List of Famous people who died in 1986

Ron Kass was an American businessman, recording executive, manager of The Beatles, and film producer. Kass worked with at least four recording companies: Liberty, MGM, Warner Brothers, and Apple Records.

Howard Da Silva was an American actor, director and musical performer on stage, film, television and radio. He was cast in dozens of productions on the New York stage, appeared in more than two dozen television programs, and acted in more than fifty feature films. Adept at both drama and musicals on the stage, he originated the role of Jud Fry in the original 1943 run of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, and also portrayed the prosecuting attorney in the 1957 stage production of Compulsion. Da Silva was nominated for a 1960 Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his work in Fiorello!, a musical about New York City mayor LaGuardia. In 1961, Da Silva directed Purlie Victorious, by Ossie Davis.

Solomon Hersh Frees, better known as Paul Frees, was an American actor, comedian, impressionist and vaudevillian. He is known for his work on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Walter Lantz, Rankin/Bass, and Walt Disney theatrical cartoons during the Golden Age of Animation and for providing the voice of Boris Badenov in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. A contemporary of voice actor Mel Blanc said Frees was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices".

Henry Nash Smith was a scholar of American culture and literature. He was co-founder of the academic discipline "American studies". He was also a noted Mark Twain scholar, and the curator of the Mark Twain Papers.

Henry William Menard was an American geologist.

James Stratton Holmes was an American-Dutch poet, translator, and translation scholar. He sometimes published his work using his real name James S. Holmes, and other times the pen names Jim Holmes and Jacob Lowland. In 1956 he was the first non-Dutch translator to receive the prestigious Martinus Nijhoff Award, the most important recognition given to translators of creative texts from or into Dutch.