1978 deaths

Ragna Thiis Stang (15 September 1909 – 29 March 1978) was a Norwegian historian and museum administrator.

Hans Heiberg (28 January 1904 – 6 December 1978) was a Norwegian journalist, literary critic, theatre critic, essayist, novelist, playwright, translator and theatre director.

Niels Onstad (26 March 1909 – 17 June 1978) was a Norwegian shipowner and art collector.

Guy-Marie Riobé (1911–1978) was a French Catholic Bishop of Orléans in office 1963 to 1978. He held liberal, progressive views influenced by the climate of the Second Vatican Council.
He became prominent because of an altercation with Admiral Sanguinetti, over France's possession of a nuclear deterrent. He died following a swimming accident. His successor, Jean-Marie Lustiger, avoided any reference to Riobé during his installation after a fifteen-month interregnum (1979).Riobé promoted a de-centered vision of the priesthood, arguing in favor of the creation of new types of ministries.

Georges Cogniot (15 December 1901 in Montigny-lès-Cherlieu, Haute-Saône – 12 March 1978) was a French writer, philosopher and politician of the French Communist Party.

Albert Laprade (29 November 1883 – 9 May 1978) was a French architect, perhaps best known for the Palais de la Porte Dorée.
During a long career he undertook many urban renewal projects as well as major industrial and commercial works.
A skilled artist, he published a series of sketch books of architecture in France and other Mediterranean countries.

Josette Day (Paris, July 31, 1914 – Paris, June 27, 1978) was a French film actress.
Born Josette Noële Andrée Claire Dagory, she began her career as a child actress in 1919 at the age of five. When she was 18, Day was the mistress of Paul Morand and later was in a relationship with famous French writer and director Marcel Pagnol, whom she met in January 1939 and lasted part of World War II. She did not marry him.In 1946, she played her best-known role, alongside Jean Marais, as Belle in Jean Cocteau's 1946 film Beauty and the Beast.
Her films include Allo Berlin? Ici Paris! (1932), The Merry Monarch (based on Les Aventures du roi Pausole) (1933), Lucrèce Borgia (1935), L'homme du jour (1937), Accord final (1938), La Belle et la Bête (1946) and Les Parents terribles (1948).
Despite numerous parts in famous French films, Day ended her career as an actress in 1950 when only 36 years old. She retired to marry wealthy chemical businessman Maurice Solvay (descendant of Ernest Solvay, founder of the notable Solvay company). In February 1959, while on cruise in the Pacific, she and Solvay met a Tahitian girl at a Papeete market named Hinano Tiatia, whom the couple took under legal guardianship and who was the center of Solvay's inheritance dispute having not been adopted at the time of his sudden death in 1960.

Georges-Henri Pingusson (July 26, 1894 – October 22, 1978) was a French architect.

Jean Sainteny or Jean Roger (29 May 1907, in Vésinet – 25 February 1978) was a French politician who was sent to Vietnam after the end of the Second World War in order to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces and to attempt to re-annex Vietnam into French Indochina.: 16 

Marie-Louise Damien (born Louise Marie Damien; 5 December 1889 – 30 January 1978), better known by the stage name Damia, was a French singer and actress.