Glamorous ghosts of the past


“How did a nice girl like you end up in a cemetery?”

Hollywood Forever Cemetery tour guide Karie Bible gets asked this all the time. Standing steps away from headstones, graves and mausoleums just two weeks before Halloween, it’s hard not to wonder the same thing. Even if you’re not superstitious, it still feels uncomfortable to be in a cemetery this time of year.

Bible has been exposed to cemeteries since childhood because of her parents’ infatuation with Civil War history. She said that after visiting the Hollywood Forever Cemetery 10 years ago, she decided she belonged and became a tour guide two years later.

Not fade away - The Hollywood Forever Cemetery is the final resting place for many famous stars, from actors to musicians. Notable residents include actors Tyrone Power and Douglas Fairbanks, The Maltese Falcon’s director John Huston, and punk rock innovator Johnny Ramone. - Lindsay Cumming | Daily Trojan

Dressed as if she herself was from a different time, in a calf-length black lace dress and cropped black fur coat, she appropriately and eerily evoked the classic style of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Explaining both her outfit choice and her attraction to this creepy locale, Bible said that she wants to “bring history to life.”

As the tour starts on one of the few gloomy afternoons Los Angeles has seen in months, she begins to tell us the history of this somewhat unobtrusive landmark. Inconspicuous to most people driving down Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, it would take a lot of effort to actually notice it exists.

When Jules Roth purchased the cemetery in 1939, he quickly sold off much of the exterior of the property to make way for a strip mall and auto garages, which still block any decent view of the cemetery to this day.

Despite it being relatively hidden from view, the history of the place lives on inside the gates. Roth, the longtime owner and manager of the cemetery, was an infamous character who symbolized both the history of Hollywood Forever and the scandals that have plagued it for decades.

“He was so crooked he could have eaten soup with a cork screw,” Bible said.

A gangster in the 1930s, Roth purchased the cemetery just two years out of San Quentin Penitentiary.

His past remained with him as he ran Hollywood Forever, and upon his death in 1998, it was discovered that he not only kept a fully stocked wet bar in his office, but also a large pornography collection and spy records of all his employees.

Less sinister, but no less interesting, are the stories of the celebrities actually buried here. Located across the once-100 acres of burial grounds (40 acres were purchased for studio space by Paramount Pictures in the 1920s), visitors encounter loved ones lost, from the beginning of Hollywood’s history to the present day.

The cemetery is home to Florence Lawrence, the prolific silent movie star. Though Lawrence was not the first actress ever, Bible said that movie stars were originally left unnamed in silent films for fear they would demand more money with greater recognition. When Lawrence’s name was leaked — the first ever to be identified by the public — she was deemed “the first movie star.”

Hollywood Forever is the final resting place of many other well-known Hollywood icons, including Griffith J. Griffith — the man who gave his name to Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory — and Academy Award-winning director John Huston, of The Maltese Falcon fame, who was such a fan of Bushmills whiskey that fans frequently leave a bottle of it on his headstone.

Marion Davies, one of the best comic actresses of the silent era (though also remembered for her 32-year affair with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst), is also buried here, in addition to Harold Rosson, the cinematography for the classic The Wizard of Oz.

Many other names make the list of “residents” here — including Nelson Eddy, Richard Blackwell, Janet Gaynor and Harry Cohn — that are hardly remembered by most generations today.

One look at the headstones and mausoleums these stars are buried in, or the flowers and lipstick marks covering their graves now, and it is obvious that — at least at one point — they were completely beloved.

As Bible said, “the work [of the graves] is how they really live on.”

Though not the spookiest of ways to celebrate the Halloween season, the tour provided an amazing wealth of knowledge about a Hollywood that will, thanks to this cemetery, live on forever.

The spirits of the stars that are buried here might not haunt this town ominously, but they do conjure up visions of the past — from a time when the movie industry was met with nothing but distrust and skepticism (and boarding houses in Hollywood with signs declaring “No Dogs or Actors”), to the Golden Age of Hollywood, when the movie industry thrived as never before.

From the peacocks that roam the grounds during the week to the unexpected mix of celebrities buried here, one thing is for certain — only in Hollywood.