The Graveyards of the Stars

Over the past eighty years or so, the people who made movies have become as embedded in the American consciousness culturally as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln are politically. For some of us, it's hard to imagine growing up without Gable and Lombard, Tracy and Hepburn, or Rogers and Astaire.

Much of that Hollywood is gone now, the studios having fled downtown for such spots as Burbank and Studio City. But if you want to take a step back and get a glimpse of historic Hollywood, one way to do it is by visiting some of its cemeteries.

Moviemaking, particularly from the 1910s onward, is one of those rare American industries which is actually historian-friendly in that nearly all of its major events took place in a single locale - the area in and around Los Angeles. Its sunny skies and pleasant climate practically assured that the stars who worked and played there would eventually retire there - and, in many cases, die there. And even though many of the Greats hailed from elsewhere, most of them saw fit have themselves interred in the town that made them great.

Finding their remains, however, even in such a limited geographical area, is unfortunately one of those ventures where it pays to do your homework. There are more than a dozen major cemeteries in and around Los Angeles and some of them guard the identities of their deceased as jealously as a gated community guards the identities of the living. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason as to who is buried where. Clark Gable, as one might expect, is buried next to Carole Lombard (at Forest Lawn in Glendale), but the Three Stooges (all six of them) are buried in four different graveyards. Knowing a star's religion can sometimes provide a clue to their whereabouts - although with two major Catholic cemeteries in the area and three Jewish ones, this knowledge doesn't necessarily help much. Not only that, but you also have to keep in mind that some really heavy-hitters - Judy Garland and Joan Crawford, to name but two - aren't even buried in Los Angeles at all.

Fortunately, a lot of people have already confronted this problem, and some of them (bless their eternal souls) have already done most of the work for you. You just have to know where to look.

One place to start is with our good friends at http://www.findagrave.com. (See my list of recommended websites.) All you have to do is enter the name of a celebrity and they will tell you where the person is buried, often showing a photograph of the gravesite (with arrows) along with a detailed description so that you can pinpoint the specific lot.

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