Sorry, Folks, No Autographs

Where better to walk the day before Halloween than among some of Hollywood’s most celebrated departed?

More than 200 fans of Hollywood history and architecture did just that Saturday, traipsing from headstone to mausoleum on the 20th annual tour of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery by the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.

The tour focuses on the founders of Hollywood and “the people who put Hollywood on the map,” said Frank Cooper, vice president of the society, whose work includes preserving Art Deco buildings.

In keeping with its Art Deco emphasis, the tour focuses on people prominent between World Wars I and II, the period when Hollywood was born and flourishing, Cooper said. He dressed for the event in jodhpurs, just as Cecil B. DeMille, now among the interred, did when directing his Bible epics.

During the two-hour tour, docents shared stories about the famous dead.

Kilt-clad Sabato Fiorello groped for a bit of vintage gossip to offer participants in front of the tombs of DeMille and his wife. Finally, Fiorello revealed that DeMille had cast his secretary and mistress as the pharaoh’s wife in “The Ten Commandments.”

“Very large hips, God bless her,” Fiorello said.

Visitor Jeff Stork of Lake Balboa said the tour was an opportunity to visit the graves of Hollywood personalities without seeming too much of what his friends refer to as a “death hag.”

“And I’m looking for Dee Dee Ramone, who’s here,” said Stork, referring to the rocker who died in 2002 at age 49.

Stork collects Hollywood death trivia the way a larger group of people collect sports trivia. When the docent pointed out the headstone of Christopher Quinn, Anthony Quinn’s young son and DeMille’s grandson, and said the toddler drowned in W. C. Fields’ pool, Stork quietly corrected him.

“It was a reflecting pond,” Stork whispered.

“I think everybody’s curious about death,” said James Walton of Valley Glen, explaining why he had paid $13 to take the tour. “It’s something we’re all headed toward.”

“Where’s the tomb of the unknown actor?” a participant asked docent Scott Frank.

Frank replied: “Are you kidding? Half the people here are unknown actors. They were going to put ‘unknown actor/waiter’ [on the headstone] but they thought it was too chintzy.”

Several docents noted the popularity of Egyptian motifs for cemetery structures of the Art Deco period after King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922.

For a final resting place, the former Hollywood Memorial Park was bustling Saturday morning. Besides those on the tour, hundreds of visitors had come to the cemetery just north of Paramount Studios in preparation for the Day of the Dead.

According to docent Karie Bible, the most-visited site in the cemetery is Rudolph Valentino’s crypt. Bible dressed like one of several mournful “ladies in black” who have brought red roses to Valentino since he died in 1926 at age 31.

Wearing black spider-web stockings, docent Celeste Hong welcomed the newest star to the cemetery, Fay Wray, who broke the beast’s heart in “King Kong.” Wray died Aug. 8 at age 96.

Bill Levin, a dean at a Protestant seminary in Boston, found the tour a thought-provoking respite from daily concerns, including Tuesday’s election.

“Everybody here has two dates -- a birth date and a death date -- separated by a dash,” Levin said. “It’s the definition of that dash that makes your life. What do you want that dash to be?”