List of Famous people who died in 1979

Lia Orlandini was an Italian film actress. She was also a voice actor, dubbing foreign films for release in Italy.

Cyril John Mockridge was an English film and television composer who scored such films as Cheaper by the Dozen, River of No Return and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1955 film Guys and Dolls, and composed the theme music for the television Western series Laramie.

Tōyō Miyatake was a Japanese American photographer, best known for his photographs documenting the Japanese American people and the Japanese American internment at Manzanar during World War II.

Margareta "Grete" Rosenberg was a German freestyle swimmer, who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Sarah Hope Summers, better known as Hope Summers, was an American character actress known for her work on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry RFD, portraying Clara Edwards.

Leonid Fyodorovich Myasin, better known in the West by the French transliteration as Léonide Massine, was a Russian choreographer and ballet dancer. Massine created the world's first symphonic ballet, Les Présages, and many others in the same vein. Besides his "symphonic ballets," Massine choreographed many other popular works during his long career, some of which were serious and dramatic, and others lighthearted and romantic. He created some of his most famous roles in his own comic works, among them the Can-Can Dancer in La Boutique fantasque (1919), the Hussar in Le Beau Danube (1924), and, perhaps best known of all, the Peruvian in Gaîté Parisienne (1938). Today his oeuvre is represented by his son Theodor Massine.

Willis Goldbeck was an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He wrote for 40 films between 1923 and 1962. He also directed ten films between 1942 and 1951. Willis graduated from Worcester Academy.