POP/ROCK - March 13, 1987
Although he’s been dead 28 years, rocker Buddy Holly’s name is still making money. Trouble is, it’s going to a bank, a car dealer, a pizza parlor and a Hollywood feature film, not to his widow, Maria Elena Holly Diaz, she says. Diaz, of Irving, Tex., told a committee of the state legislature in Austin on Wednesday, “Since he died, I have been in constant battle with a lot of people out there that are using his name to make money for themselves.” Holly died Feb. 3, 1959, in a plane crash in Iowa. Legislator Al Granoff of Dallas has proposed a bill that would prohibit unauthorized commercial use of a personality’s name for 50 years after his or her death.
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