Dead celebrities fighting from the Great Beyond

In life, they were big, bankable and they feasted on fame.

In death, they’re still working, only now it’s as someone else’s meal ticket.

Whether they’re hawking hamburgers from the Great Beyond or plugging Pepsi from six feet under, deceased celebrities remain hot property. Some even have agents. Lucy, Elvis and the Duke have pitched lottery tickets, batteries and beer. Fred Astaire danced with a hand vac. Gandhi hawked an Italian telephone company.

But amid all that heavenly hustling, a survivor-led backlash is suddenly brewing.

In late May, when a Doc Martens magazine spread depicted Kurt Cobain, Joey Ramone and two other departed rockers wearing the boots in the after-life, some of their family members complained so loudly, Doc Martens killed the campaign and fired the ad’s creator. In New York, where a lawmaker wants to ban the unauthorized commercial use of dead legends, the heirs of Judy Garland, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe and many more have added their muscle to that fight.

As Photoshopping and digital editing help marketers resurrect long-gone stars for a lucrative return to product endorsement, some survivors and estate managers seem to be drawing a hard, new line between respectful appreciation and milking someone’s memory for a quick buck.

“Sure, there are some (commercial opportunities) where we don’t mind doing these things — some that we do for profit and some for charity,” said Mickey Leigh, brother of Joey Ramone, who died in 2001. “But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. And this is certainly a place where we would not have crossed over, no pun intended.”

Doc Martens’ boots-in-heaven ad was conceived in England where no laws govern the unauthorized commercial use of dead icons. In America, two states — New York and Wisconsin — do not ban the practice, according to CMG Worldwide, an Indianapolis-based property rights management firm. Doc Martens drew fire because the rockers’ families never were consulted or paid. For the survivors, though, the issue was about dignity, not dollars.

Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, called the ad “despicable” and said Cobain never would have agreed to it. Leigh, meanwhile, said Ramone never wore that brand of boots and, worse, was Jewish and did not believe in the concept of heaven.

“Not kosher,” said Leigh, who lives in New York. “I had heard that you could use deceased people’s images in the UK and I’d heard there were some states here (where that loophole existed), but I didn’t believe it. Now I know that’s the case.

“I would do whatever I could to help people to retain control over their loved ones,” Leigh said. “Doc Martens pulled the ad so quickly and issued an apology. A little progress has been made.”

Beyond image piracy, however, New York Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein is sensing another buzz among the survivors of famous folk – a shifting notion of what is proper and what is pure profit. She is sponsoring a bill that would give dead legends the same publicity-rights protections that now are granted to the living. In short, her bill would make it illegal in New York to use a deceased person’s image commercially without permission of the star’s family.

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