Dead rich and famous and raking in profits from the grave

Published on Thursday 29 October 2009 19:45

DESPITE raking in millions of dollars through the sale of rights to footage of his final rehearsals, Michael Jackson is not the top-earning dead celebrity.

Forbes magazine puts the former King of Pop in third place behind Yves Saint Laurent and the composing duo Rodgers and Hammerstein.

The fashion designer earned 214 million over the past year, dwarfing the 55m taken in by the Jackson estate.

Saint Laurent, who died of brain cancer in 2008, appears at the top of the index largely as a result of an auction of artwork he once owned, including paintings by Mondrian and Matisse.

The bulk of Jackson's posthumous cash came through selling the rights to This Is It, a film based on rehearsal footage for what would have been his comeback concerts in London.

Forbes estimates that this income was bumped up by the sale of nine million albums and 5.5 million digital downloads since his death in June.

Elvis Presley is fourth in the list, making 34m over the past 12 months.

An agreement earlier this year over allegedly unpaid royalties from the Lord of the Rings movies saw author JRR Tolkien earn 31m last year, placing him fifth, according to Forbes.

The British academic died in 1973, aged 81.

John Lennon, the former Beatle who was shot dead in New York in 1980, came in seventh with 9m earned.