MONROE

0

If you can’t afford to live next to a celebrity, take heart: It’s a lot cheaper to be dead next to one.

Consider the action at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, where Marilyn Monroe and a host of other notables are interred.

A single crypt remains available in Monroe’s neighborhood the Corridor of Memories one of eight wall crypt spaces left in the celebrity-filled Westwood cemetery. Compared to the home prices in celebrity-filled enclaves like Beverly Hills or Bel Air, it’s a relative deal: From $40,000 for a spot on the top row to $100,000 for a “couch crypt” where the body is laid lengthwise along the wall, rather than feet-first, so that a much longer slab of granite carries the inscription.

And just like Sunday open houses, the Westwood park draws its fair share of lookey-loos.

“We’ve received a number of inquiries about (the site near Monroe), but as soon as most people hear the price they get in their car and drive away,” said Nancy Fenderson, general manager of the Westwood Memorial Park.

Park officials declined to disclose the exact location or price of the crypt near Monroe, but they did say it is higher than eye or touch level. (The choicest spots are eye level.)

The 93-year-old cemetery, tucked behind highrise office towers on Wilshire Boulevard, boasts more than 40 celebrities among its residents. Actress Natalie Wood, author Truman Capote and industrialist Armand Hammer are laid to rest there, though Monroe draws the most visitors.

Fenderson said the park’s celebrity clientele attracts people inquiring about “pre-need arrangements” who want their final resting place to be “part of that celebrity profile.”

But Fenderson, who has been manager just two months, said she feels uncomfortable about using the park’s celebrities as a marketing tool to get people to buy grave sites there.

Nonetheless, Angelenos are notorious for being concerned about where they’re seen even after they’ve left this life.

“Some people who will eventually come to this park care about who’s going to be to the right and to the left of them,” she said. “It’s just like any piece of property: you’re concerned about who your neighbors are.”

Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City has its share of celebrities including Michael Landon, Dinah Shore and Moe Howard though Chief Executive Barry Berlin says people seem more concerned that their resting place is next to a loved one instead of a celebrity.

“They want to be close to people they know rather than celebrities they’ve never met,” Berlin said.

At the Westwood park, Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner purchased the last remaining spaces immediately adjacent to Monroe: one for himself and another for his wife, Kimberly, confirmed Bill Farley, Hefner’s spokesman.

But Farley said the publisher chose Westwood Village Memorial Park because it contains the remains of his friend Buddy Rich and there was an adjacent space available for his wife.

Besides, the cemetery is about a mile from Hefner’s Holmby Hills manse.

Although he ran photos of Monroe in Playboy’s debut issue, Hefner never met her in life, Farley said. “He felt she was a strong influence in his life, and this was a way to pay tribute to her,” he said.

Like Westwood Village Memorial Park, Hillside doesn’t charge a premium for plots near celebrities. “We’re not a used car lot; it’s the same price for everyone,” Berlin said.

Like all real estate, he added, a plot’s value is “determined by three things: location, location, location.”

For wall crypt spaces, “it’s the opposite of condominiums it gets cheaper the higher up you go,” Berlin said. The third and fourth rows cost about $6,000 at Hillside, while the seventh row runs about $2,000.

Wall crypts tend to be more popular than grave sites, Berlin said, because many people have “psychological barriers” to being buried underground.

And just like houses, grave sites in heavily trafficked areas are less desirable.

A plot near Glendon Avenue in the Westwood Village Memorial Park, for example, costs $21,500, while a spot in the center of the cemetery runs about $30,000.

Besides crypts and plots, there are other options including a $545 scattering service at the Westwood park, where a person’s cremated remains are spread over a rose garden on the premises.

Marketing Hillside’s celebrity clientele is a delicate issue for Berlin, although that wasn’t always the case. When the singer Al Jolson died in the early 1950s, he was buried in Hollywood Memorial Park. His family wanted to build a memorial to the singer, Berlin said, but the cemetery wouldn’t allow it. So Harry Groman, the founder of Hillside, built a 120-foot waterfall as a memorial to the entertainer to win the family’s favor. The ploy worked: Jolson’s body was moved to the Culver City park a year after his death.

“Harry Groman thought it would be cool to have someone of Jolson’s stature buried here it would give the park world renown,” said Gerard Wicklin, investment manager of the park.

Jolson Memorial Fountain, which is visible from the San Diego Freeway, became a focal point of the cemetery. “And that’s why a lot of Jolson’s contemporaries such as Eddie Cantor and Jack Benny purchased sites here.”

But not all celebrities live on the Westside, and that goes for the dead ones, too.

Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale perhaps has the largest celebrity clientele, with more than 120 notable residents. Walt Disney, Spencer Tracy, George Burns and Gracie Allen rest there though the park’s staff won’t say exactly where.

“If anyone comes into the office and asks for a map, where someone is buried or if someone’s buried here, the answer is no,” said Dick Fisher, publicity director for Forest Lawn. He declined to state the prices of plots at the memorial park.

At Hollywood Memorial Park, which probably has more dead stars per square foot than any place on earth, people no longer have the opportunity to be buried near the likes of Douglas Fairbanks, Cecil B. DeMille and John Huston.

A court-appointed trustee prohibits the park from selling new plots. The cemetery is currently operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after state investigators in 1995 discovered a series of misdeeds from improper burial to mismanagement of funds.

“We don’t have anything to do with celebrities anymore,” said a receptionist, who declined to give her name. “All we can do for you is give you a map.”

And that map,which clearly indicates the stars’ homes, is free of charge.

No posts to display