The Strange History of Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Just south of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles sits Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The 62-acre site borders Paramount Studios and boasts 80,000 gravesites including more dead Hollywood icons than anywhere in the world. Burial sites include Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Jayne Mansfield, Peter Lorre and Mickey Rooney. In 2017, the remains of Judy Garland were moved from her original New York burial site to Hollywood Forever’s new Judy Garland Pavilion. (Toto is also buried here.) Other cemetery stalwarts include gangster Bugsy Siegel, rocker Johnny Ramone, founder of Penthouse magazine Bob Guccione, and two bona fide Little Rascals, Alfalfa and Darla Hood.
The history of Hollywood Forever is strange and fraught with scandal. It was founded in 1899 on 100 acres and originally called “Hollywood Cemetery.” RKO Studios purchased 40 acres and this became the Paramount Studios lot. Part of the remaining land was put aside for Beth Olam Cemetery, the only Jewish burial ground in Hollywood. In 1939, convicted felon Jules Roth purchased a 51 percent stake in the property. For the next six decades, Roth used cemetery funds to pay for personal luxuries while the grounds fell into disrepair.
Roth forbade minorities to be buried at the site. This included actress Hattie McDaniel (Gone With The Wind) who’d expressed a desire to…
