Hollywood
-
{Hollywood} Forest Lawn Glendale: The Great Mausoleum and The Church of the Recessional
Continuing on in Forest Lawn Glendale… Before we venture over to the Great Mausoleum, we have one important pitstop: The Church of the Recessional, where both Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s funerals were held–Clark on November 19, 1960 and Carole (with her mother) on January 21, 1942. Naturally, we tried to see inside but there wasn’t much to see through the windows and all the doors were locked. Here is a photo of the inside, from Forest Lawn’s website: And now…onto the Great Mausoleum. A place I have thought of often and had always hoped to visit. It is absolutely gorgeous to behold in person.The building is huge…
-
{Hollywood} Forest Lawn Glendale: The Lawn and Freedom Mausoleum
Forest Lawn Glendale is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous! I have heard this before, of course, but this is one of those times where words don’t do it justice. Founded in 1906, the memorial park is famous for its vast collection of sculpture and art, as well as for being one of the first cemeteries to not allow upright headstones, giving the park a smoother look and appeal. There truly is no other cemetery like it, not that I have ever seen in my life. Of the five we visited, this was the first one (for obvious reasons) and we said later on that we shouldn’t have visited it first since it…
-
{Hollywood} Sony Pictures (formerly MGM)
I approached this tour rather apprehensively. Metro Goldwyn Mayer is, sadly, no more. The largest studio, the most prestigious studio, the studio that had “more stars than there are in the heavens”, Clark’s home studio for over 20 years, is gone. By the 1970’s, its glory days were nothing but a memory. The MGM name is nothing but really a name anymore, not a place. The former studio is now Sony Pictures and Sony owns Columbia and is much more proud of that than of MGM history. I won’t get into the long, sad story of MGM’s decline here but I highly recommend this book that came out last year,…
-
{Hollywood} Forest Lawn: Hollywood Hills
Our trip to Forest Lawn: Hollywood Hills was a quick one. Founded in 1906, it is younger and smaller than its big Glendale cousin (blog on Glendale this week!) but is still gorgeous in its own right. The best part of the cemetery is the view; you could see for miles from the top of the hill. Our main objective here was the legendary Bette Davis, who was not at all hard to find. I left her a bouquet (dedicated from some dear friends of mine); she had already been given several flowers and also a big lipstick print. She’s entombed with her mother Ruth and sister Barbara. Right around the…
-
{Hollywood} Hollywood Boulevard
The infamous Hollywood Boulevard is about what you would expect: a mix of the old and the new, with buildings like Grauman’s Chinese and the El Capitan Theater sharing sidewalk space with the Kodak Theater and an H&M. The streets filled with hundreds of fans, milling the street taking photos, and hundreds of vendors harrassing you at every turn to buy their stuff or take their tour. An obvious place to start here is Grauman’s Chinese Theater. They do offer tours inside this historic theater, but we did not take one. Instead, we milled around outside and compared our hands to celebrities. Here is Clark Gable, whom I must say had very…
-
{Hollywood} The Roosevelt Hotel
Opened in 1927 and situated diagonally from Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, the Roosevelt Hotel is a well-known Hollywood landmark. It was named for Theodore Roosevelt and was financed by Louis B. Mayer, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Marilyn Monroe lived here for two years and did her first photo shoot in the hotel’s pool area. Other notable residents include Clara Bow, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Harold Lloyd…you name them, they probably stayed at, or least partied at, the Roosevelt. Of course, this includes Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who frequently rented out the penthouse before they were married. The room rates actually aren’t…
-
{Hollywood} Home to Encino
As I learned after zig-zagging around the (often treacherous) Hollywood hills, most stars of today and yesterday aren’t that different when it comes to where they lay their head. Some locations are desirable only so you can write a certain street and a certain zip code as your address. No doubt this is the reasoning behind people who bought residences such as Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ Pickfair and Jimmy Stewart’s beloved Beverly Hills home only to wreck them down and build something ultra-modern and ultra-vulgar. Both having spent several years residing under the shining lights of Hollywood, Clark and Carole chose the quieter suburb of Encino to set up their new…
-
{Hollywood} Carole Lombard Lived Here
Tracing the footsteps of the beloved third Mrs. Gable… This house on Iris Circle, built in 1926 in the then-trendy Whitley Heights area of Los Angeles, was owned by Carole and her first husband, William Powell, from about 1931 to 1933. It was quite a treacherous drive up a long, narrow street and there is absolutely no parking at all–heaven forbid you have guests over! (In fact I couldn’t get a shot from across the street because there were cars parked right behind me on the narrow road.) But the view from those windows must be spectacular. Here’s that same window, from the real estate listing when the house was for sale about…
-
{Hollywood} Holy Cross Cemetery
Holy Cross is a scenic Roman Catholic cemetery in Culver City that opened in 1939. It is said that if a star is Catholic, they’re buried here. Here in this scenic area called the Grotto are several celebrities grouped close together. The main reason for our visit was the grave of this eccentric fellow, Bela Lugosi (Dracula). To my classic-horror-fiend friend who traveled with me, Bela Lugosi is her Clark Gable. So he was a must visit! I stumbled upon the grave of “Der Bingle”, Bing Crosby, not too far from Bela. Nearby too is the grave of French actor Charles Boyer, known for his role in Gaslight (1944). Also here…
-
{Hollywood} The Former Homes of…
Instead of hopping on a tour bus to be driven around, snapping photos and hoping to catch today’s stars in their bathrobes watering their front lawns, we were on a mission to find the homes of the past. Let’s start with two of Clark’s wives… Here is the house on Landale that Clark’s first wife Josephine Dillon lived in from her arrival in Hollywood until her death. Clark owned this property, paid the property taxes and let Josephine live there rent-free. He left her the house in his will. After Clark’s widow Kay Williams sold the Encino ranch to developers in 1970’s, she moved into posh Beverly Hills to this house on…