My Glamorous Dead Friends

Kevin Ridgeway

I had the great pleasure of meeting my first dead celebrity during a torrential rain storm one spring afternoon nearly twenty years ago in a cemetery that shares a wall with the landmark Paramount Studios. I am sure there were many live celebrities hard at work on film and television productions on its soundstages—my mother and I had tried, without much luck, to enter so that we could sneak a peak, but we were rudely accosted by a security guard and forbidden to go anywhere beyond the iconic iron gates that shield the secrets of movie magic from a curious public. We drove around the block aimlessly looking for a Burger King when we ran into another pair of iron gates that were wide open and inviting. Oh, no, we thought, as we rounded the bend and onto the grounds, a graveyard. As we tried to find a way to exit back onto Santa Monica Blvd. we noticed a headstone that read Mel Blanc: Man of a Thousand Voices. The man behind Bugs Bunny—right there in front of us and just six feet under the grass! I did not get my hopes up for an autograph, but I talked his ear off about the golden age of Warner Bros. cartoons for at least twenty minutes, getting soaked in the process. And he didn’t tell me to leave him alone; in fact, not a soul told us that we were trespassing! It was the beginning of my long history hobnobbing with the stars of Hollywood’s golden age.

They say there’s no business like show business. I might add that there’s no business like the business of death, especially in Southern California—the combination of the two is sublime, and I figured it out at the tender age of twelve years old. I’ve met them all—Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Rudolph Valentino, Marilyn Monroe, Errol Flynn—rattle off even the most extensive list of who was who in Hollywood nearly a century ago, and chances are I’ve rubbed elbows with their tombstones. I’ve even danced on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and lived to tell the tale.

Cemeteries in Southern California are an awful lot like country clubs. The most elite burial ground in all of Hollywood is Forest Lawn Memorial Park with its rolling hills, ornate churches and mammoth collection of fine art. Audio speakers greet you with the finest pieces of classical music as you enter one of its two lavish hotels for the rich and famous, all of them tucked away in the wall ready for a meet and greet with you alone between the hours of 9AM and 5PM Mondays through Saturdays. Even Jesus Christ himself, somberly staring at you from the stained glass windows, seems star struck with Jean Harlow to his right in a lavish suite made from Italian marble. I’ve thought countless times to myself how I simply must earn some level of esteemed notoriety so that I can achieve permanent access to this eternal after party!

The funerals are epic productions with elaborate stagecraft and cameo appearances by live celebrities, and the memorials are superior dwellings to even the finest palaces dotting Beverly Hills. Why take the kids to Disneyland when they can hang out with ol’ Walt himself in his expertly landscaped private urn garden? Now, I understand that some people have their bugaboos about such activities, the most common of those being that it is morbid and disrespectful, but the vast majority of these people deliberately sought out the attention and I’m not about to let them go on forgotten while they rot in those tuxedos and gowns by Irene. Sometimes I even present them with posthumous Oscars, a gesture I’m sure doesn’t go overlooked and might even result in my having an in when it comes to occupying a piece of fine real estate amongst the heroes of celluloid and vinyl.

I’m not alone in my tombstone tourism. With the advent of the internet large websites designed and maintained by likeminded individuals began popping up. Entire web communities are devoted to the hunt for society’s most acclaimed human remains, and they are rapidly growing. I am quite frankly threatened by them; I want these dead celebrities all to myself. Perhaps there could be a reality television contest in which the winner gets a star-studded funeral and a contract with Forest Lawn. I would be the first to sign on!

When people from small town America ask me if I see a lot of famous people being from Los Angeles, I certainly don’t have to lie or admonish them for being so naïve. I simply inform them that I can and often do see the rich and famous—I can go so far as to say that I lunch and play golf over them and that they are the quietest, most polite people that I’ve ever known.

rindliterarymagazine.com