Crazy Mystery: Is Andy Kaufman Really Still Alive?

And does he really have a 24-year-old daughter?
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 14, 2013 10:20 AM CST

The Andy Kaufman Awards were held Monday night, and they closed with quite a bang, according to a detailed recap on The Comic's Comic. First Kaufman's brother Michael, who presided over the New York City event, revealed that he's not sure whether his famous comedian brother really died of cancer at the age of 35 in 1984 (conspiracy theories have long held that he faked his death). Michael said he found, among Andy's things, plans to fake his own death; he also claimed to have received a letter from Andy in 1999 saying he had a wife and daughter and wanted to remain in hiding and live a normal life. In the letter, he asked Michael not to reveal anything while their father was still alive; he just died this summer.

A month after their father's death, a young woman contacted Michael to confirm Andy was still alive and was her father, Michael continued. She said Kaufman liked to watch the awards he inspired from afar. So Monday night, Michael asked if the young woman was in attendance ... and she (apparently) was: A 24-year-old woman came onstage and claimed her dad is, in fact, Andy Kaufman. "He just wanted to be a stay-at-home dad," she said. "That's why he wanted to leave the showbiz ... He's just pretty much a great dad, and raised us." Sure, the whole thing sounds like a Kaufman-esque hoax, but one attendee wrote on Facebook that it seemed "as real as any reality that I've seen," though it was certainly "a mindf---." And a lifelong Kaufman friend—who saw Kaufman's body at his funeral—tells the Hollywood Reporter, "This was not a prank." (Update: Turns out, the "daughter" is an unrelated actress.)

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