Bet you'd be surprised at some of the famous folks who sought bankruptcy protection--check it out:
- Abe Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States sought asset protection in bankruptcy when he declared in 1833. It took him 17 years to pay off friends who had given him money to start his business.
- Recently deceased TV legend Ed McMahon filed for bankruptcy upon learning that he was late $644,000 on a $4.8 million loan for a home in Beverly Hills, California. His lender had filed a notice of default.
- Oscar-winning film producer, and animation and theme park pioneer Walt Disney filed for bankruptcy in 1923 after backers for the corporation he started two years earlier pulled out. In 1921, he started the Laugh-O-Gram Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri, with only $15,000 from investors. It proved to be too problematic for New York distributors of his animated fairy tales.
- Trailblazer automobile manufacturer Henry Ford went broke almost three times before he sold his first car, and filed for bankruptcy.
- Marvin Gaye filed for bankruptcy in 1976 after an expensive divorce, tax problems, and drug addictions. To deal, he moved to Hawaii and lived in a bread van.
- M.C. Hammer decided on filing bankruptcy in 1996 after telling the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Central District of California that he was $13.7 million in debt and had only $9.6 million in personal assets.
- Talk-show host and best selling American author Larry King filed bankruptcy in 1978 at which point he was $352,000 in debt, accused of stealing $5,000 from a business partner, and charged with grand larceny.
- In 1979, Tom Petty filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with debts of $500,000. He was in the middle of negotiating a ploy against MCA Records which had recently bought Petty’s indie label Shelter Records. Not wanting to go to a new label without consent, Petty viewed bankruptcy as a way for him to negotiate a fresh deal with his new label home.
- Anna Nicole Smith, 1993’s Playboy Magazine “Playmate of the Year,” filed for bankruptcy in California in 1996 as a result of an $850,000 judgment against her in a sexual harassment lawsuit.
- Donald Trump’s Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 17, 2009. His casino group, Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. had assets of about $2.1 billion and total debts of about $1.74 billion as of December 31, 2008.
Tags: bankruptcy, Celebrities Who Filed Bankruptcy
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under Bankruptcy News and Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hi Total Banckruptcy,
This is an excellent top ten list. I had no idea that Henry Ford went bankrupt 3 times before, it looks like perseverance paid off in his case. I found you through Twitter and am now following you, we are @toptentopten. I help run a site http://www.toptentopten.com/ which is entirely user generated top ten lists. We have seen that a lot of websites and bloggers who post their lists to our site are getting a lot of traffic to their site.
You can source your list when you create it, and a link to your site appears at the bottom of the list. A lot of people click on your link because the original source is always better. Another thing we’ve noticed people do is put your url in the description, and make the list votable, so people can change the rank of your items. Votes are really what makes your list and profile on our site more popular. The more popular your list is on our site, the more people see it, and hopefully will visit your site.
Let me know if you have any questions, and we hope to see your lists on our site.
Best Regards,
Vince