I recently spent an afternoon wandering through Hollywood Forever Cemetery–yes, voluntarily–and I loved it! I don’t generally think of myself as morbid. Yes, I love The Adams Family, The Walking Dead and every zombie movie ever made, but I also love sweet puppy kisses and soft furry kittens. Then again, I do watch a lot of ID Channel. Regardless, Hollywood Forever is the very opposite of morbid. Green, sun drenched and peaceful, it’s also oddly inspiring and thoroughly entertaining. I guess nothing less should be expected from the final resting place of so many of the wacky, wonderful, wildly creative folks that helped shaped Hollywood, or lived in the shadow of it.
For a setting that features such showy personalities, Hollywood Forever is in a pretty inconspicuous location. Granted, Paramount Studios lies directly to the south, but it’s amazing what a simple wall can do. If you happen to be on the Paramount lot, unless you know there’s a cemetery on the other side, you’ll have no idea there’s a cemetery on the other side. (Hollywood Forever actually came first. It was founded in 1899 and sold about forty acres of its land to Parmamount/RKO Pictures by 1920.)
Located off Santa Monica Boulevard between Gower and Van Ness, Hollywood Forever is nestled between a row of auto body garages and mechanic shops to the west, and a basic-looking strip mall featuring a coin laundry, free clinic and AutoZone to the East. All that auto stuff is how I ended up at the cemetery. I’d brought my car in for an issue with the radiator. I’m a huge fan of Turner Classics and old movies, so, having a couple of hours to kill, I decided, why not walk next door and check the place out. I plopped down five bucks for a map at the gift shop, and I was off. You can tell so much about a person’s life from a carving or a few simple words on a tombstone. There’s usually a humbleness to it, a simplicity. But not at Hollywood Forever. Not that I should have been surprised considering the large number of creative spirits–no pun intended–interred there. After all, this is the place where, throughout the summer, thousands of folks are allowed through its gates clutching picnic baskets filled with snacks and a variety of libations to watch movies projected onto the side of one of its buildings–movies that often feature some of the very people buried there. I was talking to a friend about this once and she found it strange and sacrilegious. I begged to differ. These are Hollywood folks we’re talking about, so the only sacrilege would be to not remember them.
So in homage, I wrote a reasonably bad poem:
There are pagodas and peacocks and a pavilion too/ Cause they moved Judy Garland from her resting place in New York/ And from all those East Coast looky loos
Douglas Fairbanks Sr’s tomb sits at the end of a reflecting pool (with ducks and swans, no less)/ Guess if you act, produce, direct and found United Artist / Your final resting place had best be the coolest of the cool
Had no idea who this dude Edmon Simonian was/ He wasn’t a Hollywood insider, but he was not to be outdone/ So he left us a sculpted book with his bio to show how he’d won/ Beat polio, survived the communists, fought with the KGB for seven years/ Moved to America, excelled at woodworking and design/ Bought and renovated the Melrose Hotel with great care (seriously, it’s all written on those pages)
This other dude’s title as Romanian Film Director takes top billing over even his name/ Notice the film camera on top, there’s even a slate on the back side attesting to his claim to fame
Tony Scott’s tombstone takes you along for an adventurous ride/ Not familiar with what he directed, just take a gander at the other side (dude has his credits listed!!!! I did love Top Gun and Man on Fire though.)
Tyrone Power’s bench rests right beside the lake/ With the comedy and drama masks and the words from Hamlet, “Goodnight, sweet prince” as his final take
Gotta say I was surprised at Cecil B DeMille’s plot/ For a man who did everything on an epic scale/ I was like, “Cecil, is that all ya got?”/ I mean, dude, you directed The Ten Commandments , Samson and Delilah, Greatest Show on Earth/ I was expecting a giant wall of fire shooting up out of the dirt (as well as elephant statues standing on their hind legs in front of a pyramid mausoleum built to scale with Moses and Ramses statues closely resembling Charlton Heston & Yul Brynner guarding its entrance–Just sayin’.)
There’s a cenotaph (monument) honoring Hattie McDaniel who wanted to be buried there in 1952/But the injustice of segregation permeated cemeteries too/And it wouldn’t be until years later that the first black person to win an Oscar would partly get her due
Valentino, Fay Wray, Chris Cornell, John Huston, Estelle Getty, Bugsy Siegel, Peter Lorre, Peter Finch, Mr. Penthouse himself-Bob Guccione, Mickey Rooney…and the list goes on and on…
Oh, and then there are place savers or futurums to guarantee you won’t miss your chance/At having a very special place in this creative eternal dance/ Leave it to Hollywood that you have to make a reservation fifty years in advance
But no one belongs in Hollywood Forever more than this diva who was not a part of the Hollywood crowd/ but who is in essence everything this town is about/ Her image and her words carrying such clout/ “Not only was she perfect, she was Italian.”
But in the end my favorite had the simplest text/From the man who voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Barney Rubble and all the rest/Three little words to ease him into the realm that’s next/”That’s All Folks”–simply the best!
