Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood’s oldest cemetery, located next to Paramount Studios, is the final resting place for over 100 famous people (or 500 depending you your definition of fame). Unlike other Los Angeles cemeteries, they actually encourage people to visit and tour the graves of their well-known residents. In fact, the flower shop located at the gate even sells a map showing the grave locations along with a description of the occupant.
This is no ordinary cemetery. During the summer, Cinespia hosts film screenings on the grounds, where people can picnic on the lawn and watch a classic movies being projected on the wall, as they are surrounded by thousands of eternally resting souls.
As ironic as it sounds, while we where there, it started to rain. We walked the grounds and I shot some photos, while steering clear of the threatening geese guarding their nests.
One of the things that stuck us the most while there, were the graves of hundreds of babies and small children located along the back wall of the cemetery. Each gravesite was a mini shrine to the prematurely deceased, complete with their toys and other artifacts. It definitely puts things in perspective.
Of course, our main reason for visiting Hollywood Forever was to pay our respects to Johnny Ramone, whose ashes are entombed there.
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Nice article. You might like to kmow that film historian Karie Bible conducts tours of the cemetery a couple of times a month. You can see the complete schedule at Cemeterytour.com.