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.

History of Home of Peace Cemetery

Home of Peace isn’t Los Angeles’ first Jewish cemetery, but it’s close. B’nai B’rith Cemetery in Chavez Ravine, near where Dodger Stadium is today, was the site of the first Jewish burial in Los Angeles in 1858.

By 1902, B’nai B’rith was crowded, difficult to bring horse-drawn hearses into and surrounded by oil derricks. The Jewish community was concentrated in Boyle Heights; opening a new cemetery closer to the Jewish neighborhoods made sense.

Between 1902 and 1910, the remains of all those buried at B’nai B’rith were moved to the new Home of Peace Cemetery. While many were relocated to the Benevolent section along Eastern Avenue. The graves of other pioneering Jewish families can be found on the lawn between the Whittier Boulevard entrance and the Chapel Mausoleum.

B’nai B’rith Synagogue, which owned the cemetery, became Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Today, the cemetery is called the Home of Peace Memorial Park and Mausoleum and is owned by Rose Hills.

What to Look For at Home of Peace

Graves here range from the traditional Jewish in-ground sites with upright monuments to family mausoleums to crypts in the community mausoleum to urn gardens. The following suggested tour will help guide you to notable graves.

Funerals, burials and unveilings of markers still take place at Home of Peace Cemetery and Mausoleum. Please be respectful of the place and the mourners who may be there.

As you enter the cemetery from Whittier Boulevard, go the right where the entrance road branches. As the road straightens out, there will be a planter (once a fountain) on your left. On your left will be Section A and on your right will be Addition 3M.

Section A

Just past the fountain, in Section A you’ll find the grave of Mark Sandrich (1900-1945) (Mark Rex Goldstein), who directed five Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals in the 1930s.

Arriving in Hollywood from New York in 1922, he was a prop man before getting a chance to direct in 1927. By 1932, he’d won an Academy Award for his short “So This is Harris.” He first paired Astaire and Rogers in “The Gay Divorcee” (1934). That was followed by “Top Hat” (1935), “Follow the Fleet” (1936), “Shall We Dance?” (1937) and “Carefree” (1938). In 1940, after moving to Paramount Studios, Sandrich created “Holiday Inn” (1942), which featured the Irving Berlin song “White Christmas” sung by Bing Crosby. His sons are TV directors Mark Sandrich, Jr., and Jay Sandrich. (Plot 80, Grave 1)

Continue south toward the mausoleum. On the left, you’ll see a memorial with two easy chairs facing each other in front of a fire place. This unusual memorial is for William (1859-1934) and Estelle (1859-1951) Rubin. A bronze plaque on the north side gives a poetic timeline of their lives together.

A sidewalk runs along the left side of the Rubin memorial. Walk toward the center of the cemetery. You’ll see a monument with an angel on top. This is the Jereslaw Angel, which has become an icon of Home of Peace. Michael Jereslaw (1858-1887) was the son of Jacob and Mina Jereslaw. The 20-foot tall, carved limestone angel was one of the memorials moved from the original Chavez Ravine cemetery.

Come back to the road. On the right side is a cupola honoring the Kaufman family. Take a look at the mosaic inside the dome. Further south, on the right hand side of the road near where it intersects with a road running east-west through the cemetery is Addition 3M.

Addition 3M

Jack H. Skirball (1896-1985) produced the first movie to show the actual birth of a baby and funded the building of the Skirball Cultural Center, which focuses on Jewish history and cultural contributions, in 1983.

Ordained as a rabbi in1921, he left congregational work in 1933 to manage the Educational Films Corp., where he produced “Birth of a Baby.” The landmark achievement was reported by Life magazine in a nine-page story. His company, Skirball Productions, produced Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” (1942) and “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943). In the 1950s, he became involved in real estate and developed the 43-acre family resort, Vacation Village in San Diego, which became a model for resort hotels. (Row 2, grave 63)

At the intersection turn left toward the traffic circle. Here in the northwest section of the outer edge of the circle, you’ll find two mausoleums for members of the Newmark family.

Harris Newmark (1834-1916) and his family were among the founders of Los Angeles. His memoir, Sixty Years in Southern California: 1853-1913, is considered “the single most valuable memoir” about Southern California in the 19th century. His wife Sara Newmark (1841-1910) was his cousin. A grocery and dry goods seller, he had real estate holdings throughout Southern California. He helped to subdivide and develop the city of Montebello. He was a founder of the Los Angeles Public Library, a charter member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, an organizer of the Board of Trade, which helped bring the railroad to Los Angeles. He served as president of Congregation B’nai B’rith in 1887 and was a founder of the Jewish Orphans Home and helped establish the Southwest Museum. His family mausoleum is south of the J. P. Newmark family mausoleum.

Behind the Harris Newmark mausoleum are markers for the Loeb and the Levi families. Harris’s daughter Estelle Newmark (1861-1935) married Leon Loeb (1845-1911) in 1879. Her sons Edwin and Joseph Loeb founded the law firm of Loeb & Loeb. Her daughter Rose (1891-) married Herman Levi (1870-), one of the founders of the Capitol Milling Co. in 1833. The company provided flour for Los Angeles for decades and was located a mile north of the civic center across from Chinatown.

J. P. Newmark (1827-1895) arrived in Los Angeles in 1848 and encouraged his brother Harris to join him. The brothers were partners in a variety of business opportunities over the next 40 years. The J. P. Newmark mausoleum, which is closest to the road that bisects the traffic circle, also contains the crypt of his wife Augusta Newmark (1834-1908) and other family members.

At the crossroads, on the southwest side of the intersection with the road leading from the circle road, are a series of estates, where you’ll find:

Jack Warner (1892-1978), born Joseph Leonard Eichelbaum, who founded Warner Bros. Studios with his brothers Harry, Sam and Albert. The brothers’ father was a wandering peddler with a taste for get-rich-quick schemes. The family bought a nickelodeon in Newcastle, Penn., in 1903. When their plans for creating a film distribution exchange failed, they turned to producing one-reelers in 1912.

With the profits from their first blockbuster, “My Four Years in Germany” (1917), they bought a Sunset Boulevard studio. Six years later, the studio had its first star: a dog named Rin-Tin-Tin, who kept the studio floating financially until Warner Bros. made entertainment history in 1927 with the release of the first movie with sound, “The Jazz Singer” (1927).

As production chief, Jack ruled with an iron fist on the purse strings. He held stars James Cagney, Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland to unfavorable contracts they had signed as unknowns. He angered his own family by holding on to his Warner Bros. stock in Warner Bros. after his three brothers agreed to sell theirs in 1956. He ended up with total control of the studio and shares that tripled in value. He finally sold his interest in Warner Bros in 1967 and was an independent producer until he retired at 80.

Head back north (toward the entrance) until you come back to the road from the traffic circle. Take that road away from the circle (westward) until you come to another intersection. Turn left (south). On the left, about half way to the end of the road, you see the markers for Abraham Spiegel (1907-2004) and his wife Edita (?-1999).

The Spiegels funded the Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, in memory of their two-and-a-half year old son, Uziel, who was murdered at Auschwitz. Spiegel himself survived four concentration camps. After arriving in the United States in 1947, he developed tract homes and was chairman of two banks. He funded the Spiegel Family Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv and the Spiegel Family Park in Tel Aviv. He also helped establish Yeshiva University of Los Angeles High School and the Yavneh Hebrew Academy in Los Angeles. A friend of Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon as well as a several Egyptian leaders, Spiegel served as an intermediary between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Shamir.

Further south, in the next to last section from the southwest corner, is Curly Howard (Jerome Lester Horwitz) (1903-1952). Curly was the youngest brother of Moses “Moe” and Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges, and became one of the Stooges when Shemp left the group in the 1930s to pursue a solo career as a comedian.

From a vaudeville act featuring physical, slapstick humor, The Stooges performed for 40 years, mainly in film shorts. Six men appeared as Stooges over that time. In 1946, Curly had a series of strokes that led to his death. Shemp, who had left the group to work on his own, returned in 1946 to replace Curly. Curly Howard’s grave is half way between the road and the cemetery fence. (Western Jewish Institute Section, Row 5, Grave 1)

Take the road until it dead ends and turns to the left. At the next intersection, turn right (north, toward the entrance). You will be driving down the eastern side of the Chapel Mausoleum. Just past the road that runs in front of the building, park and we’ll explore the lawn in front of the mausoleum. This is Section C.

Standing directly in front of the main mausoleum facing toward the entrance, is a small mausoleum. Here you will find Rabbi Edgar Magnin (1890-1984).  The grandson of the founder of the Magnin department store chain in San Francisco, Rabbi Magnin led Congregation B’nai B’rith (later known as Wilshire Boulevard Temple) for 65 years. He was known as the “rabbi to the stars”: He married actress Norma Shearer and MGM executive Irving Thalberg in 1927 and officiated at the funerals of Thalberg; movie executives Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn and Adolph Zukor and actors Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and George Jessel. He participated in the inaugurations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon (1969) and Ronald Reagan (1981). As a rabbi, he promoted interfaith unity and stronger Jewish participation in civic affairs. He presided over the construction of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Blvd., which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

East across the lawn is the Hamburger mausoleum. Here you’ll find Asher Hamburger (1821-1897). He successfully ran stores in Alabama, Sacramento and San Francisco, when his sons M.A. and S.A. Hamburger persuaded him to take advantage of opportunities in booming Los Angeles. In 1881, he opened the People’s Store on Main Street. His sons continued to operate and expand the store after his death.

Moses Asher Hamburger (1859-1930) oversaw the construction of a six-story Beaux Arts building designed by Alfred F. Rosenheim at 801-829 S. Broadway. When it opened in1908, the store employed 1,000 people and was the largest department store west of Chicago with more than 30 acres of floor space. It had the first escalator in the city, and the only one in existence west of St. Louis at the time. Los Angeles Public Library was located there from 1908 to 1914. The building was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1989. The store was bought by the May Co. in 1923.

North of the Hamburger mausoleum, you find two Warner Family mausoleums. The smaller, mausoleum is that of Harry Warner (1881-1958) (Hirsch Eichelbaum). He was the oldest of the four Warner Brothers. In 1903, he suggested the family buy a nickelodeon. Producing films to supply the nickelodeon was a natural next step. His brother Jack’s aggressive financial savvy helped build Warner Bros. into a major studio. Harry served as president from 1923 to 1956. Had it been up to Harry, the studio’s most notable film, “The Jazz Singer” (1927), would never have been made. He was against his brother Sam’s pursuit of talking films, reportedly saying, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”

The tomb of director Charles Vidor (1900-1959) (Karoly Vidor) is in the Harry Warner Family mausoleum because the last of his four wives was Harry Warner's daughter, Doris. Vidor was the first director to allow dancer Gene Kelly to choreograph his own numbers (in “Cover Girl,” 1944). Born in Budapest, the World War I army veteran arrived in Hollywood in 1924. He worked his way up to an opportunity to direct in 1931. He is best known for directing Rita Hayworth in “Gilda” (1946) with its “Put the Blame on Mame” faux-striptease. His other films include “A Song to Remember” (1945), “The Joker is Wild” (1957) and “A Farewell to Arms” (1957).

In the larger Warner mausoleum, you’ll find the tomb of Samuel Warner (1885-1927) (Samuel Eichelbaum). Sam Warner, chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Studios, brought sound to the movies with the release of the “The Jazz Singer” in 1927 -- an achievement he never had a chance to witness. The day before the movie’s premier, Sam died from complications of a sinus infection. The movie changed cinema forever and made Warner Bros. Studio a major power. (Section D, Warner Family Mausoleum, Crypt 8)

A road that leads east toward the 710 freeway intersects the circular road where the larger Warner mausoleum is. At the end of this road near the locked gates is an interesting tombstone. (Take note that this is a narrow road. Turning around at the end in a car is difficult). On the right hand side as you face the freeway is Joseph Weiss (1888-1925), whose tombstone is a poignant bas relief sculpture.

Go back to the road that leads to the entrance of the memorial park. North of the traffic circle near a tree on the right hand (east) side is an urn shaped monument near a large tree. Here you’ll find:

Morris R. Schlank (1879-1932) made movie schlock, churning out westerns, comedies and action flicks in a matter of days on budgets skimpier than a burlesque artist’s costume. He cast fading stars and B-grade talents in movies he marketed to poor rural theaters that otherwise ran old, nearly forgotten movies. As a result, he kept making silent films long after other studios converted to sound. Forced to decide between upgrading to “talkies” or going out of business, Schlank decided to take a year-long rest cure to mull it over. He returned to make his first sound movie “Shop Angel” (1932) followed by “Drifting” (1932) and “Exposure” (1932). He died of a heart attack in the middle of 1932. In all, he made 53 films over his 13-year career.

Follow the road north (straight ahead) past the intersection and around the curve. The road will straighten out and then begin to curve to the left toward the entrance. Stop at the fountain.

On the right, is a section called Regular. Here you will find the grave of Sarah Vasen Frank, M.D., (1870-1944) the first Jewish woman doctor in Los Angeles and superintendent of the Kaspare Cohn Hospital, which eventually evolved into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The seventh child and only girl of nine children, Dr. Vasen attended what today is known as the University of Iowa Medical School in Keokuk, the first co-educational medical school in the country. She specialized in obstetrics and gynecology and went on to become superintendent and obstetrician for the Jewish Maternicy Home in Philadelphia in 1898. Two years later, she returned to her family home in Quincy, Illinois, to set up a private practice. In 1904, she moved to Los Angeles. In 1910, she left the hospital and set up her own practice first on West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles and then about a year later on West Pico Boulevard (where the Staples Center is now). Around this time she met and married retired businessman Saul Frank, 56. They settled in Glendale in 1915 and helped organize a religious school for the town's Jewish children. Tragically, Saul died three years after the couple married. When Dr. Vasen's niece Florence Vasen Kahn was clearing out her things after her death in 1944, Florence found that Dr. Vasen had kept her husband's jacket hanging over the back of his favorite rocking chair, just has he had left it on the night he died of a heart attack 26 years earlier.

On the right hand side (where the freeway is) is a section called Half Block. There you’ll find the grave of Carmel Myers (1899-1980).

She got her break in the movies when her father, Rabbi Isidore Myers, became an unpaid consultant for D.W. Griffith’s epic, “Intolerance” (1916). Her mother pushed to get her daughter a screen test, and Carmel was cast as a slave girl. Her dark hair, high forehead and smoldering eyes gave her a career as a sultry vamp opposite actors Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, John Barrymore and John Gilbert. Typical of this was her role as Iras in “Ben Hur” (1925), where she seduces Ben Hur and another male character. When talkies took off, her age rather than her voice forced her into supporting roles. From 1951-52, she hosted one of television’s first talk shows ‘The Carmel Myers Show.” In 1976, she appeared in two episodes of the TV sitcom "Chico and the Man" and a cameo in the star-studded comedy "Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood” (1976). Her cousins, director Mark Sandrich and glamour photographer Ruth Harriet Louise, are also buried at Home of Peace Memorial Park.

Rabbi Isidore Myers (1856-1922) is buried one row west of his daughter, Carmel. Born in Poland and trained in Australia, Rabbi Myers founded Sinai Congregation, Los Angeles’s first Conservative synagogue. He oversaw the building of the temple’s first building at 12th and Valencia streets in 1909, and a second at 407 New Hampshire St. in 1925. S. Tilden Norton, who is buried in the Chapel Mausoleum, designed both. The second building still stands as the Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church. The Myers tombstone is a pillar with an open book on it east of Carmel’s grave.

Ruth Harriet Louise (1903-1940) was one of Hollywood’s first glamour photographers, considered the equal of photographer George Hurrell, Sr. With help from her cousin, actress Carmel Myers, she became MGM’s chief photographer. Over her five-year career, she shot more than 1000,000 photos of stars including Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Lon Chaney, Greta Garbo, Marion Davies and Ramon Novarro. After her marriage to writer-director Leigh Jason in 1927, she had a son and daughter. The carving on her headstone of a woman, a baby and a little boy is a haunting reflection of the tragedies of her own life. Her son, Leigh Jr., died at age 6 from leukemia. Two years later, Louise died from complications from a premature labor that took the life of her baby boy as well.

Half Block, Plot 12, Row 6, Grave 1


Details: Home of Peace Memorial Park and Mausoleum

Location: 4334 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90023

Telephone: 323.261.6136 or 800.300.0223

Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays through Fridays. The cemetery is closed on Saturdays (Shabbat) and major Jewish holidays.

Good things to know: There are restrooms in the Chapel Mausoleum

Nearby Sites: Calvary Catholic Cemetery is directly across the street north of Home of Peace and contains the burial sites of a number of Catholic Hollywood celebrities. Three Orthodox Jewish cemeteries are located on the west side of Home of Peace: Beth Israel Cemetery, Mount Zion Cemetery and Agudath