Hollywood's 1899 Cemetery and Film-Industry Necropolis
6000 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter the cemetery during posted hours. Cinespia film screenings and Dia de los Muertos festival require separate ticketed admission.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved drives across 62 acres of landscaped cemetery
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1899 · National Register of Historic Places · Film-Industry Heritage · Largest Dia de los Muertos Festival Outside Mexico
Hollywood Cemetery was founded in 1899 when Isaac Lankershim, Isaac Van Nuys, and other investors formed the Hollywood Cemetery Association and acquired a 100-acre tract of farmland along Santa Monica Boulevard. The new cemetery filled the demand for a burying ground in the rapidly developing Hollywood district at the western edge of Los Angeles.
The rise of the film industry transformed the cemetery's role almost immediately. By the 1910s and 1920s, many of the silent-era and early-sound-era stars who lived and worked in Hollywood were buried here. The list of interments grew into a record of the studio system itself: Rudolph Valentino (interred in the Cathedral Mausoleum in 1926), Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Marion Davies, Tyrone Power, Peter Lorre, Mel Blanc, Jayne Mansfield, Mickey Rooney, Carrie Fisher, Burt Reynolds, Chris Cornell, Anton Yelchin, and (since 2017) Judy Garland, transferred from her original Westchester New York interment. Punk-rock figures Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone, Latin music figures Tito Puente Jr., and television performers Valerie Harper are also interred at the property.
In 1929, Paramount Pictures Studios acquired the 40 northern acres of the original cemetery property; the studio backlot abuts the cemetery's southern wall to this day. The cemetery was renamed Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 to reflect changing American funerary preferences toward 'memorial park' terminology.
The cemetery slid into financial and physical neglect through the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1998, Tyler and Brent Cassity purchased the property out of bankruptcy for $375,000 and renamed it Hollywood Forever. The new ownership invested millions in landscape restoration, monument repair, and a programming model that combined active interment with cultural programming. Cinespia, the summer outdoor film series founded by John Wyatt, has projected films on the side of the Fairbanks Lawn mausoleum since 2002. The cemetery's annual Dia de los Muertos festival, launched in 2000, draws tens of thousands of attendees and is recognized as the largest Day of the Dead celebration outside Mexico. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
Sources
The Rudolph Valentino tradition is the cemetery's oldest paranormal story. Valentino died in New York in 1926 of complications from a perforated ulcer; his body was returned to Hollywood and placed in a crypt in the Cathedral Mausoleum. Beginning in the 1930s, an unidentified veiled woman dressed in black began visiting the crypt on the anniversary of his death with a single rose. The 'Lady in Black' tradition continued for decades through multiple identifiable participants — some self-acknowledged, others associated with publicity efforts by Valentino's family and studio interests. The persistent visitation generated its own folk tradition, with reports of additional veiled figures and the impression of Valentino's presence near the crypt. Visitors continue to report cold spots and a sense of being observed in the corridor near his niche.
Clifton Webb — actor in Laura, The Razor's Edge, and Cheaper by the Dozen — was interred in the Abbey of the Psalms in 1966. Visitor and staff reports describe the scent of cologne, the impression of an elegantly dressed figure, and quiet auditory anomalies near his crypt. The Beneath Los Angeles ghost-walk programming and several published Hollywood-paranormal collections document these accounts.
The Fairbanks Lawn — where Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jr. are interred in a reflecting-pool tomb — and the Garden of Legends section around Valentino draw additional reports of figures in early-twentieth-century dress glimpsed at dusk. Visitor activity has substantially increased since Judy Garland's 2017 reinterment at Hollywood Forever; her crypt and Carrie Fisher's adjacent ash urn are among the most-visited stops on the cemetery's celebrity walks.
The cemetery's programming team treats the paranormal tradition with the same balance applied to its other public-facing content — acknowledged as part of the property's social history without endorsed as confirmed phenomena. Cinespia screenings frequently incorporate Valentino-era films into seasonal programming.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk among the graves of Judy Garland, Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, Mickey Rooney, Tyrone Power, Douglas Fairbanks, Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone, Chris Cornell, and hundreds of other film and music figures. Pick up a free printed map at the flower shop near the entrance.
Cinespia has projected classic films on the Fairbanks Lawn since 2002. Audiences picnic among the older monuments while films screen on the side of the mausoleum. Tickets sell out far in advance.
The cemetery's annual Day of the Dead celebration is the largest outside Mexico, with altares, music, processions, and traditional foods. Held the closest Saturday to November 1.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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