How Is Forest Lawn Memorial Park the 'Disneyland of Cemeteries'?

Just outside Los Angeles, Forest Lawn Memorial Park is the resting place of many celebrities -- and also home to art, architecture, and celebrations of life. Learn about it in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/funerals/forest-lawn-memorial-park.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbon.
Here in Glendale, California's Forest Lawn Memorial Park, there are
plaques scattered throughout that detail its creator's vision. When doctor
Hubert Eaton took over the three hundred acres FO one

(00:23):
hundred and seventy hectors in nineteen seventeen, he installed a
massive stone tablet engraved with what he called the Builder's
Dream and the Builder's creed. It speaks of a quote,
a great park devoid of misshapen monuments and other signs
of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns,

(00:44):
splashing fountains, beautiful statuary, and memorial architecture. The plaques are
all signed the builder. Before the article of this episode
is based on how Stuffworks. Spoke with James Fishburne, PhD,
Director of the Forest Lawn Museum. He said, that's how
we refer to Eton the builder. It's very grand. You

(01:08):
get that grand sense when you visit. There are rolling hills,
studding landscapes, mountain views, and 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 three

(01:28):
hundred thousand people are buried there, including some of America's
most famous names, it also boasts gardens, churches, a huge mausoleum,
and an art museum. It's lively enough that over sixty
thousand people have actually gotten married there. Fishburne said it
was designed quote so it didn't feel like a place
of death and decay, but rather a celebration of life,

(01:51):
a place you would want to visit 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 a. Fishburne said, one of
the early ideas was to sort of recreate what the

(02:11):
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. 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

(02:35):
houses original art and replicas of famous works, including one
of the largest replica collections of Michelangelo. There's even a
reproduction of his famous statue of David that stands seventeen
feet tall that's about five point two meters, which is
the same grand size as the original. They built an
entire building to house another piece in their collection. The

(02:58):
largest painting in the West during the United States, Jonstka's
The Crucifixion, which is one hundred and ninety five feet
wide and forty five feet tall. That's about sixty by
fourteen meters. That's more than twice as wide as an
Imax movie screen and nearly as tall. European cemeteries evolved
over the centuries alongside different periods of art and religion

(03:22):
and thought about death. In the United States, the largest
cemeteries on the East Coast were established in the early
eighteen hundreds and thus were tied to the conventions of
those times. But when Forest Lawn began on the outskirts
of the growing city of Los Angeles, Eton and the
founders could rethink those conventions and they got the timing

(03:43):
just right to be a new cultural center. Fishburne said,
when Forest Lawn was established over a century ago, it
was immediately between two population centers. It's located between Pasadena,
which was already booming in the early twentieth century, and
downtown Los Angeles. A few years after we opened, the
Los Angeles Aqueduct was constructed, and there was just a

(04:06):
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
like Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Nat King, Cole Clark Gable,
Michael Jackson, Will Rogers, and Elizabeth Taylor, just to name

(04:27):
a few. But don't expect to see a list of
who's who, or rather who's where a Forest Lawn employees. No,
people come to see the famous graves, but they won't
help you find them. Fishburne said, we try to respect
the privacy of the families that we serve, so we
don't do celebrity grave tours. We don't advertise X, Y

(04:49):
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. A Walt Disney is
also buried in Forest Lawn, but that's not the only
connection between him and this memorial park. A. Forest Lawn's

(05:11):
tutor 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

(05:35):
different areas and esthetics of Disney's nearby amusement park. Fishburne said,
Eton and Disney ran in some of the same circles,
and Forest Lawn and Disneyland share the zeitgeist of the
early and mid twentieth century, the sort of storybook style
that you see in a lot of early Disney movies
and in Disneyland. Forest Lawn is sometimes called the Disneyland

(05:59):
of Saries, but Fishburne sets the record straight quote forest
Lawn was founded first. We like to joke that actually
Disneyland is the amusement park of Forest Lawn's. Ultimately, as
with all cemeteries, it's a place as much if not
more for the living than for the dead. Fishburne said,

(06:22):
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. 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.

(06:44):
Today's episode is based on the article inside LA's Forest
Lawn where the biggest celebrities rest in Peace on how
stuffworks dot Com, written by Kate Morgan. Brainstuff is production
of Byheartradio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler klang A. For more podcast It's
My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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