Dead celebs "more powerful than ever"

And the world’s most bankable dead celebrity is… Wait, who? According to Forbes magazine, neither Elvis Presley nor Michael Jackson snagged the No. 1 spot this year. Instead, the posthumous honour went to French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, whose estate earned approximately $350 million since his death from brain cancer in June 2008. How does a fashion designer possibly make millions after death? Did he invent pants? Or t-shirts? The truth is St-Laurent will have a hard time repeating the feat. The bulk of his earnings came from the one-time sale of his possessions—art, furniture, antiques. The runners-up were Rodgers and Hammerstein, who earned $235 million for the rights to music they co-wrote, while Jackson and Presley came in third and fourth, respectively. Forbes senior editor Matthew Miller says that dead celebrities—or, “delebs”—are “more powerful than ever.” He adds: “The money may be drying up in Hollywood, but there’s still plenty of cash being made in the graveyard.”

The Telegraph