List of Famous people who died in 1987

Phyllis Dorothy Cilento, Lady Cilento was an Australian medical practitioner, prominent medical journalist and pioneering advocate of family planning in Queensland.

Salvador Flores Rivera, also known as Chava Flores, was a Mexican composer and singer of popular and folkloric music. His songs often described the lives of Mexico City's ordinary people.

Attila Hörbiger was an Austrian stage and movie actor.

Victor Stafford Reid, OJ, was a Jamaican writer born in Kingston, Jamaica, who wrote with an intent of influencing the younger generations. He was awarded the silver (1950) and gold (1976) Musgrave Medals, the Order of Jamaica (1980) and the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Literature in 1981. He was the author of several novels, three of which were aimed towards children; one play production; and several short stories. Two of his most notable works are New Day - "the first West Indian novel to be written throughout in a dialect form" - and The Leopard.

Edith Prescott Luckett Davis was a film and Broadway stage actress in the 1910s and 1920s. She was the mother of Nancy Reagan, First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989, and mother-in-law of US president Ronald Reagan.

Malcolm Kirk was an English professional wrestler who went by the ring name of "King Kong" Kirk as well as Kojak Kirk, Killer Kirk and "Mucky" Mal Kirk. He started as a professional rugby league player before becoming a professional wrestler. Kirk died of a heart attack on 23 August 1987 after collapsing in the ring during a tag team match at the Hippodrome in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. The wrestling event was run by Joint Promotions with the main event being a tag team match between Kirk and King Kendo against Big Daddy and Greg Valentine in front of 1,500 people. Kirk's death and the aftermath contributed to the decline of professional wrestling in the United Kingdom.

Elizabeth Debbie Eden was an American trans woman whose husband John Wojtowicz attempted a bank robbery to pay for her sex reassignment surgery. The incident was made into the crime drama film Dog Day Afternoon (1975), directed by Sidney Lumet. The character Leon Shermer, played by Chris Sarandon, is loosely based on Eden.

Joseph Thomas Schwab, also known as Josef Schwab was a serial or spree killer, who murdered five people in the Top End region of the Northern Territory and the Kimberley region of Western Australia during June 1987. Schwab, a German citizen, was visiting Australia on a tourist visa; the media dubbed him The Kimberley Killer.

Sam Gilbert was an American businessman who owned a construction company in Los Angeles, California. He is best known as a controversial athletic booster of the UCLA Bruins men's basketball team from the mid-1960s until UCLA was ordered to disassociate from him in 1981. He ran a money-laundering enterprise to finance the now-famous World Poker Tour tour stop called the Bicycle Casino, for which he was posthumously indicted in 1987. He was the husband of a well-known Los Angeles area teacher, Rose Gilbert.

Edward Douglas Cowart was an American judge who served as a Dade County Circuit Court Judge.