Continuing with my series of Hollywood cemeteries is the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, located in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles. For visitors wanting to get the most bang for their buck when it comes to Hollywood celebrities, one wouldn’t find a more condensed gathering of famous burials than this location. Just by casually browsing the cemetery, I was able to spot more than twenty-five famous graves in less than one hour’s time. Oddly situated in a downtown area, this small cemetery is very easy to get around. Tour groups often stop here to see its most famous grave, that of Marilyn Monroe.
Saturday, April 2, 2011 – My friend Bob and I stopped by Westwood to browse the headstones in the early morning hours, killing some time before the Hollywood Show that we would be attending opened for business. Obviously Bob had been here many times, so he could point out the bulk of the famous graves here – but there were just so darn many of them that you could hardly help spotting them anywhere you walked. We only failed to find one one grave that we were looking for – that of Donna Reed – and we hadn’t realized that Don Knotts was now buried here, but other than that, we found all whom we were looking for. Among them:
Academy Award winner for Mister Roberts, Jack Lemmon starred in a slew of great (and diverse) films like Some Like It Hot, The Out of Towners, JFK, and a batch of films with his sometimes comedy partner Walter Matthau, such as The Odd Couple, Grumpy Old Men, and Buddy Buddy.
All in the Family was one of the greatest sitcoms in the history of television, and it became so largely thanks to the incredible time-honored character of Archie Bunker, as portrayed by Carroll O’Connor. His son and co-star in In the Heat of the Night, Hugh O’Connor – who committed suicide in 1995 – is interred with him.
Billy Wilder was one of the all-time great directors and was in fact awarded with two Best Director Oscars (for The Apartment and The Lost Weekend) and a Best Screenplay Oscar for Sunset Boulevard. In all, he received 21 Oscar nominations over the course of his career.
James Coburn won his Academy Award for Affliction, but he was equally memorable in most of his roles – in films such as Maverick, The Muppet Movie, and Duck, You Sucker. Almost inexplicably, he is on the front cover of Paul McCartney’s classic album Band on the Run.
As a sitcom buff, I was intersted to see the grave of Brian Keith. He was best known as the bachelor Bill Davis in Family Affair. He also gained fame in the iconic Disney film The Parent Trap.
Not many comedy teams are buried together; there are Olsen & Johnson, Ozzie & Harriet, and Burns and Allen – but if you consider Walter Matthau to be a teammate of Jack Lemmon, then you might add their names to the ranks as they are both here in Westwood, albeit not next to one another. Incidentally, The Bad News Bears is one of my all-time favorites.
Nominated twice for an Oscar, Karl Malden won only one – for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire, but he starred in numerous classic films such as On the Waterfront, One-Eyed Jacks, and Patton. I asked Bob to use his American Express credit card for my pictures, so that I say the phrase “Don’t leave home without it” as I posed for my picture.
The don’t come much more classic than Dean Martin, who scored both as an actor and a singer – crooning the #1 hit Memories Are Made of This and being part of the classic comedy team of Martin & Lewis with pal Jerry Lewis. As a member of the so-called Rat Pack, he starred in such films as Oceans Eleven and 4 for Texas.
Certainly the most famous burial in Westwood is actress and international sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. When I first came to Westwood in 1988, her grave was the only one with which I posed. Notable about her grave is that Joe DiMaggio had flowers sent to it every day for 20 years following her death and Hugh Hefner purchased the crypt immediately to the left of Marilyn.
One of the most tragic burials in Westwood is that of Heather O’Rourke, who portrayed the young girl Carol Anne in the three Poltergeist films. Sadly, she died at the age of 12 of cardiac arrest caused by septic shock. Her line “They’re heeeere” has been emblazoned in pop culture.
In 2005 and 2006, Truman Capote had two films based on his life, but before that had gained his fame as an author of books that led to two immensely classic movies Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.
Some of us knew him from his occasional appearance on Night Court, but Mel Torme’s real fame came from his jazz singing and compositions. I must say that I personally am extremely happy that he wrote The Christmas Song, a holiday staple made popular by Nat King Cole.
Bob Crane was a real oddball in real life. The subject of the biographical movie Auto Focus, Crane was a sitcom actor, starring in Colonel Robert E. Hogan in Hogan’s Heroes. Following his unsolved murder in 1978, he was interred at Oakwood Memorial Park, but more than 20 years later was moved to Westwood.
You’d never forget the face of Allan Melvin, even if the name isn’t familiar. He was Sam the butcher in The Brady Bunch and Archie Bunker’s good friend Barney Hefner in All in the Family.
I had long been fascinated by the life of pin-up legend Bettie Page, who seemed to vanish into thin air, following her stint as a model in the 1950’s. In the 1990’s she finally began showing her face at which time I obtained a signed photo and book from her.
Eve Arden was best known to me for her rolls in Grease and Under the Rainbow, but those roles followed an entire career in the golden age of television in shows like Our Miss Brooks and films like Stage Door, At the Circus, and Mildred Pierce.
It seems like Paul Gleason was always playing a jerk. Generation X’ers like me while know him as blowhard Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson in Die Hard and Principal Vernon in The Breakfast Club.
Carl Wilson was the oldest of the Beach Boys’ Wilson brothers. He was a founding member of the band, lead guitarist, and sometimes lead vocalist on such classics as God Only Knows, Good Vibrations, and Darlin’.
I had to jump and fence and hurt my hand to get into the private area where comedienne and singer Fanny Brice was located. The subject of the film Funny Girl, Fanny helped define an era of Broadway shows and radio comedy.
Peggy Lee was a popular jazz and popular music singer from the 1940’s, scoring a number one hit with Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me) in 1948. She also starred in Stage Door Canteen and was a prominant voice for four characters in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.
Psycho is one of my very favorite films and the most memorable scene was the horrifying shower scene in which actress Janet Leigh is brutally murdered. I had the pleasure of meeting Janet Leigh in 1995 and she was very good to me in signing a couple of times through the mail.
Farrah Fawcett was more than an actress. She was a certified pop culture icon in the 1970’s. As one of Charlie’s Angels, she stole the hearts of men and boys throughout the world – with her famous red bathing suit poster selling as many as 12 million copies.
As an entertainment business magnate, Merv Griffin was known not only for his talk show The Merv Griffin Show, but for creating several game shows including Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!
It should come as no surprise that the headstone – the last one in this posting by coincidence, not design – of Rodney Dangerfield includes a self-effacing joke. He was a staple of stand-up comedy throughout my youth, drawing attention to getting ‘no respect’ in films such as Back to School and Caddyshack.
Other famous graves that I saw at Westwood but didn’t get pictures with include murdered Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten, actor Lloyd Nolan, and the future headstone for author Ray Bradbury.
UPDATE: Wednesday, January 4, 2017 – My friend Bob and I made another visit to Westwood after scouting some sitcom locations in Santa Monica. We were able to locate Donna Reed this time, as well as visiting the Don Knotts grave we had missed the last time. In addition we found a few others including Ray Bradbury, which sadly was no longer a ‘future’ headstone…
Producer Irwin Winkler and his wife Margo (who starred in Goodfellas) are both still alive, but they’ve got their final resting place all picked out…
Peter Falk is best known for his role as Columbo and his role in the mega-comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Although his grave reads “I’m not here, I’m home with Shera” (Shera being his wife), he’s really not. He’s here.
The son of Sylvester Stallone, Sage Stallone sadly died at the young age of 36, after starring with his father in Rocky V.
It’s a little hard to read the inscription on the grave of Donna Reed, but this is where TV’s consummate housewife from The Donna Reed Show, Oscar winner for From Here to Eternity, and legendary screen wife of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, is laid to rest.
The last time I was at Westwood, the gravestone of science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who penned the classic Fahrenheit 451, was in place but he was still alive. After passing away in 2012, he was laid to rest under the stone.
Jack Klugman had his hand in both the dramatic and sitcom world, as he starred as Oscar Madison in the TV version of The Odd Couple, as well as his own series Quincy M.E. and the film Twelve Angry Men, not to mention four roles in The Twilight Zone series.
Last but not least is the fabulous plaque grave marker indicating the final resting place of the wonderful Don Knotts, star of The Andy Griffith Show, Three’s Company, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, and numerous other films and TV series in which showcased his talent.
UPDATE – Wednesday, May 2, 2018 – Bob and I made a brief stop back at the cemetery to check out the new Hugh Hefner grave, which as I mentioned above had been purchased by Hef a long time ago, conveniently seated right next to Marilyn Monroe… and that’s where it was.
The side-by-side graves of Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe, each of whom has received plenty of kisses.
Once additional grave I stumbled on was that of Ernest Lehman, who was not only nominated for an Oscar six times for his screenplay adaptations, but also wrote the original screenplay for North by Northwest, the Alfred Hitchcock classic that happens to be my favorite film.
Return to Saturday 2011 in Hollywood here…
Return to Wednesday 2017 in Los Angeles here…
Continue to the next Hollywood cemetery here…
I may need to check this one out when I make the trip out there to see Reagan and Nixon. It has a lot of my favorites like Lemmon, Matthau, Coburn, and Caroll O Connor. I’ll also need to look up the grave of John Wayne.
Tim Bash
June 1st, 2011
Paul Gleason deserves a bigger headstone.
Maybe even a monument.
He shoulda punched Judd Nelson when he had the chance.
Eric Hubble
June 14th, 2011
Thank you for the preview. As it turns out I will be heading out there sooner then expected. I’ll be in L.A. in October to see the Nixon and Reagan libaries as well as Westwood here. We also hope to take some sort of Hollywood bus tour.
Tim Bash
August 3rd, 2011