The following is a list of notable deaths in October 1988.
Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:
Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.
October 1988
October 1
- Lucien Ballard, 80, American cinematographer (The Wild Bunch, True Grit, The Killing), traffic collision.[1]
October 2
- Hamengkubuwono IX, Indonesian ruler
- Alec Issigonis, British engineer
October 3
- Clarence Carnes, American criminal
- Marco Galli, Italian water polo player
- Franz Josef Strauß, German politician
October 4
- Carlo Carretto, Italian religious
- Geoffrey Household, English writer (b. 1900)
October 5
- Dermie O'Connell, American basketball player
- Ron Staniforth, English footballer
October 7
- Sándor Bíró, Hungarian footballer
October 8
- Pál Titkos, Hungarian football player and manager
October 9
- Jackie Milburn, English footballer
- October 9 – Felix Wankel, German inventor
October 10
- Kurt Marshall, American model actor
- Joan Pujol García, Spanish secret agent
- Montgomery Tully, Irish film director
October 11
- Buck Clarke, American percussionist
- Morgan Farley, American actor
- Bonita Granville, 65, American actress (These Three, Nancy Drew, Now, Voyager), lung cancer.[2]
- Max Imdahl, German art historian
- Guido Monzino, Italian mountaineer
- Red Owens, American basketball player and coach
- Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland, English nobleman
- Giuseppe Tonucci, Italian road bicycle racer
October 12
- Norman Barry, American football player and coach
- Běla Drážková, Czechoslovak swimmer
- Adelaide Hautval, French physician and psychiatrist
October 13
- Melvin Frank, American film director
October 14
- Serafín Aedo, Spanish footballer
- Ricardo Alarcón, Argentine footballer
- René Vietto, French cyclist
October 15
- John Ball, American writer
- Piero Fornasetti, Italian artist
- Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, English composer
October 16
- Abdulrahman Fawzi, Egyptian football manager
- Christian Matras, Faroese linguist
- Muzafer Sherif, Turkish psychologist
October 17
- György Horváth, Hungarian weightlifter
October 18
- Frederick Ashton, British choreographer
- Paulius Galaunė, Lithuanian art historian
October 19
- Lawrence W. Butler, American effects artist
- Þórður Guðmundsson, Icelandic water polo player
- Son House, American singer and guitarist
- Marcos Carneiro de Mendonça, Brazilian footballer
- Sten Suvio, Finnish boxer
October 20
- Ulrich Beyer, German boxer
- Nino Nutrizio, Italian journalist
October 22
- Henry Armstrong, American boxer
- Plácido Galindo, Peruvian footballer
- Clare Stevenson, Australian officer
October 23
- André Neher, Israeli theologian
October 24
- Alfio Marchini, Italian partisan
- Osvaldo Toriani, Argentine footballer
October 25
- Eric Larson, American animator
- Jesús Olmos, Mexican basketball player
October 26
- August Ibach, Swiss footballer
October 27
- Giuseppina Modena, Italian partisan
- Winnie van Weerdenburg, Dutch swimmer
- Erika von Thellmann, Austrian actress
October 28
- Pietro Annigoni, Italian painter
October 29
- Thomas Benjamin Cooray, Sinhalese Catholic cardinal
- Ross Rocklynne, American writer
October 30
- Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, German actor
- T. Hee, American animator and director
- Tasos Livaditis, Greek poet
- Francisco Rodrigues, Brazilian footballer
October 31
- John Houseman, English actor (The Paper Chase, Three Days of the Condor) and film producer (Julous Caesar), Oscar winner (1974), spinal cancer.[3]
- Vasco Ronchi, Italian physicist
- George Eugene Uhlenbeck, Dutch physicist