10 Famous Rich People That Died Penniless

Unfortunately, being rich is how we define success in America

And the only thing worse than being poor is being rich and then being poor

Today we're counting down the 10 rich people that died penniless, as voted on by you, the viewer

Welcome to Rank Worthy, the show where we rank just about everything. Gary Coleman, like many child stars, had a rough life

He hit it big with his iconic turn as Arnold on different strokes, and then struggled with financial planning, anger issues, and substance abuse for the rest of his life

After a stint working as a security guard, winning a lawsuit against his adoptive parents for mishandling his childhood earnings

and then still going bankrupt only a decade later, Coleman's adulthood was plagued with issues

After a rocky marriage and chronic medical bills, Coleman passed away after falling down a flight of stairs in his Provo, Utah home

Born Constance Francis Marie Aucleman, the woman who would go on to become Veronica Lake, had anything but an idyllic existence

She began her career as a pinup model and would go on to become an A-list actress

She was thought of as the most beautiful woman of her era. But mental illness and alcoholism ultimately caused her to squander away her wealth

After her fame waned, she spent much of her life abroad, eventually returning to the U.S. to see her children

She went to see a local doctor in Vermont where she was diagnosed with liver failure and acute hepatitis

She passed away within a month with almost nothing to her name. Billie Holiday is an icon

She's one of the most successful jazz singers in history. She was even inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Like many people on this list the world singer found herself struggling with alcohol and substance control Holiday passed away in 1959 from substance abuse complications

It's said that she only had about $750 to her name. Her work and image have gone on to make millions

She's remembered as one of the most important singers of the 20th century. Judy Garland is a true cautionary tale

She was practically raised in Hollywood, becoming famous at an early age, co-starring in films with Mickey Rooney

She eventually went on to the star-making vehicle Wizard of Oz, which made her immortal

However, with all this fame and fortune comes studio executives conspiring to get her addicted to pharmaceuticals

a string of bad men, and at best, an adversarial relationship with her mother

Garland was only 47 years old when she passed. She left massive debts to the IRS and multiple institutions, supposedly totaling close to $4 million

That's a lot of money in today's currency. In 1969 money, it's close to triple

Despite her financial woes, Garland's legacy goes on to larger and larger acclaim with every passing year as her performance as Dorothy, he is looked back on as one of the best film musicals ever

Edgar Allan Poe's death is a topic of much debate. Some say he passed of rabies, others carbon monoxide poisoning, and yet some think it was pooping, a practice in the 1800s where individuals would be made to drink large amounts of alcohol and then forced to vote for a specific politician

No one knows for sure the exact reason why he died. One thing all scholars can agree on, though, is that he was dirt poor for the entire time he lived

So much so in fact that the year he died he only made a sum which he was attempting to support a family of three on Needless to say he now one of the most famous writers in the Western world

Nikola Tesla is the closest thing we're going to get to a real-life Tony Stark

except for the fact that Tesla died, broke his s**t. Tesla discovered alternating current and popularized the use of electricity

He could have been a billionaire, but he tore up the contracts between him and Westinghouse Electric Corporation

In 1901, Tesla had an idea to give everyone on the Atlantic seaboard free electricity

by constructing a tower named the Wardenclyffe Tower. Ultimately, the project collapsed

Tesla was publicly shamed, and he died alone, massively in debt, and profoundly mentally unstable

His body was found in a dilapidated building surrounded by dead pigeons

It has been proposed that he was living off of them before he passed away. Oscar Wilde's wit is world-renowned

Despite being one of the quintessential writers and humorists of his day, he passed away in what one biography of the time described as relative poverty

He left his children roughly 250 pounds, which in today's money would be roughly $30,000

However, when you think about how much money his works had made up until that time, only having 250 pounds is a shockingly low amount

However, in quintessential Oscar Wilde fashion, an anonymous donor gifted him with a massive stone angel as a gravesite headstone

This angel also happened to have a rather large nether region, which was later destroyed by the gravesite's caretaker because he thought it was unseen

Herman Melville is one of the towering giants of American literature. That wasn always the case In fact the famed author of Moby Dick died in obscurity after working as a customs inspector for the majority of his life Melville was so impoverished over his life that he relied on his wife brother for a substantial part of their income Ultimately the literary

powers that be re-examined Moby Dick, and by the mid-1920s, Melville had been canonized

Not bad for a book that initially only sold 3,000 copies. Sammy Davis Jr. was a founding member of

one of the most iconic Hollywood clicks of all time, the Rat Pack. The actor, writer, comedian

and singer cemented himself as Hollywood royalty by being one of the greatest all-around entertainers

ever. Unfortunately, like everyone on this list, he wasn't very good with money. When he passed

away in 1990, Davis owed the IRS over $7 million. After his widow auctioned off his mansion and

remaining assets, she still didn't have enough money to pay the IRS and was ultimately impoverished

for the rest of her life. The one silver lining in all of this is that Davis had a life insurance policy

taken out on himself so that when he passed, his three surviving children were each granted $500,000 in payouts

Bela Lugosi was a self-made man. He ascended from a poverty-stricken childhood in Romania

immigrated to the States off of some acclaimed stage work in Europe, and before anyone knew it

played Dracula in Todd Browning's iconic classic horror picture. Unfortunately, Lugosi's golden years

were anything but peaceful. Having developed a morphine, methadone, and booze addiction

he slowly poisoned himself to death. By the mid-1950s, he was appearing in cheap B-movies

for the schlock King Ed Wood, and drinking a bottle of scotch a day

When he passed, he left his children next to nothing