List of Famous people who died in 1977

Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White's first name; he was named after the African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington.

John Little McClellan was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative (1935–39) and a U.S. Senator (1943–77) from Arkansas.

Giuseppe Pancera was an Italian professional road bicycle racer. He won second place in both the 1928 Giro d'Italia and the 1929 Tour de France.

John Ward Melville was an American philanthropist and businessman active in the "Three Villages" in western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He donated 400 acres of land and money to establish Stony Brook University in 1957, which has developed as a major public research institution. He played a major role in the development of Melville Corporation, known today as CVS Health.

Robert William Meusel was an American baseball left and right fielder who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for eleven seasons from 1920 through 1930, all but the last for the New York Yankees. He was best known as a member of the Yankees' championship teams of the 1920s, nicknamed the "Murderers' Row", during which time the team won its first six American League (AL) pennants and first three World Series titles.

Sigurd Lohde (1899–1977) was a German film and television actor.

Tochihikari Masayuki was a sumo wrestler from Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan who reached the second highest rank of ōzeki in 1962. He joined Kasugano stable in 1952 and reached the top makuuchi division in 1955. He never won a top division championship but was a tournament runner-up four times. He was promoted to ōzeki in May 1962 alongside his stablemate Tochinoumi. He fought as an ōzeki for 22 tournaments but lost the rank after recording three consecutive losing scores and immediately announced his retirement in January 1966. He became an elder of the Japan Sumo Association under the name Chiganoura. He was a judge of tournament bouts and was involved in both the incorrect decision to award a win to Toda that stopped Taiho's 45 bout winning streak in March 1969 and the famous decision in January 1972 to declare Kitanofuji the winner over Takanohana by kabai-te. He died of rectal cancer at the age of 43. His shikona of Tochihikari was subsequently used by a later wrestler from Kasugano stable, also known as Kaneshiro Kofuku.

John Howard Lawson was an American writer, specializing in plays and screenplays. After starting with plays for theaters in New York City, he worked in Hollywood on writing for films. He was the first president of the Writers Guild of America, West after the Screen Writers Guild divided into two regional organizations.