Hollywood Ever After

When Stars Go to Heaven

For centuries, men worshipped stars of the celestial variety. Lately, however, star adoration has become a more localized phenomenon, centered in the City of Angels. Star Maps guide us to their homes. In countless magazines and television show we discover what they wear, what they think, what brand of car they drive and which diet plan they swear by. We seem to know more about them than we know about ourselves. Yet stars remain elusive. We yearn to rub elbows with them only to find ourselves walking in their shadow.

All is not lost, however. There is one place in Tinseltown that's got more stars than Spago's on Oscar Night and you don't need a reservation or an invitation. You won't find the address anywhere on a Star Map yet it lies in plain view, there for all to see, at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, between Gower Street and Van Ness Avenue. The place is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, home to 101 stars and notables from the Golden Age of the movies. They're all here, the gangsters and the molls, the sirens and the moguls, the bit players and the leading women and men, resting forever in landscaped tranquility. Each grave tells a story in what amounts to no less than the grand narrative of Hollywood of the bygone era, with divas like Jayne Mansfield, comedians like Mel Blank, studio founders like Harry Cohn, screen mobsters like Edward G. Robinson, and their real-life star-struck counterparts like Bugsy Siegel.