Now that Amazon has welcomed me back as a potential market source (thank you Jerry Brown) I've put my "book of the month . . . sorta" feature back up on the right. And what better book for the week before Halloween than a guide to Los Angeles' dead people?
The official title is LA's Graveside Companion: Where the V.I.P.s R.I.P.
Cute, huh?
Got to see author Steve Goldstein talk about the book, and his original title was "Beneath Los Angeles." In fact, that's now his website.
Goldstein has appeared on California's Gold with Huell Howser, on a Pet Cemetery segment. He's got a video out, produced by his brother: Gravehunting with Steve. In it, he tours Hollywood Forever, Holy Cross, and Hillside Memorial Park cemeteries.
Goldstein is giving a free tour of Westwood Memorial Park, where Marilyn Monroe is encrypted, on October 29th. I don't see that at his website. (beware the music there, btw). Read more about that and sign up at SocalStudio.org
According to Goldstein, Marilyn was the first really big celebrity to be interred at the 100-year-old Westwood, but now there are many more. Burt Lancaster, Peggy Lee, Truman Capote, Mel Torme, Donna Reed, Roy Orbison, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Don Knotts, Bob Crane, Natalie Wood...and more, according to the Seeing-Stars site.
In fact, the Wikipedia entry on Westwood has an alphabetical listing of all the dozens of stars buried there. The picture of Marilyn's plaque came from WikiCommons.
Closer to home, I found that the local cemetery with the great mosaics of San Pedro, which I blogged about last Monday, is host to Charles Bokowski's remains.
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