R.I.P. Hollywood

I’m baaaaack! Did you guys miss me?

While living in CA, I went on a quest one saturday to see how many old movie star graves I could find, and I think I did pretty well. There are quite a few stars I would like to see that are in other states, or even other countries, but for the Los Angeles area, a good number of them are buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery.

The first one on the list was the one I wanted to find the most. Bela Lugosi. It was cool to just stand there and think of him lying a few feet below me decked out in his Dracula costume. *shivers* And those are good shivers!  Then we have Bing Crosby (Harry Lillis) who I’ve really come to like in the past couple of years. Apparently he was a golfer.

A lot of the graves I found were near this little grotto area. It had an altar and some statues around. It was a nice area and made it easy to find who I was searching for. The rest of the cemetery was pretty unremarkable.

I won’t go through and name everyone that I saw, but I will mention about Rosalind Russell’s grave. I have a picture of the name plaque, but the next picture shows the full gravesite. It was pretty large with that huge statue of Jesus towering over it. That also made her easy to find.

I want to make a mention of a couple of graves I found, but haven’t posted pictures for. I don’t remember the name of the cemetery, but both Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are buried there. I was thrilled to see them both! But as I was taking pictures of Fred’s grave, an employee of the cemetery stopped me and told me that pictures weren’t allowed there because Fred Astaire’s family had requested that no one be allowed to photograph his grave. So because of him, the whole cemetery was off limits to photographers. So since I went to his grave first, I wasn’t able to take any pictures of Ginger’s grave, which I was REALLY disappointed about. But funny that I did get pictures of Fred’s grave, when his is the one that caused the whole ruckus for the entire park. I’m not posting it though out of respect for his family’s wishes.

I recently learned that there’s a name for people who travel around searching for long gone celebrities’ graves. They’re called “Death Hags.” Yeah, I know…it’s not too attractive sounding. But I guess I can now refer to myself as a Death Hag and not just a taphophile. haha

Don’t know who Edmond O’Brien is? Watch the movie White Heat sometime. It’s one of the best James Cagney movies there is, and Edmond played opposite Cagney.

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