Forest Lawn Memorial-Park: The Unauthorized Guide
Mark Masek
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Mark Masek
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Forest Lawn Memorial-Park
1712 S. Glendale Ave.
Glendale, Calif.
Introduction: Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale, Calif., is one of the most well-known and frequently visited cemeteries in the United States, perhaps in the world. Though it’s hard to imagine a cemetery being a tourist attraction, Forest Lawn attracts more than 1 million visitors every year. Before Disneyland opened in Anaheim in 1955, Forest Lawn was the top tourist attraction in Southern California.
Although many visitors come to pay their respects to a loved one or friend, the vast majority of people who pass through the main entrance gates on Glendale Avenue come hoping to find the grave of their favorite celebrity. (The entrance gates, erected in 1932, are reportedly the largest wrought iron gates on the world, taller by five feet than the gates at Buckingham Palace – get ready for an endless string of superlatives when you visit Forest Lawn.)
Actually, Forest Lawn’s Glendale cemetery is one of 10 Forest Lawn properties in Southern California. But it’s the first, and the most well known. The lush, beautifully landscaped, 300-acre cemetery, with more than 300,000 permanent residents, forever changed the look of cemeteries across the country. In fact, Forest Lawn was the first cemetery to call itself a “memorial park.”
Forest Lawn, of course, is best known for its celebrity clientele, from Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, to Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor. Unfortunately, while many other cemeteries in Southern California acknowledge and even promote their celebrity residents, and welcome fans to come and pay their respects, Forest Lawn does not. They officially prohibit loitering and photography on the grounds, and employees will not tell visitors the location of any celebrity grave. In fact, officially, Forest Lawn typically doesn’t even acknowledge that the celebrities are there.
But for a discreet, careful and well-prepared visitor, Forest Lawn is a unique, fascinating and unforgettable experience, and one that shouldn’t be missed for anyone interested in old Hollywood, film history, art, architecture, or just spending a day in a location that offers two things rarely found in Southern California – free admission and free parking.
History: Hubert Eaton started his career as a mining engineer in Nevada, but found his fame and fortune in the ground in California. In 1912, the 31-year-old Eaton arrived in Tropico – now part of Glendale – to take a job selling cemetery plots at a struggling, 6-year-old, 12-acre graveyard called Forest Lawn. Eaton had lost a small fortune on an unsuccessful silver mine in Nevada, and he took the job at Forest Lawn so he could repay the debts to his mine backers.
At the time, the only structure on the property was a tiny, dilapidated gardener’s shack. Shortly after he started working at the cemetery, Eaton came up with the then-radical idea of “pre-need” sales of plots and monuments and, within a year, sales at Forest Lawn were up 250 percent. In less than five years, Forest Lawn had increased to 55 acres and Eaton was offered a job as manager of the property.
According to the Forest Lawn legend, Eaton stood on a hilltop overlooking the property on New Year’s Day 1917 and had a vision. While Forest Lawn was still a traditional cemetery – drab and dreary with large monuments over the graves – Eaton came up with the ingenious idea of a “memorial park” with no “unsightly” tombstones, and a philosophy of cemeteries depicting a celebration of life, a beginning rather than an ending. Eventually, Eaton’s revolutionary ideas transformed Forest Lawn into a lush, beautifully landscaped, 300-acre cemetery with 150 employees and more than 300,000 permanent residents, and forever changed the look of cemeteries across the country.
Depending on which version of the story you believe, Eaton was either a visionary genius who transformed the American cemetery into a true garden of memories, a place to celebrate life and honor the dearly departed, or a cunning opportunist who planned and built a near-monopolistic mortuary empire that continues to rake in millions of dollars each year thanks to huge profit mark-ups on cemetery plots, coffins, grave markers, funeral services, flowers and every other aspect of the death business.
Eaton wrote “The Builder’s Creed,” which is literally carved in stone and displayed on a massive wall at both Forest Lawn Glendale and Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. The Creed outlines Eaton’s dream for Forest Lawn: “I shall endeavor to build Forest Lawn as different, as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness, as Eternal Life is unlike death. I shall try to build at Forest Lawn a great park, devoid of misshapen monuments and other customary signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statuary, cheerful flowers, noble memorial architecture with interiors full of light and color, and redolent of the world’s best history and romances. I believe these things educate and uplift a community.”
“Forest Lawn shall become a place where lovers new and old shall love to stroll and watch the sunset’s glow, planning for the future or reminiscing of the past; a place where artists study and sketch; where school teachers bring happy children to see the things they read of in books; where little churches invite, triumphant in the knowledge that from their pulpits only words of love can be spoken; where memorialization of loved ones in sculptured marble and pictorial glass shall be encouraged but controlled by acknowledged artists; a place where the sorrowing will be soothed and strengthened because it will be God’s garden,” Eaton wrote.
Eaton also expanded the range of services offered by the cemetery. Despite vigorous opposition from local undertakers, Forest Lawn opened the first mortuary within a cemetery in 1934. By adding the mortuary, coffin salesroom, crematorium, church and florist shop on the Forest Lawn property, Eaton created a one-stop burial shop. The cemetery grounds also contain a museum and a gift shop.
There are several chapels on the Forest Lawn property, including the Wee Kirk O’ the Heather, Little Church of the Flowers, and the Church of the Recessional. The stand-alone structures were modeled on historic churches in Scotland and England, and have hosted more than 70,000 weddings, in addition to countless funeral services. Ronald Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, were married in the Wee Kirk O’ the Heather chapel in 1940, as were Regis Philbin and his wife, Joy, in 1970.
In a city where celebrity is the only really important currency, Forest Lawn Glendale is still at the top of the cemetery “A List.” As early as 1937, Time magazine described Forest Lawn as “the nation's most extraordinary cemetery, which has become, in the last decade, the Valhalla of the cinema business” and “as indispensable to Hollywood’s great dead as a footprint in the cement at Sid Grauman's Chinese Theatre is to its living.”
Unfortunately, Forest Lawn has become a cranky, ill-tempered old celebrity, eager to enjoy the glamour and fortune, but not at all willing to do anything for fans who have made its fame a reality. But, after all, Forest Lawn is a privately owned, commercial facility, not a public park, so they can really do whatever they want. And if you don’t follow their rules, you will be asked to leave, or possibly even arrested for trespassing. Even though many celebrity grave hunters consider getting kicked out of Forest Lawn as sort of a rite of passage, even a badge of honor, you’ll still be better off if you follow their rules.
And don’t think they aren’t watching you. Security guards regularly patrol the grounds, and all parts of the Great Mausoleum – inside and out – are monitored by closed-circuit security cameras. And security throughout the property has increased dramatically following the entombment of singer Michael Jackson inside the Great Mausoleum in September 2009.
Yet, even with all the rules, regulations and restrictions, Forest Lawn Glendale is still a prime tourist attraction, and a great location for prudent celebrity grave hunters to visit. In fact, before Disneyland opened in Anaheim in 1955, Forest Lawn was the top tourist attraction in Southern California, with an estimated 1.5 million visitors each year. In 1959, Time magazine called Forest Lawn the “Disneyland of Death.”
Directions: From the south, take the Golden State Freeway (5) to the exit at Los Feliz Boulevard. Take Los Feliz east about a mile to Glendale Avenue, then south on Glendale Avenue about 400 yards to the main entrance. From the north, take the Ventura Freeway (134) to the Glendale Avenue exit, then south on Glendale Avenue about two miles to the main cemetery entrance. The cemetery is located at 1712 S. Glendale Ave.
Hours: The grounds are open every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (6 p.m. during Daylight Savings Time), and the mausoleums and churches are open every day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., although admission to the Great Mausoleum is severely restricted.
The Tour: Forest Lawn Glendale is so large that it would take more than a day just to see the highlights. To make the visit more manageable, we’ve divided the cemetery into three separate tours – the Grounds, the Freedom Mausoleum and surrounding area, and the Great Mausoleum. At the main entrance, stop at the information booth and ask for a map of the grounds, which includes a listing of all the sections and buildings on the property (as well as a list of rules for visitors).
From the main entrance off Glendale Avenue, follow the main road toward the Wee Kirk O’ the Heather Church. On a hill directly west of the church, in the Wee Kirk Churchyard Section, is a large family monument, topped by a bronze statue of a kneeling archer, protecting a woman and two small children. Drive around to the west side of the hill. Walk up the hill to the statue of the archer, and walk in the direction that the archer is pointing. About 45 feet away, in the sixth row of graves, you’ll find the final resting place of actor James Maitland Stewart, best known to film fans around the world simply as Jimmy Stewart (1908-1997). His notable film appearances include “You Can’t Take it With You” (1938), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), “The Philadelphia Story” (1940), “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), “Harvey” (1950), “Rear Window” (1954), “Vertigo” (1958) and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962).
Stewart was the first Hollywood star to enlist in the military for World War II, joining the U.S. Army Air Corps nearly a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. When he was first sent to Europe to fly bombing missions, his father gave him a letter in which he wrote, “Jim, I’m banking on the enclosed copy of the 91st Psalm. The thing that takes the place of fear and worry is the promise of these words. I am staking my faith in these words. I feel sure that God will lead you through this mad experience. … God bless you and keep you. I love you more than I can tell you. Dad.” Stewart carried the letter with him for the rest of his life, and the words from the Psalm that his father gave him are written on his grave marker: “For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.”
Buried next to Stewart is his wife, Gloria Hatrick Stewart (1918-1994), and Ronald Walsh McLean (1944-1969), Gloria Stewart’s son from a previous marriage who was killed while serving with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam.
After you leave the Stewarts’ graves, continue on the road behind the Wee Kirk O’ the Heather Church until you see the Cathedral Slope Section on your left. Continue all the way around the hill and stop just as the road starts to straighten out on the other side.
In the Cathedral Slope Section, on the eastern slope of the hill, about 75 feet from the road, in Lot 1675, you’ll find the grave of one of the most nominated and most honored persons in the history of the Academy Awards – costume designer Edith Head (1897-1981). Her grave is in front of the tall pine tree closest to the top of the hill.
From 1948 to 1977, Head received 36 nominations and eight Academy Awards for individual achievement. After her first nomination for “The Emperor Waltz” (1948), Head was nominated for an Academy Award for 19 consecutive years, until 1966, winning seven times. In some years, when the Academy gave out awards for costume design for both color and black-and-white films, she was nominated twice. With more than 1,100 screen credits, Head is the most honored costume designer, and the most honored woman in the history of the Academy Awards. She dressed everyone from Clara Bow, Fred Astaire and Marilyn Monroe, to Paul Newman, Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley.
Her grave marker reads “Edith Head Ihnen – Beloved Wife, Friend, Artist.” She is buried next to her husband, Wiard Ihnan (1897-1979), who was a set designer and art director, and won two Academy Awards himself, for art direction on “Wilson” (1944) and “Blood on the Sun” (1945).
Southeast of Head’s grave, across the road in the Everlasting Love Section, right next to the curb in Lot 814, is the grave of actress Carole Landis (1919-1948).
For most of her career, Landis was a studio contract actor, playing small roles in big movies, including “A Star is Born” (1937) and “A Day at the Races” (1937). Her big break came when director Hal Roach cast her with Victor Mature in “One Million B.C.” (1940). Landis toured extensively with the USO during World War II, helping to sell War Bonds and entertaining the troops, both in the United States and overseas. She wrote about her experiences in a best-selling book titled, “Four Jills in a Jeep,” and also starred in the film version of the book in 1944, playing herself, along with Kay Francis, Martha Raye, Mitzi Mayfair, Jimmy Dorsey, Phil Silvers, Betty Grable, Alice Faye and George Jessel.