Westwood Memorial Park

Short of the red carpet on Oscar night you'll rarely find as many celebrities in one spot as you will at Westwood Memorial Park. If your time as a tourist is short, skip the necropoli like Forest Lawn or Hollywood Forever and come here.

Westwood Memorial Park's History

People have been laid to rest in this area since the 1880s. Not until 1905, did the 2.72 acres at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Glendon Avenue become the state-sanctioned Sunset Cemetery. In 1926, a few years before UCLA opened, the name was changed to Westwood Memorial Park.

Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park & Mortuary

In the mid-1920s, visitors to Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery entered through a monumental Spanish Revival portal with a colorful tile dome. They would have been welcomed to bring picnics and blankets to sit on the lawns and listen to concerts performed for radio broadcast.

Named for the palace of Odin, the Norse god of slain heroes, Valhalla Memorial Park was one of Los Angeles' first lawn cemeteries with grave markers flat to the ground. Tourists came to walk its tree-line avenues and enjoy its three reflecting pools and park-like environment. 

Scandal tarnished Valhalla just five months after its opening. Financiers John R. Osborne and CC. Fitzpatrick, who created the cemetery, were convicted of reselling the same burial plots – as many as 16 times – for a profit of $3 to $4 million. They were convicted, fined and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  The cemetery was taken over by the State of California until 1950 when it was purchased by Pierce Brothers.

Among those laid to rest here are Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame; Bea Benaderet, the voice of Betty Rubble of “The Flintstones”; Aneta Coraut, who played Andy Griffith’s girl friend and his son Opie's teacher, Helen Crump on “The Andy Griffith Show,” Cliff Edwards, the voice of Jiminy Cricket in “Pinocchio”; and Curly-Joe De Rita, the sixth man to be a member of the “Three Stooges.”

Finding graves at Vahalla is sometimes a challenge, so bring your patience when you visit. While the map is helpful, geographically adjacent areas are not necessarily given consecutive letters.

Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, Los Angeles

When Rosedale Cemetery opened its gates in 1884, it was the first cemetery in Los Angeles where people of all races and creeds could be interred. (Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles also claims to be the first nondenominational cemetery in the city and accepted persons who because of race couldn't be buried in other cemeteries. But this sometimes meant burial in potter's field.)

No one better personifies the significance of that than actress Hattie McDaniel (1895-1952), the African American actress who portrayed Mammy in “Gone With the Wind” (1939) and became the first African American to win an Academy Award.

Despite her talent and success, segregation prevented her from attending the movie’s Atlanta premiere and forced McDaniel and her husband to sit alone at a back table at the Academy Awards ceremony.

She appeared in nearly 100 films, was the first Black woman to sing on American radio in 1931 and the first to star in her own radio and TV series, “Beulah” (1947-1952). In 1945, she helped organize a class-action lawsuit against housing discrimination in her West Adams neighborhood. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court and overturned race based restrictions on owning property.

Ironically, race restrictions kept Ms. McDaniel out of Hollywood Forever, where she wanted to be buried. (The cemetery has since erected a cenotaph in her honor in 1999.)

When Ms. McDaniel was buried at Rosedale, 125 limousines and an estimated 3,000 mourners accompanied her to the gravesite.

Home of Peace Mausoleum

The domed Chapel Mausoleum with its double minarets is at the end of a long stretch of lawn directly in front of the entrance to Los Angeles’ Home of Peace Cemetery.

Oriental archways open on to corridors of marble-fronted crypts. Stained glass skylights scatter shards of colored light on the floor. Silence reigns.

This is the second of two posts on Home of Peace Cemetery.  The first covers the grounds surrounding the mausoleum.  A map of the mausoleum is available at the end of this post.

Here you’ll find the tombs of studio moguls like Louis B. Mayer and Carl Laemmle and his namesake son; Mack Gordon, who composed “Chattanooga Choo Choo”; Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges; ice cream maker Burt "Butch" Baskins; and mobster David Berman and his murdered daughter Susan Berman.

Home of Peace Cemetery

Home of Peace Cemetery in Boyle Heights is the final resting place for movie moguls and stooges; rabbis and entrepreneurs; beauties, bad guys and pioneers.

The domed, Moorish mausoleum with its twin minarets holds Louis B. Mayer, the boss of MGM Studios; his scam artist brother Rudolph; pioneer filmmaker Carl Laemmle and his talented, big spending son, founders of Universal Studios; ice cream magnate Burt Baskin of Baskin & Robins 31 Flavors; and mobster David Berman and his murdered daughter, author Amy Berman.

You can find Shemp and Jerome “Curly” Howard of Three Stooges at Home of Peace as well. (Moe Howard, the third of the original Stooges, is buried at Hillside Memorial Park.)

On the lawn in front is the mausoleum of Rabbi Edgar Magnin, scion of the Magnin Department Store founders, leader of Wilshire Boulevard Temple for 65 years and participant at the inaugurations of two presidents. East across the lawn are the mausoleums for the Hamburger family, founders of one of Los Angeles’ first department stores, and two branches of the Warner family, founders of Warner Bros. Studios.

Oakwood Memorial Park, Chatsworth, CA

Nestled against rocky hills that could have been torn from the backdrop of an early western, Oakwood Memorial Park is a green haven. A variety of trees — eucalyptus, pine, pepper and olive — whisper overhead.

The cemetery opened in 1924 along what had been a stage coach trail adjacent to a Native American burial ground that later burned. 

As the entertainment industry blossomed, this area became a favorite location for filming. As early as 1912, Karl and August Iverson were allowing their family ranch above Chatsworth to be used for filming. An estimated 3,500 movie and television productions filmed there including the movies "Stagecoach" (1939), "The African Queen” (1951) and "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956).

Cars made it easy to reach areas like Oakwood at the northwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley. Modern in appearance, Oakwood Memorial Park remains today far enough from the tourist routes to provide those interred with peace and privacy.

This cemetery is a classic memorial park with ground level gravestones. A highlight is the historic Chatsworth Community Church, now used by the Anglican congregation of St. Mary the Virgin in the Pioneer section. Built by volunteers in 1903 at 10051 Topanga Canyon Blvd., it was originally used for weddings, funerals, christenings, church suppers, meetings, safety from floods and fires and even high school classes from 1906-08. The church closed its doors in 1963. It was threatened with demolition when the Chatsworth Historical Society raised funds to move the church to the memorial park in 1965.