Cemeteries as Cultural Landmarks

Situated on the grounds of Paramount Pictures Studios, Hollywood Forever Cemetery has served as a cultural landmark in the Los Angeles area since it was taken over and revamped by actor Tyler Cassidy in 1998. With the fires recently scorching the Los Angeles area, I felt
compelled to share research I conducted on Hollywood Forever Cemetery a few years back.

While homes and lives have been burned to the ground, community has strengthened, proving love is more powerful than destruction. This
ongoing grieving period is crucial for the Los Angeles community, and I hope my research into one of their most iconic cemeteries can bring some positive memories back of the connection between life and death, the universe’s ultimate equalizer.

Hollywood Cemetery Adapts to Times

While there is a plethora of unique cemeteries in Los Angeles, most notably Forrest Lawn, the history and lasting impact of Hollywood Forever Cemetery drew me in and made it irresistible as case study. The once antiquated cemetery became a burial destination for many celebrities and now acts as one of the stops for not only dark tourists but all tourists in Los Angeles.

Hollywood Forever is deservedly celebrated for its beautiful grounds and elaborate headstones. But what sets Hollywood Forever apart from other cemeteries is its willingness to adapt to the needs of the times. In addition to its use as a burial ground, Hollywood Forever Cemetery proudly hosts a wide range of cultural events and exciting activities that bridge the world between the living and the dead. Hollywood Forever never passes up the opportunity to open its gates to the Los Angeles general public, from movie nights to concerts.

Rural Cemetery Movement

The explanation for Hollywood Forever’s beautiful grounds and desire to be part of the community as a tourist attraction has its roots in the Rural Cemetery Movement. During the mid-nineteenth century, cities were becoming overpopulated, and available land was sparse. As a result, cemeteries moved from inner cities to the outskirts of town.

This shift in location changed how people thought of a cemetery. Once a depressing piece of land in a crowded city, the cemetery now becomes an out-of-town oasis that showcases open space and greenery. However, as the outskirts of the town turned into suburban neighborhoods, the “rural” cemeteries were once again integrated into everyday life.

The Rural Cemetery Movement began with Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mount Auburn was the first cemetery to invest in its scenic beauty and become a widely known tourist attraction. Cemeteries transformed from unmaintained plots of land to open spaces with glorious landscapes, shifting the role of the cemetery in America and altering the American view on death.

Cemetery as Tourist Destination

Along with Mount Auburn, Hollywood Forever Cemetery is revered for its beautiful grounds and its establishment as a destination for tourists. Alongside rows of palm trees, peacocks stroll out of their large pens that line the interior of the cemetery walls and roam the
grounds. There are monumental fountains with elaborate water effects and colorful flowers of various types, all helping to elevate the aesthetic of the grounds.

The Rural Cemetery Movement changed the landscaping of cemeteries, but it also reinvented the typical headstone. Older headstones were used as a simple marker to identify the interred. However, the shift towards an emphasis on the aesthetics of the cemetery introduced
elaborate headstones and mausoleums to the mainstream as a signifier of the family’s wealth and respect for the deceased.

Paying for Funerals

Remarkably, the average consumer was now willing to invest their hard-earned savings into plaques and markers for their loved ones as a way to fall in line with the new trend and show that they too can give the same type of respect to their loved ones as wealthy families. Many families in the United States go into debt when a loved one dies. They believe “the degree to which you loved someone or the degree to which you are grieving someone who died is mapped by how much money you’re spending on a funeral” (Murphy).

Hollywood Forever Cemetery is known for its intricate and elaborate headstones that range from statues of celebrities, like Johnny Ramone, to rows of large fountains with long reflective pools at the end. Part of what makes Hollywood Forever stand out among the innumerable cemeteries across the world is its impressive array of headstones and intricate mausoleums, allowing the grounds to serve as a unique tourist attraction.

Many of the tourists came to the cemetery to see the graves of celebrities buried at Hollywood Forever, specifically Johnny Ramone and Rudolph Valentino. The number of celebrities interred in Hollywood Forever is a known attraction, and the cemetery uses this unique quality to its advantage. Each year, the cemetery puts on an annual memorial for Valentino, attracting many community members and tourists, thus increasing the foot traffic to the grounds (Levitt, 2018).

The Lure of Dark Tourism

Much of the advertisement, specifically to dark tourists who travel worldwide to gravesites or haunted locations, is based on the sheer number of celebrities buried under the grounds. Though my interviews were short and sporadic, mimicking more of a general survey, seeing that most of the interviewees were tourists who only visited the site once, I discovered that there had been previous research that suggests people have the desire to visit the graves of celebrities as a way to get a taste of stardom and feel closer to the celebrity (Levitt, 2010).

Hollywood Forever Cemetery has done a spectacular job of recognizing its marketable qualities, specifically that many celebrities are buried there and continue to be buried there. The re-labeling of this space has allowed them to function as a site for cultural and entertainment
events.

Marketing for Cultural Events

Digging into Hollywood Forever’s marketing, their website boldly emphasizes their desire for the space to be multifunctional, stating first and foremost that “Hollywood Forever is a full-service funeral home, crematory, cemetery, and cultural events center in the heart of
Hollywood, Los Angeles”. They end by signifying they are a cultural event space, separating themselves from most other cemeteries.

A few lines below, the text reads that Hollywood Forever Cemetery is “the final resting place of hundreds of Hollywood legends… and hundreds of others, alongside thousands of neighborhood residents and individuals from across the globe”.

However, what is most striking to me is the last paragraph of the opening page. The website reads, “As Los Angeles’s most dynamic cultural event center, Hollywood Forever welcomes families and visitors to concerts, films, and events each year.”

Cemeteries Changing

Hollywood Forever acts as a model to inspire future burial grounds and cemeteries to act in response to the public’s needs and be malleable enough to stay relevant in the cultural underpinnings of its community. When cemeteries function as multipurpose spaces, the narrative
around death and dying shifts, and conversations about the end-of-life process become healthier.

Burial grounds take up large swaths of land in cities around the world, and they have the potential to act as a gathering space that encourages cultural growth and community. The Rural Cemetery Movement allowed the public to understand that there can be beauty alongside death. Hollywood Forever Cemetery has the ability to, and does, further this notion by allowing the public to come into the cemetery gates and interact with the gorgeous architecture and landscaping while learning about the people who have been laid to rest in this space.

New Options for Cemeteries

As more innovative cemeteries and methods of burial seep into the mainstream, my theory is that death will become less stigmatized. When people learn about the plethora of options that are available at the end of life that span far beyond conventional burial and cremation, hopefully there will be a shift in the conversation. It may foster a death positive attitude on the small scale. When Hollywood Forever hosts a movie night or concert, they allow attendees to gather in a stigmatized space and break their preconceived notions of death.

The more spaces that function in an effort to foster death acceptance, the more the conversations will become mainstream, and death positivity can be the normalized state of being. When we face death, life becomes easier to accept. And that acceptance can start when at a yoga class or picnic in the cemetery, thanks to Hollywood Forever.

Bibliography

Parts of this article were taken directly from research conducted by Symon Braun Freck in 2022.
Bender, Thomas. “The ‘Rural’ Cemetery Movement: Urban Travail and the Appeal of Nature.”
The New England Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 2, New England Quarterly, Inc., 1974, pp.
196–211, https://doi.org/10.2307/364085.
French, Stanley. “The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and
the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement.” American Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 1, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1974, pp. 37–59, https://doi.org/10.2307/2711566.
“Hollywood Forever Cemetery: Funeral & Cremation Services in Hollywood.” Hollywood
Forever, 31 Oct. 2021, https://hollywoodforever.com/.
King, Susan. “Celebrating the Dead Is No Grave Undertaking.” Los Angeles Times, 2002.
Levitt, Linda. Culture, Celebrity, and the Cemetery : Hollywood Forever. Routledge, 2018.
Levitt, Linda. “Death on display: reifying stardom through Hollywood’s dark tourism.” Velvet
Light Trap, no. 65, spring 2010, pp. 62+. Gale OneFile: Fine Arts, link.gale.com/
apps/doc/A221020992/PPFA?u=usocal_main&sid=bookmark-PPFA&xid=7dd6e6ad.
Accessed 30 Mar. 2022
Murphy, Sara. Personal Interview. 25 March, 2022.

Read more from Symon on Open to Hope: https://www.opentohope.com/death-positivity-vs-fear-of-death/

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