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One would be hard-pressed to think of any other entertainer who sowed as much doubt about his true character than comedian Andy Kaufman did in the 1970s and 1980s. He adopted multiple personas and stayed in character even when he was off-stage. He performed as other people. Or he had other people perform as him. Or maybe he was performing as other people pretending to be him. He staged tantrums and altercations so convincingly that audiences were left wondering whether his flare-ups were rehearsed routines or genuinely spontaneous outbursts of anger. In the end, he blurred the division between Andy Kaufman and Andy Kaufman's comic creations so thoroughly that much of the public was no longer sure which was which. But the end did come — on 16 May 1984, a 35-year-old Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His remains were returned to New York for interment at Beth David Cemetery. His death certificate and his gravesite are viewable on-line. Nonetheless, in the thirty years since his death, Andy Kaufman is alive! rumors have been refueled and run out for a few laps around the track a number of times. Most recently, in November 2013 a woman took the stage with Kaufman's brother Michael at the 9th Annual Andy Kaufman Awards hosted at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York and announced that she was Kaufman's daughter, that her father was still very much alive, that he had faked his death to get out of the limelight and be a stay-at-home dad for her and her siblings, and that he had wanted to appear at the awards ceremony but ultimately decided not to come. She teased the audience with the statement I don't know how much longer he can keep everything away: However, the woman in question claimed to be 24 years old, but Kaufman passed away more than 29 years ago, so she's several years too young to possibly be Andy Kaufman's daughter (unless the comedian continued to secretly father children after his reported death, which creates the logically circular scenario of his faking his death so that he could be a stay-at-home dad to kids he didn't yet know he would have). Moreover, according to People magazine she's reportedly a theater student, which is more highly suggestive evidence that her appearance was a stunt similar to the kind her putative father was renowned for pulling: The Smoking Gun later identified the woman as a New York City actress named Alexandra Tatarsky whose father is a psychologist and not a (deceased) comedian: The Hollywood Reporter (THR) also got nowhere when it attempted to contact Michael Kaufman to verify elements of the story proffered by him and his brother's alleged daughter: The 20th anniversary of Kaufman's death also provided the occasion for some Andy Kaufman is alive! rumors, fueled primarily by an Andy Kaufman Returns blog and a press release (widely distributed via Yahoo!) proclaiming that he had emerged from hiding two decades after faking his death — accounts supposedly confirmed by his having given an interview to ABC and submitted to (and passed) DNA testing. And all of this screamed of being a very un-Kaufman-like publicity stunt: The celebrity-died-young actually faked his own death to drop out of the public eye rumor has long since been milked for all its worth. Every decade sees it applied to at least one prominent entertainer — James Dean, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur. They're all dead, and they're not coming back. Ever. That someone issued a press release proclaiming Andy Kaufman to be alive signified nothing other than an attempt to capitalize on the confusion his bizarre performance style sowed during his lifetime. (Heck, if anybody was capable of faking his own death, it was that crazy old Andy Kaufman, right?) The releasing agency, PRWeb, is a for-hire wire service that will distribute anyone's press release, about anything, for a fee. (Another PRWeb release from the same timeframe — Ambassador from Mars Receives 181,634 Spam Emails; Says 'Earthlings Are Not Ready' and Takes First Available Saucer Back Home — demonstrated that nothing was considered too silly to be distributed by the PRWeb wire service.) The supposedly recent photographs of Andy Kaufman appearing as Tony Clifton, his abusive lounge singer character, displayed in the Andy Kaufman Returns blog were taken from a May 2004 Andy Kaufman tribute event, during which Kaufman's friend and writing partner, Bob Zmuda, played Tony Clifton. Zmuda himself said, during a 1999 interview: The Andy Kaufman Returns blog was later amended to state that, contrary to details provided in the press release, he was not interviewed by ABC, and the alleged DNA testing was not conducted by the auditing firm of Ernst & Young. This seemed rather transparently indicative of someone's having to backpedal after receiving complaints from companies disgruntled at having their names associated with a hoax. Indeed, within a few days the perpetrator was forced to issue another press release apologizing for his prank: If the real Andy Kaufman wanted to demonstrate he was still alive, just one public appearance would serve that purpose far more convincingly than an unverifiable DNA test. Most important, if the Andy Kaufman we remember — the brilliant, unpredictable, erratic, and unique comic genius — had finally emerged from hiding decades after faking his own death, I have no doubts that he'd find a much more imaginative way of revealing his return than an Internet press release and a rather ordinary blog, or having his daughter announce his imminent return to the audence of a small awards ceremony. The Kaufman hoax returned in September 2014, when Bob Zmuda reversed course (because he had a book to sell) and claimed that not only did he believe that Kaufman had engaged in some ridiculously far-fetched scheme to fake his death, but that Kaufman would be emerging to reveal his great prank to the world very soon: As usual, we expect that long after the book Zmuda was hawking (Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally) is forgotten, Andy Kaufman will still be dead
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