List of Famous people who died in 1987

Arnold Stark Lobel was an American author of children's books, including the Frog and Toad series and Mouse Soup. He both wrote and illustrated those picture books, as well as Fables, for which he won the 1981 Caldecott Medal recognizing the year's best-illustrated U.S. picture book.

Esmond Penington Knight was an English actor. He had a successful stage and film career before World War II. For much of his later career Knight was half-blind. He had been badly injured in 1941 whilst on active service on board HMS Prince of Wales when she fought the Bismarck at the Battle of the Denmark Strait, and remained totally blind for two years, though he later regained some sight in his right eye.

Walter Houser Brattain was an American physicist at Bell Labs who, along with fellow scientists John Bardeen and William Shockley, invented the point-contact transistor in December 1947. They shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention. Brattain devoted much of his life to research on surface states.

Brigadier Tristram Hugh "Tim" Massy-Beresford, DSO, MVO, MC, was a British Army officer who fought in the Second World War. He created "Massy Force", an unorthodox military unit to fight against the Japanese prior to the Fall of Singapore and to conduct a guerrilla campaign afterwards; he also led the funeral procession at the funeral of King George V.

David Lewis, born David Levy, was a prominent Hollywood film producer in the 1940s and 1950s, who produced such films as Dark Victory (1939), Arch of Triumph (1948), and Raintree County (1957). He worked for Warner Brothers, Paramount and M-G-M and was elected a vice president of Enterprise Productions, Inc. in 1946.

Viola Dana was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent films. She appeared in over 100 films, but was unable to make the transition to sound films.