Hollywood Forever Cemetery

6000 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038
Phone:

East < GO > West

If you're looking for something different to do on a summer Saturday night in Los Angeles you might want grab a blanket and and get together with a few thousand other folks while taking in a movie at this cemetery. That's right, since 2002 vintage movies have been screened on a blank wall facing the Fairbanks Lawn at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. You can get movie tickets from Cinespia Movie Screenings.

The cemetery was founded in 1899 simply as the Hollywood Cemetery and is the final resting place of many, if not most, of the movie industries early stars and celebrities. That includes folks like Judy Garland, Tyrone Power, Cecil B. DeMille, Mickey Rooney, Peter Lorre, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford, and Rudolph Valentino, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer of "Our Gang" fame, and many more.

Most of these folks were certainly among the rich and/or famous in Hollywood so it might be a bit surprising that someone like Rudolph Valentino, a huge silent movie star, was laid to rest in a borrowed crypt. That was apparently supposed to be a temporary arrangement while a more fitting resting place was constructed. Well it never got constructed for various reasons and the guy is still waiting in the borrowed crypt.

Guided walking tours of the cemetery are also available.

If you are headed west on Santa Monica Blvd. look for this building on the south side of the road, it is right next to the entrance to the cemetery.

Photo(s): 2015