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Los Angeles is home to the glitz and glamour of Hollywood; it's an "industry" town through and through. But the movie business isn't its only industry. The City of Angels is also home to the most influential American cemetery: Forest Lawn, "the Disneyland of Death.” In a culture that stigmatizes grief and loss, Marilyn Monroe’s crypt is one of the most visited tourist sites in the country. The cemeteries of Los Angeles offer Americans a vector to access their morbid curiosities through the cult of celebrity death. Los Angeles is a fairyland, a liminal space, not completely real. Within its confines, the silver screen can be blinding.
In addition to the spectacle of celebrity tragedy, the history of LA’s cemeteries reveals a diverse community of immigrants and transplants desperate for the American dream, though you might not know it, depending on whose version of that dream you’re starring in. Both Forest Lawn and Hollywood Forever Cemetery were built on movie set backlots. There's no business like show business, and the cemeteries of Los Angeles have the Hollywood version of America's history down.
Jessica Ferri is a writer and photographer based in Northern California. She is the author of Silent Cities New York and Silent Cities San Francisco, and a book critic for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. She is the owner of Womb House Books.
