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Written by DeadGirl
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Sunday, 10 July 2005 |
It's Hollywood mythmaking of a different sort on a tour of celebrity-death sites
July 8, 2005
By CARLA WHEELER / The Press-Enterprise
Scott Michaels banks on the morbidly curious.
People cheerfully pay $35 to board his sightseeing van for a three-hour tour of Hollywood's tragic side.
Tinseltown can easily go from gold to rust, so there's no dearth of macabre stories for Michaels to mine during his Dearly Departed -- The Tragical History Tour. He takes people to about 80 places of note, offering a running commentary along the way.
Ever wonder where Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose on Oct. 3, 1970? Michaels drives by the former Landmark Hotel, where he shows his guests the window of the room where the rock singer keeled over with a cigarette in her hand.
Want to see where the Manson murders occurred? Michaels swings by the Los Feliz home where the LaBiancas died and the Benedict Canyon property where Sharon Tate and four others were slaughtered in August 1969. He turns on a CD player, creeping out guests by playing songs that Charles Manson recorded.
"Charles Manson wanted to be a rock star. For a while he hooked up with (the Beach Boys') Dennis Wilson," said Michaels, adding that Wilson's song "Never Learn Not to Love" was based on lyrics Manson wrote. "It's a fascinating piece of music history."
Michaels meshed an interest in history and Los Angeles' morbid happenings to fashion a career in the tour business. He worked for companies such as Starline Tours and Grave Line Tours for 11 years before striking out on his own last Jan. 1 with a Dearly Departed tour.
He researches the deaths of celebrities incessantly, poring over autopsy reports and other public records to unearth quirky details about their demise.
He even created www.findadeath.com to help satiate other inquiring minds who want to know more about the last moments of stars such as Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin (who bought Michaels a beer at the Hamburger Hamlet in Hollywood in 1994).
"He was gaunt and could hardly walk or talk," Michaels wrote on the Web site.
It's this minutia that people lap up as they're shuttled down dozens of streets, catching quick glimpses of where notables lived and died in LA. They saw the mansion where gangster Bugsy Siegel was mowed down by bullets. And they whizzed by the El Coyote restaurant that served Tate and her friends their last meals.
Ears perked up when Michaels told them Nat King Cole died of lung cancer ("He was a three-pack-a-day smoker") and showed them the section of the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room where actor River Phoenix collapsed from a drug overdose.
"Joaquin phoned (police) from this pay phone," he said, pointing to the booth while turning on a recording of the 911 call River's brother made.
Necks craned so people could get better views of the white, 23-room mansion on Elm Drive in Beverly Hills where Erik and Lyle Menendez pumped bullets into their parents on a hot August night in 1989.
"I call this the real-life 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' " Michaels said, explaining how the murders remained unsolved until the brothers spilled the beans themselves. "Erik blabbed to his psychologist."
Passing the Ambassador Hotel, which will soon be demolished, Michaels plays a news broadcast of the Robert F. Kennedy shooting at the hotel on June 5, 1968.
Besides the recordings, Michaels peppers the tour with visuals. He hands out photo albums filled with pictures taken at crime scenes and funeral homes. The collection includes graphic snaps from the unsolved "Black Dahlia" murder case, showing the body of Elizabeth Short severed in half.
Because of the nature of the photographs and the stories told, it's probably unwise to bring young children on the Dearly Departed tour. If you're faint of heart, you might want to pass, too.
Though some of the subject matter is gruesome, Michaels makes his guests laugh. If he wasn't driving the van, Dearly Departed might be a stand-up routine. This happens to be Hollywood, after all.
"We're interested in other people. And it's about facing our own mortality," said Mark Cramer, 46, a Disney employee who went on the tour. "(Plus) we put celebrities on pedestals, and they are real people. Everyone's got flaws."
http://www.pe.com/entertainment/guide/stories/PE_Ent_Guide_D_scarytour08.142b22.html |
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