24 Famous People Who Weren't That Famous Before They Died

Famous people, for all their creativity and ingenuity, are often rewarded with fortune, the limelight, and probably toilet paper made out of $100 bills. Unless you're anyone on this list, that is.
24 Famous People Who Weren't That Famous Before They Died

Famous people, for all their creativity and ingenuity, are often rewarded with fortune, the limelight, and probably toilet paper made out of $100 bills. Unless you're anyone on this list, that is.

Because it turns out that when fortune smiles upon you, there's no designated time in which she does. To that end, we asked our readers to show us some of the most famous people on the planet ... who only became so after they kicked the bucket. The winner is below, but first the runners-up ...

BRV<E LEE 1240-127 IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE NOW, BUT BRUCE LEE WAs NOT ALL THAT WELL KNOWN IN AMERICA AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH. HE HAD PLAYED KATO ON THE
James Dean's career lasted only a year. He made three movies, two of which came out after his death, including the one that turned him into a legend :
Today, Gregor Mendel is considered the father of modern genetics. But when he first presented his experiments with peas, they were dismissed as being
CRACKEDCO JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE TOOLE'S COMEDIC MASTERPIECE A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES WAS PUBLISHED ELEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH AND WON THE PULITZER PRIZE
Filmmaker Edward D. UNSPEAKABLE Wood, Jr. toiled in HORRORS FROW OUTER SPACE obscurity for most of PARALYZE his life, making ultra- THE LINING AND RES
Virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C., Eva Cassidy recorded three albums and released only two before her death at 33 in 1996. Four ye
Jack THE King Kirby co- created the Marvel Universe, perhaps you have heardof it? CRACKED.COM His art defined the Silver Age of Comics and the chara
CRACKED Oh, that? It's an android COM CO GU modeled on Philip K. Dick, of course. The movies COMIC: tr Blade Runner, Minority co CON Report, and Total
Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on June 7, 1848, and became a painter after working as stockbroker He created his style using bold colors and vivid own
Franz Kafka, now renowned for his works: The Metamorphosis', The Trial' and 'Amerika', was insecure his SO about capability that he burned most of h
CRACKEDOON I WANT YOU TO EAT MY MEAT The real Uncle Sam was a butcher remembered for supplying soldiers with meat during the War of 1812. After his de
CRACKED.COM Although today a Modigliani is worth around $60 million, in his lifetime things were different: the highest price he got for a painting wa
The Broadway musical Rent was Jonathan Larson's first major New York effort. It went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical, Best Book, and Bes
CRACKED.COM This is the French sculptor Camille Claudel 64-1943). Unable to attend the males-only Ecole des Beaux-Arts she did manage to become an app
EL Greco Domenikos Theotokopoulos) painter born in 1541. Was a Grete in Living in Rome in 1570, he denigrated Michelangelo's art skills SO the Roman a
You know him as a misunderstood genius, but VINCENT VAN GOGH had begun attracting attention with his paintings before his death. Many of his most famo
Herman Melville died an unappreciatedl literary geniuso During his life, he made very little from being an author. His early work was recognized by a
High school dropout/junkie/ ALSFIN GMAAR EaknGEN street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was the enfant terrible of the W os New York art scene. FRC ART Hi
CRACKED COM h 3L Kong Qiu (551-479 But, in 212 BCE, the BCE), was twice Qin emperor prime minister of ordered the burning the small Chinese of alll cu
CRACKED CO Jane Austen (1775-1817) didn't enjoy much popularity, nor she was critically acclaimed, during her own lifetime. She wasn't much read for o
2011 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig is released to commercial and financial success, winning an Oscar. 201
H.P. Lovecraft, the now famous American author known mostly for his creation of the fictional creature cthulhu, only wrote for pulp magazines and was
Because she could not stop for Death... Only 10 of Emily Dickinson's poems were published during her lifetime, all without attribution. Dickinson was
If Robert Johnson Considered one of the best guitarists in history, and really sold his soul considered an inspiration for to the devil for other lege

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