I’ve always been partial to graveyards. Growing up, when I wasn’t at the movies, I was traipsing through bone orchards. I never got into grave rubbings. Instead I liked to create histories of the people that were planted there. There’s something refreshing about a cemetery. Some find it inspirational to visit a maternity ward and look at all those squalling infants with their whole lives ahead of them. To me, that’s beyond depressing. All I can imagine are the horrors they have to look forward to. Puberty. Tax audits. Golden Girls reruns. Depends. At least the phone stops ringing when you’re dead.
Through the years, I’ve made a habit of visiting cemeteries whenever I travel. I can’t imagine a trip to L.A. without an excursion to the “Disneyland of the Dead,” Forest Lawn, the final resting place of such luminaries as Bette Davis, Liberace, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Freddie Prinze, Marjorie Main and “Gabby” Hayes.
But there’s an even better cemetery only a half-hour from Manhattan. The fabulous Ferncliff Cemetery, nestled in picturesque Hartsdale, is crammed with celebrity corpses. Why trudge out to the Hamptons or Fire Island when you can pack a lunch and spend a day with Joan Crawford?
One bright morning, several years ago, a good friend and I drove up the West Side Highway to Ferncliff and parked in front of a mausoleum. Inside, the sight of the vaulted ceilings, stained glass and endless hallways lined with hundreds of dead people took my breath away. Easter had left the walkways choked with lilies. Mercifully, an elderly irish attendant took pity on us. “You’ll be looking for Judy and Joan,” he said. “They’re not here. The only famous one here is Basil Rathbone.” He beckoned us down a corridor and pointed up to where the former Sherlock Holmes finally laid down his pipe. “Come into the office,” the guard said, and for the first time I noticed a gob of spittle on his chin. He pulled several maps from a filing cabinet and circled the spots where we could find some of Ferncliff’s more famous residents.
Our first stop was the great director Preston Sturges, responsible for such comic masterpieces as Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story. I practically prostrated myself on his grave, but my friend reminded me we had a lot to see, so we headed off to see Judy Garland.
A kind woman saying her rosaries directed us to Judy. There were plenty of floral tributes near her crypt, but the woman sneered, “None of ‘em are from her kids, that’s for sure.” She then told us that when Miss Garland died, her body was left in holding for two weeks before anyone paid the bill. Reading the cards people had sent the beloved, tragic singer, I was surprised to discover that many were from children. “To Dorothy from Wendy,” one said. But there was one obviously non-heterosexual wisecrack: “She’s really most sincerely dead.” A line from a song in The Wizard Of Oz. (In 2017 Judy Garland’s body was moved across country to Hollywood’s Forever Cemetery in order to be close to her children.)
After that we found TV variety host Ed Sullivan, composer Jerome Kern, playwright Moss Hart and ultimate party hostess Elsa Maxwell. We walked down every row of the Knollwood section until we pinpointed the plot of one of my favorite comedians, Jackie “Moms” Mabley.
We paid homage to the magnificent Paul Robeson.
We were delighted to find someone had left a half bottle of Wild Turkey on the grave of Another Country author James Baldwin.
We searched high and low, but were unable to unearth 60s radio DJ Alan Freed and jazz great Thelonious Monk. But we had no problem hunting down terrific actress Diana Sands.
And the inspiring graves of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz.
For me, the greatest moment was when I came across Joan Crawford’s crypt. In true Joan fashion, it was a bitch to find. I finally pushed back a metal gate and there on the mausoleum wall, embossed in gray marble, were the names of soft-drink magnate Alfred Steele and his loving wife, Joan Crawford (1908-1977). Poor Joan. Her reputation has taken a lot of flack over the years, but I keep thinking of the animated, dark-haired beauty who burned a hole in the screen in Grand Hotel and how many times she had to re-invent herself to stay afloat. So what if she was a bad mother? She wasn’t my mother. And nothing in this world gives me as much pleasure as listening to her scream at Lorne Greene and Vera Miles in Autumn Leaves: “You’re both so consumed with evil, so rotten, your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself!” Hopefully, Jessica Lange’s heartbreaking and sympathetic portrait of Crawford in Ryan Murphy’s brilliant TV series Feud: Bette & Joan will help restore her tattered reputation.
On the ride back, I thought about how everyone gets cremated these days. I understand the concept in a kind of Buddhist, ecological way, but I believe that being reduced to ashes and scattered at sea robs one of the pleasure of visiting an old friend. It just isn’t the same when you’re standing on a deserted beach and a gust of wind blows sand in your face and you say, “Bob, is that you?”
At least I know where I’m going when I shuffle off this mortal coil. I bought a grave plot near my friends in Towson, Maryland. At least I’ll be there with John Waters, Pat Moran, Chuck Yeaton, and Mink Stole. And right near Divine’s grave. John Waters drove us there over the Christmas holidays and we both stood on our gravesites. He jokingly said to me: “Final Destination!” and I nearly fell over laughing.
I just wonder if I have the guts to put on my tombstone: “What Are You Looking At?”