Inside LA's Forest Lawn, Where the Biggest Celebrities Rest in Peace

There are plaques scattered throughout Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California, that detail its creator’s vision. When Dr. Hubert Eaton took over the 300 acres (121 hectares) in 1917, he installed a massive stone tablet engraved with what he called “The Builder’s Dream and The Builder’s Creed.” It speaks of “a great park devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary and memorial architecture.” The plaques are signed, “The Builder.”

"That's how we refer to Eaton – 'the Builder' – it's very grand," says James Fishburne, Ph.D., director of the Forest Lawn Museum. As is the place Eaton built: "You get that grand sense when you when you visit," Fishburne says. "There are rolling hills, stunning landscapes, mountain views, you can you can see the ocean in the distance. And then the art collection is also very grand."

Forest Lawn is a cemetery, but it's not like any burial place before it. While more than 300,000 people, including some of America's most famous names, are buried there, it also boasts gardens, churches, a huge mausoleum and an art museum.

It was designed, says Fishburne, "so it didn't feel like a place of death and decay, but rather a celebration of life, a place you would want to visit."

All About the Art at Forest Lawn

Today, there are six Forest Lawn Memorial Park locations in Southern California, but the original is in Glendale. From the beginning, the art has been a major draw at Forest Lawn.

"One of the early ideas was to sort of recreate what 'the Grand Tour' used to be: If you were very wealthy, you could go to Europe and travel all over and view amazing cathedrals and sculptures and paintings," says Fishburne. Forest Lawn was an effort to "bring that to Southern California, in a time when international travel was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, and when there were relatively few publicly accessible art collections in Southern California."

The museum houses original art and replicas of famous works, including one of the largest replica collections of Michaelango's work. There's even a 17-foot-tall (5-meter) reproduction of his famous statue of David.

Forest Lawn is also home to Jan Styka's "The Crucifixion," which, at 195 feet (159 meters) wide and 45 feet (14 meters) tall, is the "largest religious painting in the United States, and the largest painting of any kind in the Western United States," says Fishburne. "We actually built an entire building just to house that single work."

Forest Lawn: Created as a New Kind of Park

When Forest Lawn began, the model for what a typical cemetery looked like was already hundreds of years old. But on the outskirts of the growing city of Los Angeles, Eaton and Forest Lawn's founders set out to do something different.

"This is Southern California in the early 20th century," says Fishburne. "There was opportunity. Many of the largest cemeteries on the East Coast were established, 100 or 200 years beforehand, and the conventions were sort of tied to the conventions of 200 years ago. Hubert Eaton had the freedom to sort of remake it, to rethink these conventions and make something new."

And when Eaton bought his acreage on the outskirts of Los Angeles, he got the timing just right. "When Forest Lawn was established over a century ago, it was immediately between two population centers," says Fishburne. "It's located between Pasadena, which was already booming in the early 20th century, and downtown Los Angeles. A few years after we opened, the Los Angeles Aqueduct was constructed, and there was just a population boom."

At the same time, the film industry was exploding in Southern California, and movie stars needed a final resting place. Forest Lawn is the burial place of celebrities such as Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Nat King Cole, Clark Gable, Michael Jackson, Will Rogers and Elizabeth Taylor, just to name a few.

But don't expect a list of who's who – or rather, who's where. Forest Lawn employees know people come to see the famous graves, but they won't help you find them.

"We try to respect the privacy of the families that we serve," says Fishburne. "So we don't do celebrity grave tours, we don't advertise, 'X, Y and Z are buried here.' Many of the final resting places of celebrities are openly accessible to the public, and people are welcome to come visit them. Others are in locked gardens or in private areas."

The Walt Disney Connection to Forest Lawn

Walt Disney is also buried in Forest Lawn, but that's not the only connection between the entertainment visionary and the memorial park. Forest Lawn's Tudor-inspired architectural style extends through its many burial sections, which have names like Eventide, Graceland, Inspiration Slope, Sweet Memories, Whispering Pines and Dawn of Tomorrow. There's also a heart-shaped area called Babyland, for infant burials and Slumberland, for children and adolescents.

It's reminiscent, in many ways, of the different lands and aesthetic of Disney's nearby amusement park.

"Eaton and Disney ran in some of the same circles," says Fishburne. "And Forest Lawn and Disneyland share the zeitgeist of the early and mid-20th century; the sort of storybook style that you see in a lot of early Disney movies and in Disneyland."

In fact, Forest Lawn is sometimes called the "Disneyland of cemeteries," but Fishburne sets the record straight. "Forest Lawn was founded first. We like to joke that actually, Disneyland is the amusement park of Forest Lawns."

Ultimately, Fishburne says, it's a place as much – if not more – for the living than for the dead.

"When you visit on the day of a family member's funeral, that's obviously going to be a very intense and very sad moment," he says. "But we want you to be able to come back time and again, bring friends and family and celebrate that person and celebrate Southern California and celebrate life."