Mid-Century LA Cemetery with Hollywood Royalty Buried Here
6300 Forest Lawn Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90068
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access during cemetery hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved roads on a hilly cemetery campus
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1952 · Hollywood History · Mid-Century American Cemetery Design · Public Art Landmark
The Hollywood Hills location is the second-oldest property in the Forest Lawn cemetery group. Hubert Eaton acquired the land and began a four-year permitting process before construction began in 1950. The cemetery opened on March 4, 1952.
Eaton's design philosophy rejected what he described as the visual character of older urban graveyards. He pushed for landscaped grounds, classical architecture, and public art on a scale unusual for American cemeteries. The Hollywood Hills park features Lincoln Terrace with a 16-foot bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln by Augustus St. Gaudens. The Hall of Liberty includes statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the Birth of Liberty glass-tile mural, which at 162 feet long and 28 feet high is the largest historical artwork of its kind in the United States, composed of approximately ten million pieces of Venetian glass.
Notable burials include Bette Davis, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, John Ritter, Paul Walker, Ronnie James Dio, Liberace, Nipsey Hussle, Andy Gibb, Buster Keaton, and many others associated with twentieth- and twenty-first-century entertainment. The cemetery functions as both an active burial ground and a cultural destination for visitors retracing the careers of Hollywood figures.
Sources
Unlike many cemeteries in the dark-tourism canon, Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills sustains a relatively quiet paranormal reputation. The cemetery's significance is overwhelmingly tied to the people buried there: actors, musicians, and entertainment figures whose graves draw constant visitation.
Casual ghost-tour literature has occasionally referenced unexplained sounds, flickering candles, and feelings of presence near specific celebrity graves, particularly those of figures who died young or whose deaths were widely mourned. These accounts are largely undocumented and are not promoted by Forest Lawn itself.
For dark-tourism visitors, the value of this location lies in respectful celebrity-grave visitation and in the cemetery's mid-century public-art program. Approach with the conventions appropriate to an active burial ground: quiet voices, no climbing on monuments, and photographs taken with discretion.
Walk a cemetery opened in 1952 by Forest Lawn founder Hubert Eaton, with burials including Bette Davis, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, John Ritter, Paul Walker, Ronnie James Dio, Nipsey Hussle, and rapper-musician icons across multiple decades. Lincoln Terrace, the Hall of Liberty, and a 162-foot Venetian-glass glass-tile mural are major features.
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