Forbes released their annual list of celebrities who are still making money after their deaths
Three celebrities with Irish links were included in the annual Forbes report of the top-earning celebrities who are dead.
Read More: Top famous “Irish” celebrities who are not Irish at all
On October 30, Forbes shared its annual ranking of the top-earning celebrities who are dead, and Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and John Lennon all made the cut.
Topping the list this year is Michael Jackson, whose Irish American maid earlier this year accused the pop star of being a pedophile.
Forbes, who ranked 13 dead celebrities this year, said: “Our annual list of the top-earning dead celebrities measures pretax income from October 1, 2018 through October 1, 2019. We compile our numbers with the help of data from Nielsen Music, IMDBPro and interviews with industry insiders. Fees for agents, managers, and lawyers are not deducted.”
Elvis Presley
Right behind Michael Jackson on the 2019 ranking is Elvis Presley, who earned $39 million in 2019.
In 2017, an 18th-century legal document revealed that Elvis Presley’s ancestors left Co Wicklow for a new life in America around 1775, a year before the nation officially declared independence from England.
In 1976, Presley recorded a version of "Danny Boy" for his 23rd studio album "From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee."
Read More: June 1977: Elvis Presley performed his last concert
John Lennon
John Lennon, one-fourth of The Beatles, lands on the Forbes list in seventh place for 2019, having earned $14 million. Lennon’s Irish roots are difficult to trace as they are reportedly through his father Alfred, who was by and large absent from his son’s life.
Some sources claim that Alfred’s father John (who sometimes went by Jack or James) was born in Dublin in 1858 and moved to Liverpool as a young man, where he met and married an Irish woman named Mary (or Polly) Maguire. They had fifteen children together, including Alfred, who was forced to strike out on his own after his father died and his mother could no longer look after all the children by herself.
Others have it that Alfred’s father was a bookmaker born in Liverpool to parents James and Jane Lennon from Co. Down. This version of events states that Jack Lennon went on to have two marriages, first to a Margaret Crowley and secondly to Mary Maguire. James and Jane are said to have immigrated around the time of the Great Hunger, anglicizing their name from Ó Leannáin as he went.
In 1967, Lennon purchased Dorinish Island off the coast of Co Mayo and later said in a 1971 interview: “I told Yoko that’s where we’re going to retire, and I took her to Ireland. We went around Ireland a bit and we had a sort of second honeymoon there. So I was completely involved in Ireland.”
In a 2012 interview, Yoko Ono spoke of her late husband's love for Ireland, claiming: "My husband was 100% Irish. That's what he used to say. Ireland was sort of like an auntie or a mother that he wanted to show me.
“When he was born, his mother was English and his father was Irish and he didn’t have too much opportunity to see his father, so he had this yearning for being Irish. In a way, it was sad because he was always talking about that."
Later in his life, Lennon supported the IRA’s cause but was also a fierce supporter of nonviolence. In his 1972 EP “Some Time in New York City,” Lennon included two decidedly Irish songs: “The Luck of the Irish” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”
Read More: The Fenian Beatles - the Fab Four's Irish heritage examined
Marilyn Monroe
Also featured in the Forbes list is Marilyn Monroe who in eighth place earned $13 million.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that the starlet's ancestral clan an Irish link.
Speaking with the BBC, Hector Munro, a chief with the starlet’s ancestral Clan Munro in Scotland, said: "The origins of name Munro has puzzled historians for generations.”
"Tradition has it that we were mercenary soldiers from near the River Roe in Derry, Northern Ireland, hence the name Munro - Mac an Rothaich in Gaelic. But it had proved impossible to verify."
Recent research, however, gathered through the Munro DNA Project identified a man from Ireland 1,750 years ago that has four distinct male lines with living descendants, all of which "can be traced back to southwest Ireland."
Read More: What we know about John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe's alleged relationship
The top-earning dead celebrities for 2019 as determined by Forbes are:
- Michael Jackson: $60 million
- Elvis Presley: $39 million
- Charles Schulz: $38 million
- Arnold Palmer: $30 million
- Bob Marley: $20 million
- Dr. Seuss: $19 million
- John Lennon: $14 million
- Marilyn Monroe: $13 million
- Prince: $12 million
- Nipsey Hussle: $11 million
- Xxxtentacion: $10 million
- Whitney Houston: $9.5 million
- George Harrison: $9 million
Read More: The most famous people in the world with Irish roots
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