt Georg Hugo Thomas was a German composer, conductor and music educator.