My mom was friends with a newspaper reporter in NYC in the early 40's. He sent her a few photo's he took of famous people. They have a slip in the back with a plate number and description, but, caption line is empty. She thought they were ones that did't make it to the paper. I'm wondering if I could reproduce these to be sold, or would there be copyright issues? This reporter is no longer living. Any help will be appreciated.

My guess is if you give him credit for being the photographer it would be okay.
Maybe you could do a biography type book about him and his photography if you can find enough about him. Does he have family that you could check with to make sure they won't
Disapprove of you using the pics for some reason?

This seems to be a murky issue here. I agree that you need to be checking with his family if you are going to be using any of his photography to make a profit. Also, if any of the famous people are still living, using photographs of them to make a profit might also be an issue. It's also possible that whoever he worked for in order to take the photographs might also hold a copyright on them. So, you might want to check with the newspaper he worked for to see if they would still have a copyright holding on the photographs. Best to be playing it safe here by covering all of the bases.