Random Famous People Who Died Broke (14 items)

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  (#12) Judy Garland

  • Dec. at 47 (1922-1969)

  At the time of her death in 1969 - which was caused by an accidental drug overdose when she was just 47 years old - actor Judy Garland owed money to everyone. She specifically owed the IRS thousands of dollars.

  Despite pulling in nearly $55,000 a week during her prime, Garland's lack of business sense, addiction issues, and lavish lifestyle meant that she was unable to pay the bills she racked up. According to some sources, she was $4 million in debt at the time of her death.
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  (#8) Oscar Wilde

  • Dec. at 46 (1854-1900)

  Famous Irish wit Oscar Wilde died "next-to-penniless" of cerebral meningitis in a dingy Paris hotel in 1900 at age 46, or as he put it at the time, he died "above his means." His tomb was paid for by an anonymous woman who gave him a headstone the Guardian calls "a winged, naked and initially well-hung angel" because it was apparently considered so offensive "the cemetery's head keeper castrated it and for several years used the testicles as a paperweight."

  Just how poor Wilde was, exactly, is hard to say. An early biography from 1905 claims he died in "comparative poverty," meaning he probably wasn't totally destitute. Wilde managed to leave about £250 (about $30,000 in 2019) to his children, for example - a small amount considering how successful he was before famously being imprisoned for "gross indecency."

  However, more recent biographies reveal that during Wilde's final years in Paris, he lived almost entirely on the generosity of his friends, spending most of that charity on alcohol. "I have discovered," he wrote at the time, "that alcohol taken in sufficient quantity produces all the effects of drunkenness."
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  (#7) Herman Melville

  • Dec. at 72 (1819-1891)

  When Moby Dick author Herman Melville died in 1891, the New York Times noted in a brief story a few days later he had died "an absolutely forgotten man." Moby Dick, published in 1851, only sold 3,000 copies in Melville's lifetime, and his later works were largely disregarded.

  By 1861, Melville was working for a "scanty livelihood" as a customs inspector, a position he held for 21 years, earning an unchanging $4 per day (about $81.51 in 2019). After he retired in 1882, Herman and his wife, Elizabeth, lived out their remaining years supported by a legacy from Elizabeth's brother. 

  Melville's literary reputation "sank into an oblivion" following Moby Dick "that was destined to endure until about 1919."
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  (#3) Joe Louis

  • Dec. at 67 (1914-1981)

  Boxer Joe Louis made a staggering amount of money during his reign as one of the country's top pugilists in the '30s and '40s, but "it passed through his fingers quickly - and without the sort of accounting that the Internal Revenue Service expects," as his New York Times obituary notes.

  When his career in the ring ended in 1951, Louis owed $1.25 million, a sum he never paid off before his death in 1981. The IRS just stopped trying to get it from him: "We have gotten all we could possibly get from Mr. Louis, leaving him with some hope that he can live," IRS commissioner Dana Latham told Congress in 1965. "His earning days are over.''

  In 1974, Louis worked as a greeter at Caesar's Palace, but the paychecks were eaten up by escalating medical bills for the many "heart problems, emotional disorders and strokes" he suffered in his final decade. His third wife, Martha, was left broke when Joe died. A 1989 Chicago Tribune report said Martha "can no longer walk, but she can't afford a wheelchair of her own, either. She needs false teeth. And new glasses. But there is no money for any of those things."
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  (#9) Nikola Tesla

  • Dec. at 87 (1856-1943)

  How did famous physicist, engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla die in debt despite being responsible for AC motors and power systems still in use today? He generously tore up royalty contracts with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, choosing instead to take a one-time payment of $216,600 in 1897. “Your decision determines the fate of the Westinghouse Company,” George Westinghouse pleaded with Tesla beforehand, effectively talking him out of millions - if not billions - of dollars over his lifetime.

  In 1901, Tesla lost most of his money on the Wardenclyffe Tower project, an attempt at a 186-foot tall tower that could supply free electricity across the Atlantic without wires.

  By 1912, his mental health began to deteriorate - he showed signs of OCD and autism, for example, and claimed he had fallen in love with a pigeon. He died in debt in 1943, even though Westinghouse had been paying for his room and board in New York for years - the least they could do, considering how much money he earned for them.
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  (#6) William Blake

  • Dec. at 70 (1757-1827)

  English Romantic artist and poet William Blake died in 1827 at 69, poor as a church mouse, "singing of the things he saw in heaven" to his wife Catherine. Blake reportedly "was only saved from perishing of want by the kindness of friends," having been reduced, in his final years, "to a miserable garret and a crust of bread."

  Blake was largely unappreciated in his lifetime and had a hard time making ends meet. He was also a recluse: "He was always very poor, and generally worked in such seclusion that at one period, near the end of his life, he did not leave his house for two years, except to go out for porter," according to literary critic Alfred Kazin. "It was the isolation of a temperament run on fixed ideas; and incidentally, of a craftsman who could not earn a living."

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