Another year, another Film Outside the Frame, which gives me a great excuse to check out Hollywood Forever Cemetery again.
Founded in 1899, it’s located on Santa Monica Boulevard, right around the corner from Paramount Pictures and is a very cool place. Aside from being the final resting place for some entertainment industry legends, many coincidentally found in an area of the Cemetery called the Garden of Legends, it also is a venue for some pretty awesome events.
This past week, Hollywood Forever hosted a very unique event to a sellout crowd – Breaking Bad’s Finale Party. The final episode of Breaking Bad was screened on Fairbanks Lawn, complete with appearances by the show’s stars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, as well as the Breaking Bad RV.
During the summer months Cinespia screens films on the Fairbanks Lawn, and there are many other concerts and events hosted at the Cemetery throughout the year like the Dia De Los Muertos Festival, that is one of the biggest of its kind. This colorful Mexican celebration that honors the dead is full of music and dancing, ceremonial tributes, and intricate altar creations made of sugar skulls and marigolds. In case you want to check it out, the 2013 Dia de Los Muertos will take place on Saturday, November 2nd, 2013 from 12pm-Midnight.
Here are some pictures that I took last week at Hollywood Forever. There are two pictures of Johnny Ramone’s cenotaph because it’s my favorite. Jayne Mansfield also has a cenotaph at Hollywood Forever, even though she’s interred in Pennsylvania. Other notables include co-founder and President of Columbia Pictures Harry Cohn, John Huston, Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, Rudolph Valentino, and many others. Speaking of Rudolph Valentino, there’s an interesting legend that’s been around since the 1930s about a “mysterious veiled woman” known as the “Lady in Black” who visits his crypt every year on the anniversary of his death, and it’s still happening …
Hollywood Forever is really a very beautiful place, and the peacocks, swans, and ducks seem to like it there too.
