Five Hollywood icons who were brought back from the dead to sell a product
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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / TCM / Public Domain)
Selling out is a crucial step in an artist’s evolution, and whether it’s Kiss selling lunchboxes or Orson Welles selling board games, relinquishing all creative idealism in the name of cold, hard cash is par for the course.
In Welles’s case, at least, there was some integrity behind it: the man was desperate to make movies the way he wanted to make them, and that required a lot of no-strings-attached capital. And besides, no one can say that he didn’t earn his keep, as each and every one of those many, many ad appearances was a masterclass in overacting.
These days, celebrities are even more brazen, where it makes sense that a reality star like Kim Kardashian would be a shill for pubic hair thongs and anti-wrinkle face bandages, but what in the name of the Oscars was Matt Damon doing selling crypto, and why, for the love of God, is Brad Pitt selling luxury skincare?
All of this is pretty tasteless, but it pales in comparison to the instances when deceased celebrities have been resurrected from beyond the grave to endorse a product. Even the ones whose estates are tightly controlled by their children are not safe from the clutches of greed, tackiness, and horrendous CGI, and of the examples listed here, only one feels remotely respectful of the person whose celebrity it is trading on, and that person, ironically, had no family members to guard her legacy.
Some of these affiliations make sense, at least from a marketing standpoint, but most of them are wildly off-base, with people out there being callous enough to use James Dean’s untimely death as an opportunity to sell investment banking. One wonders how many lapses in judgment are required for a commercial featuring a long-dead Fred Astaire and a broom to make it to air, and while I can’t claim to have the answers to these questions, perhaps a little more information will lead you to your own conclusions.
Five Hollywood icons revived for adverts:
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