Forest Lawn shook the cemetery world

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S HIDDEN TREASURES

Founder wanted no part of gloom, choosing art and architecture intended to uplift

Smiling figures are part of a 1937 stained glass window showing a Nativity scene at the cemetery in Glendale. Tina Burch — staff photographer

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An image of a 1969 billboard promoting weddings at Forest Lawn Glendale was part of a museum exhibit there. Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman were among the couples who took advantage. courtesy of Forest Lawn Museum

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By Marla Jo Fisher

Correspondent

This is the first in a series of columns I plan to write about hidden treasures you can visit in Southern California. They’re unique, interesting and sometimes wacky, but all of them are worth seeing.

My first choice is Forest Lawn in Glendale, which was built in 1906 and dubbed by its founder in 1912 as the first-ever “memorial-park.” You’re unlikely to believe me, but until Disneyland was built, Forest Lawn was the No. 1 tourist attraction in Southern California, according to “Forever L.A.,” a book about local cemeteries.

And there’s a reason for this: It’s just a fascinating place, it’s free to visit and, aside from anything else, it has beautiful green lawns, a museum, reproductions of famous art and a gorgeous view from its highest point.

“I believe in a happy eternal life,” founder Hubert Eaton wrote in his “Builder’s Creed,” immortalized in stone.

But let’s go back to the beginning. Eaton, a businessman with no background in cemetery management, took over a graveyard and put his own theories into effect. He wanted no gloomy, visible signs of grief anywhere, not even tombstones. Only beautiful art that lifted people’s eyes to the heavens. Forest Lawn was to be called a memorial-park, not a graveyard, because it was for the living, not the dead.

He filled it with fountains, beautiful architecture and replicas of great world art such as Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” reproduced in stained glass. Celebrities such as Walt Disney, Spencer Tracy, Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and many others were laid to rest there.

When you enter, you see tree-lined, winding roads, acres of green grass, marble statues and churches. In a stone replica of the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather, Ronald Reagan married Jane Wyman, and people still get married there today.

There’s a free museum that includes an original, 195-foot-wide piece called “The Crucifixion.” Other artworks dot the landscape. The largest building — the Great Mausoleum — is based on Campo Santo in Genoa. There is a copy of Michelangelo’s “La Pieta.”

There’s even a gift shop and a free downloadable Forest Lawn coloring book. Not kidding. You can’t make this stuff up.

Now, let’s talk about the Brits. Stay with me, it will make sense. The British traditionally have a subdued sensibility when it comes to funerals. Closed coffins are the norm, for example. That’s why two British authors — Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley — were so stunned by the ethos of Forest Lawn that they ended up writing novels about it.

Waugh was solicited repeatedly by Hollywood to sell the film rights to his hit novel, “Brideshead Revisited.” He had no intention of letting anyone film it (although it was turned into a movie after his death), but he agreed to come out to Hollywood to talk about it in 1948, just to see the town for free.

He found Hollywood so bizarre that, day after day, he just had his driver take him to Forest Lawn. Eventually, after he returned home, he wrote “The Loved One,” which was a dark satire of Forest Lawn and what he considered its bizarre customs, such as putting makeup on the deceased — a funeral cosmetician is one of the lead characters. This book was later made into a movie with Jonathan Winters.

But wait. There’s more. Huxley, famed author of “Brave New World,” wrote “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan” in 1939 after he, too, visited and found it fascinating. Calling his cemetery the Beverly Pantheon, he describes its many marble statues of nude women as “the sort of statues one would expect to see in a high-class brothel in Rio de Janeiro.”

Both men considered it the height of California weirdness. Meanwhile, some 250,000 people have been interred there, including L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz”; Clark Gable; Errol Flynn; Nat King Cole; and more.

Today, Forest Lawn has six cemeteries, all in Southern California, but the Glendale one is the most fascinating.

If you go, stop at the information kiosk at the entrance to get a map, but it won’t tell you where the famous graves are. This information is readily available online, though, with a little research beforehand. On a clear day, you can find a nice view. Wear good walking shoes.