Earnings From the Crypt

N E W  Y O R K, Aug. 14 -- One might not think of death as an optimal career move, but for some celebrities, crossing over to the far side doesn't hurt their income in the least.

Take Tupac Shakur.

The infamous rapper was gunned down in Las Vegas six years ago at age 25, but last year he sold 2.7 million albums and earned an estimated $7 million.

In fact, Shakur — who had recorded some 200 unreleased tracks at the time of his murder — has put out more albums dead than alive.

But 25 years after his death, Elvis Presley remains the undisputed king of the crypt.

A funked-up version of A Little Less Conversation was featured in a World Cup television ad in June and spent four weeks as the No. 1 single in the U.K.

The single netted the estate about $4 million and helped offset dipping attendance at Graceland. All together Elvis earned around $37 million, easily besting Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz ($28 million) for the top spot on our list.

Compiling the List

To compile our definitive list, four reporters looked at dozens of estates and spent countless hours interviewing surviving family members, lawyers and estate administrators.

Drawing on Forbes' 18 years of wealth-estimating experience, our reporters calculated pretax earnings to the estate from licensing agreements, and book and record sales, for the 12-month period from June 2001 to June 2002.

In cases where the income to the estate was spilt among several entities — as with Lucille Ball, who splits her earnings from I Love Lucy with Desi Arnaz and CBS — we considered only that which the actual ranked celebrity would have earned.

It's been a good year for the dead.

Last year, in order to make our list, dead celebrities had to earn a minimum of $3 million in income, and the average earning was nearly $11.5 million. This year, the poorest of the bunch — Robert Ludlum and Jerry Garcia — each made $5 million, and the average shot up to $15 million.