By Mike Danahey, Staff Writer
Former Courier News reporter Mark Masek has written a book with
all the dirt on Hollywood's famous celebrity-filled cemeteries.
"Hollywood Remains to Be Seen: A Guide to the Movie Stars' Final Homes"
(Cumberland House) offers 400-plus pages filled with information, anecdotes
and photos of Tinsel Town's graveyards of the glamourous and not-so-glamourous.
The book -- Masek's first -- is arranged in 14 chapters, one for each cemetery
visited. It includes detailed listings of exactly where the profiled stars have
been laid to rest along with a history of the burial grounds. Masek also maintains
a Web site to promote his work.
Masek said the cemeteries of the rich and famous are increasingly popular tourist
destinations. He picked up the habit of visiting them himself when he still
lived in the Midwest and would travel to the Left Coast on vacation.
"The first movie star gravesite I visited was Marilyn Monroe's. It surprised
me that people still leave items at her grave," he said of the Pierce Brothers
Westwood Village Memorial Park site.
Masek, a native of Joliet and a graduate of Joliet West High School, worked
at the Courier from 1979 through 1988. It was his first job after college. From
there he spent time copy editing for the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald and
working in public relations for the Argonne National Laboratory. His wife took
a promotion with a trade magazine for travel agents a few years ago, which brought
the couple West.
After the move, Masek took work driving a cab, as a film and TV extra -- including
being an orderly on "ER" -- and continued to write freelance articles. From his own
interest in the subject, Masek found a dearth of graveyard guidebooks and decided
to write his.
Not intended to be macabre, Masek said, the book is a sort of history of the
movie-making city-within-a-city, filled with stories of old Hollywood.
What makes the book handy for tourists is that, by-and-large, the graveyards are
free for the public to visit. Except for part of Forest Lawn, access is not restricted.
Hollywood Forever has gone so far as to open a gift and souvenir shop on its grounds.
The cemeteries offer a relatively easy way to get an up-close-and-personal look at
what the person may have been like, Masek added.
"A star may have lived in a dozen homes, but only has one burial place," said Masek.
Most who visit the graves treat them with the respect they would give a departed
loved one or family member, Masek said. There's even a group in Los Angeles called
Hollywood Underground, whose members view and learn graveyard lore as their hobby.
Of course, with Hollywood being an ego-driven place, some of those markers go
beyond the extravagant. At the top of that list is the memorial to Al Jolson (1886-1950),
the first singing superstar of the talking picture.
Jolson's spot in Hillside Memorial Park includes a 120-foot waterfall and a
dome held high by six marble columns. At one time it played sound clips of Jolson
crooning his signature song, Mammy. As it can be seen from a freeway near the
airport, people used to mistake Jolson's monument as a public park, Masek added.
It may be Halloween time, but Masek said there aren't many celebrity burial places
that are considered haunted.
"There are probably more of those in Chicago," he said.
Yet, in keeping with the spirit of the season, he mentioned that some reportedly
have heard spooky sobbing sounds from near the simple headstone of starlet Virginia
Rappe (1895-1921) in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery -- which was formerly known as
Hollywood Memorial Park.
Rappe died under mysterious circumstances at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco
during a party thrown by Keystone comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle to mark his
signing a multimillion dollar studio contract.
Rappe was seen being led into a bedroom by Arbuckle. Later, she was found
in the room in pain caused by a ruptured bladder, which led to peritonitis,
which killed her.
Arbuckle was brought to trial three times on murder chargers, with no
conviction and the final jury apologizing to the portly actor. But the scandal
effectively ruined his career, with the newly formed censorship panel called
the Hays Office banning Arbuckle for a time from appearing in films.
In the same cemetery where Rappe rests is another supposedly haunted spot, the
mausoleum holding Clifton Webb (1889-1966). Webb specialized in snooty characters
and found success in playing the housekeeping butler Mr. Belvedere.
There have been reports of seeing the ghost of a well-dressed man near Webb's
crypt, as well as haunting his old home in Beverly Hills before it was demolished.
More ghoulish is that Bela Lugosi of Dracula fame is buried in a cape he wore
to play the bloodthirsty count. The story goes that Peter Lorre asked Vincent Price
at the wake if he should drive a stake through Lugosi's heart, just to make sure he was dead.
The other haunted Hollywood spot Masek has heard of is the Roosevelt Hotel.
There, some have claimed to have seen an image of Monroe (1926-1962) in a mirror
in a room where she often stayed. Others swear they have seen the spirit of
Montgomery Clift parading up and down a hotel hallway, playing a bugle.
Next, Masek said he is considering doing a book filled with Hollywood hotel tales.
Another cemetery story has caught his attention as well.
Up the Pacific Coast near San Francisco is the small town of Colma. With the
Bay Area so densely populated, Colma holds many of the region's cemeteries -- seemingly
one on every corner, Masek said.
The Elgin (IL) Courier News, Oct. 15, 2002:
Former Courier scribe digs the dirt on celebrity cemeteries:
Hollywood lives seen via death