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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
What's New at Arcadia
Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock
Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!
Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca
Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.
Announcements
Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Sunday, 29 January 2006 |
Los Angeles can be a tricky place for the dedicated celebrity-grave spotter
By Gary A. Warner -The Orange County Register
LOS ANGELES - I was looking for Marilyn Monroe when I nearly walked over Rodney Dangerfield. Literally. I didn't mean it to be an ''I don't get no respect'' moment, but the path to the most famous crypt in California leads right past the comedian's grave.
''There goes the neighborhood,'' reads the epitaph on Dangerfield's headstone at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park. With Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder nearby, it really is a neighborhood. Even in death, the Hollywood crowd tends to form cliques.
Los Angeles, Spanish for ''The City of Angels,'' has one of the world's greatest collections of cemeteries and memorial parks in the world. A Who's Who of what was.
Over the course of two days, I paid my respects to Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Jean Harlow, Rudolph Valentino, Jayne Mansfield, Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Walter Matthau and George C. Scott.
This was different than following the famous maps of celebrity homes sold on Hollywood Boulevard. I knew that once I found the right address, the star
would be at home.
While Los Angeles County has more than 50 major burial places, just a half dozen or so attract a steady stream of visitors from around the globe. It can be a tricky trip for the dedicated grave spotter.
Rules and decorum vary wildly. At Hollywood Forever Cemetery, they sell maps to the stars' graves and even show classic films in the cemetery on summer nights. But across town at the sprawling Forest Lawn in Glendale, final home to more stars than anywhere in the world, the staff keeps its lips zipped about the permanent locales of silver-screen legends.
Cemetery operators have to walk a fine line, said Donna Steward, family-service counselor at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park.
''We understand the curiosity of the public, but our families come first,'' said Steward. ''We don't allow tour groups to come in, no guide yelling 'so and so is buried here; so and so is buried there.' We ask people to show respect.''
Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park is a good place to start a trip to the three most significant graveyards in the Los Angeles area. It's a tiny plot down a side alley hemmed in by the skyscrapers of Westwood.
Despite its small size, the memorial park is packed with famous celebrities, from crooner Dean Martin to rock guitarist Frank Zappa, movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck to ''Green Acres'' star Eva Gabor and In Cold Blood author Truman Capote.
But all pale in comparison with the most famous grave of all the memorial parks, the crypt of 1950s film bombshell Marilyn Monroe. The pilgrims still come bearing tributes.
''We get a very big crowd,'' Steward said. ''Sometimes it used to be a weird crowd, but it has been better in recent years.''
If there is one Southern California graveyard that has ''gone Hollywood,'' it is Hollywood Forever. Rescued from bankruptcy, the former Hollywood Memorial Park reopened in 1998 with a new name and a new mission that included embracing its position as a tourist attraction.
Hollywood Forever has a split personality. It's still an operating cemetery-- on the day of my visit, the lanes were filled with cars parked for a funeral. But Hollywood Forever celebrates its permanent residents. In the flower shop, an attendant sells maps of the cemetery's main attractions, with top celebrity grave spots marked with stars.
It's a new role for Hollywood's oldest cemetery, which dates back to 1899. Along with Hollywood alumni, Hollywood Forever is the final resting place of early city power brokers like the Los Angeles Times' Otis and Chandler families.
Before Marilyn, the most famous celebrity grave was undoubtedly the crypt of silent-screen heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, star of ''The Sheik'' and other sword-and-sandal epics. Thousands have filed past the silver-screen shrine, including the mysterious ''lady in black,'' who made annual visits on the anniversary of the star's death.
The Los Angeles area's most famous cemetery is as fan-frosty as Hollywood Forever Cemetery is fan-friendly. The sprawling 300-acre Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale hosts the remains or memorials of dozens of classic Hollywood names: Bogart, Stewart, Harlow, Gable, Flynn.
But celebrity grave spotters aren't embraced. No map. No directions.
I was looking for the garden with Walt Disney's grave, marked by a little mermaid, when a security guard pulled up and politely said the park was closing.
Driving down the twisting lane that led out into the crush of L.A. traffic, I recognized a connection between the two most visited graves along my route. Marilyn and Valentino had followed the old Hollywood maxim.
Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse.
Resting - but not always in peace
Getting there: To the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park at 1218 Glendon Ave. in Los Angeles, take Interstate 405 north, exit Wilshire Boulevard and turn right on Glendon Avenue. To Hollywood Forever at 6000 Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles, take Highway 101 north and exit Santa Monica Boulevard. To Forest Lawn Memorial Park at 1712 S. Glendale Ave. in Glendale, Calif., take the California Route 2 Freeway north, exit left onto San Fernando Road and turn right on South Glendale Avenue.
General information Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park 310-474-1579; Hollywood Forever Cemetery 323-469-1181; Forest Lawn Memorial Park 800-204-3131
http://www.beneathlosangeles.com; http://www.hollywoodforever.com; http://www.forestlawn.com/ visitors-guide/memorial-parks/glendale/
http://sltrib.com/travel/ci_3448175
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