Photo Pest: Death Stars

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Death Stars

Jared Leto, David Spade and Adam Goldberg were among the boldface names we spotted during my last visit to Los Angeles. Two decades later, we headed to Forest Lawn, desperate for a celebrity fix, even deceased ones.

En route, we tried to take a peek at the Hollywood Bowl which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. I recall it vividly from the cover of a 78 rpm recording in my parents' LP collection. Here's the entrance.

Believe it or not, the Bowl seats 18,000 people. We couldn't get any closer than this because stagehands were loading in Diana Krall's show. Just across from the parking lot, up a couple of flights of stairs, you'll find a lovely first-come, first-served picnic area where the outdoor concerts can be heard, if not seen.

We also made a quick stop at Ferndell where a young woman I met in Runyon Canyon told me to check out the turtle pond. All the shade made it seem more like Central Park.

I had a list of the graves I hoped to see but the dour woman at the Forest Lawn gates told us we'd have to use Google maps to find them. Fortunately, Bette Davis came right up. She's buried with her mother and sister. They have a great view of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Somehow I expected Bette's final resting place to be more campy than this tasteful mausoleum, although I did love her epitaph: She did it the hard way.

Google maps had no time for Liberace (or Brad Davis or Paul Monette or Richard Pryor); we found his grave quite by accident., another joint burial under a classical statue. I was beginning to detect a pattern, or perhaps a cemetery prohibition against marking your tomb with a little of the personality that made you a star.

Of course there IS Liberace's over-the-top signature. And "SHELTERED LOVE" could be an allusion to the closet he inhabited until HIV killed him in 1986.

At least some pilgrim had the wit to leave behind a modest candelabrum.

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher died within a day of each other and were buried together here. We stumbled upon them, too. From a distance, I thought the entwined statues might be lesbians, not mother and daughter. Although come to think of it, my mother did come back from the beauty parlor once claiming to have read in a movie magazine (probably the notorious Confidential) that Eddie (Carrie's father) left Debbie for Liz because Debbie, by then married to Harry, a shoe magnate, liked girls. The gossip we retain from a starstruck childhood!