Where Are They Buried? (24 page)

NOVEMBER 3, 1921 – AUGUST 30, 2003

One of fifteen children born to destitute Lithuanian parents in a hardscrabble Pennsylvania coal-mining town, Charles Buchinski was no stranger to abject poverty and hard times; at six years old he once attended school in a sister’s hand-me-down dress, by fifteen he worked fourteen-hour days clawing coal from the mines for $1 a ton.

“Rescued” by World War II, he became a B-29 tailgunner based in Guam, and after the war he surfaced in California as an out-of-work would-be actor. Lining up day after day with other acting hopefuls at Paramount Studios’ front Bronson Gate entrance, Charles got the bright idea of changing his ethnic family name to Bronson and, as the story goes, his career soon soared.

Credits for the craggy-faced actor include supporting roles in such blockbusters as
The Magnificent Seven
,
The Valachi Papers
, and
The Great Escape
, as well as accolades for a number of European films where he came to be known as Il Bruto, that is, The Ugly One. In the 1970s, his series of
Death Wish
films sealed his typecast tough-guy fate, and Charles came to symbolize vigilante justice for his role as an everyman who, prompted by the rape and murder of his wife, extracts violent revenge against the thugs and hooligans that haunt darkened city streets.

Bronson died of pneumonia at 81 and was buried at Brownsville Cemetery in West Windsor, Vermont.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
The cemetery is located on Brownsville-Hartland Road, just a couple hundred yards north of its intersection with Route 44.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Charles’ big flat tablet with bookend plant pots and a wrought iron bench is easy to find at the top of the hill.

JULY 17, 1899 – MARCH 30, 1986

After ten years as an actor and dancer in vaudeville, in 1931 the raspy-voiced James Cagney became the talkies’ first modern star and a favorite hoodlum for his role as Tom Powers opposite a bevy of floozies in
Public Enemy
. As Americans lionized the bootleggers of Prohibition and the gangsters of the Depression, Cagney played a string of antihero roles in such films as
The Roaring Twenties
,
The Frisco Kid
, and, later,
White Heat
.

Cagney was a rather plain looking man but his rapid-fire delivery and arrogant confidence made him a leading tough guy of the gangster genre. Still, he was not content to be pigeonholed and proved his range and versatility as patriotic showman George M. Cohan in the musical
Yankee Doodle Dandy
, for which he won an Oscar. He also took a Shakespearean turn as Bottom in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and played the comically villainous Captain Powell in 1955’s
Mister Roberts
.

Suffering from a number of health problems, Cagney retired in 1961 after playing a manic Coca-Cola executive in his 70th film, the Billy Wilder comedy
One, Two, Three
. He spent the next two decades on his 800-acre New York farm but emerged from retirement in 1981, as much for his own morale as for the sake of the art, to work with his old friend Pat O’Brien as a turn-of-the-century police chief in the film version of
Ragtime
.

It was his final film. On Easter Sunday 1986 Cagney finally succumbed to his diabetes and heart disease and he died at 86. Longtime friend and colleague President Ronald Reagan delivered his eulogy, and his survivors included his beloved Frances, who had married him 64 years earlier.

Cagney was buried at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-287, take Exit 4 and follow Route 100A north for 2½ miles (Route 100A will become Route 100 after 2 miles) to Lakeview Avenue and turn right. Follow Lakeview Avenue to its intersection with the Taconic State Parkway, turn left, and the Gate of Heaven Cemetery is a mile on the left. Turn left onto Stevens Avenue, go over the railroad tracks and make another left to enter.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Inside the cemetery is a large mausoleum laid out like the spokes around a wheel. Cagney’s crypt is in the second bay of the spoke that is closest to the cemetery entrance.

OCTOBER 31, 1950 – MARCH 4, 1994

John Candy joined the famed Chicago-based Second City improvisational comedy troupe in 1977 at Dan Aykroyd’s urging, and from there success was just around the corner. In 1980 he appeared beside Aykroyd and his hilarious partner in crime, John Belushi, in the soon-to-be-famous film
The Blues Brothers
. That role led to plenty of others and John become an audience favorite for playing genial losers and big-hearted chumps with a touchingly human and genuine sincerity in such films as
Stripes
,
Uncle Buck
, and
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
. John worked tirelessly and appeared in 34 movies during the 1980s, which allowed him to go from, as he put it, “macaroni and cheese to macaroni and lobster.”

His exceptional girth was key to the Canadian-born comic’s success, and though John often reacted to unexpected references
to his size with self-deprecating jokes, he struggled behind the laughs with a succession of diets. Attending the Pritikin Longevity Center, John exercised on treadmills and stationary bicycles, but was never able to control his weight—or his cigarette addiction, for that matter.

By 1994, when John traveled to Durango, Mexico, to shoot the movie
Wagons East
, he was tipping the scales at 375 pounds. Eager to finish shooting as scheduled, they sometimes filmed for twelve hours in the stifling heat. On one particular morning, John’s bodyguard rang him up but the phone went unanswered. A short while later, the guard let himself into John’s accommodations and found John, dressed in a black and red checkered nightshirt, expired in his bed. He had died of a massive heart attack.

At 43, John was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-405, follow Slauson Avenue east for a half-mile and the cemetery is on the left at #5835.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and drive to the mausoleum at the top of the hill. Walk through the front entrance and proceed down the hall on the right. On the right-hand side is Room 7, and in there John’s crypt is on the right.

AUGUST 12, 1935 – MARCH 13, 1978

The actor John Cazale is known most famously for his role as Fredo Corleone, the vulnerable and cheerless misfit who was passed over in favor of his younger brother, Michael (played by Al Pacino), in
The Godfather
. After the astounding success of that Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece, John’s career found its legs. In 1974 he reprised his Fredo role in
The Godfather Part II
and co-starred alongside Gene Hackman in what would prove to be a lost classic,
The Conversation
.

In 1975 John and Pacino (who, interestingly, had been friends since their teen years) paired up for
Dog Day Afternoon
, a fact-based drama about two dysfunctional crooks that rob a bank to pay for the sex-change operation of John’s character. After an emotional performance in which he said more with his face than he did with dialogue, John’s acting status accelerated further and he was soon offered and accepted the role of “Stosh” in the provocative Vietnam War epic,
The Deerhunter
.

However, unbeknownst to the film production company, John had been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer just weeks before filming began. When Universal Studios learned of his condition, they moved to nullify his contract but Meryl Streep, his costar in the movie and real-life fiancée, petitioned for his retention and the studio eventually relented; the shooting schedule was rearranged and John’s scenes were shot first.

John did not live to see the release of the film, and thus never learned that every feature movie in which he starred has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, a distinction that no other actor in the history of cinema shares.

At 42, John was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From Route 1, take the exit for Route 60 and follow it west for a mile to Route 99. Turn left and then make an immediate left into the cemetery.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn right at the fifth paved drive, and immediately stop. The Cazale marker is the tall-ish soapstone-colored one along the road on your left.

APRIL 3, 1904 – JANUARY 4, 1999

In a public service announcement that aired on the first-ever Earth Day in 1971, Iron Eyes Cody paddled his canoe up a polluted stream past a belching smokestack and walked to the edge of a busy highway strewn with trash. As the camera moved in for a closeup, a single tear rolled down his cheek as a narrator said, “People start pollution, and people can stop it.”

That tear proved to be more eloquent than any words, and viewers were moved to dedicate themselves to preserving the beauty of the American landscape. The ad is still remembered by millions and was recently named one of the best commercials of all time. For Iron Eyes, “the crying Indian,” the spot proved to be a career zenith and it alone lent him more notoriety than did his 60 years of acting work in almost a hundred Westerns.

But as Iron Eyes gained celebrity and his brethren swarmed to champion his Native American roots, a petty issue nagged: Iron Eyes, it turned out, wasn’t an Indian after all.

Instead, his true heritage lay in Kaplan, Louisiana, where records at Holy Rosary Catholic Church confirm he was baptized Espera DeCorti, the second son of Italian immigrants who toiled as replacements for freed slaves. Around 1925, Espera—or Oscar, as everyone called him—and two brothers struck out for California. They changed their surname to Cody, and Oscar “turned 100 percent Indian,” as his half-sister May Abshire put it. “He had his mind all the time on the movies.” Even as a youth, she recalled, Oscar would dress up as an Indian and lead neighborhood boys in outdoor games. “He always said he wanted to be an Indian. If he could find something that looked Indian, he’d put it on.”

The Iron Eyes Indian guise became a comfortable escape from his unsettling past and proved to be a ticket to Hollywood fame besides. But his was not a short-lived masquerade, or one that was donned and doffed whenever expedient. As Iron Eyes Cody, he seldom left home without his beaded moccasins, buckskin jacket, and braided wig; he married an Indian woman, Bertha Parker, and adopted two Indian boys. He spoke of how his Cree Indian mother and Cherokee father raised him in Oklahoma and he generously pledged time and money to Native American causes.

For their part, the Native American community accepted the plain evidence that Iron Eyes was not an Indian, but they continued to honor him, pointing out that his charitable deeds trumped his non-Indian heritage. But Iron Eyes never made apologies. “You can’t prove it,” he said. “All I know is that I’m just another Indian.”

After a series of strokes, he died at 94 and rests at Hollywood Forever in Hollywood, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
This cemetery is easy to find at 6000 Santa Monica Blvd., just west of Highway 101.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
There are a number of famous people residing at Hollywood Forever, and the cemetery encourages visitors. They
sell a guidebook in the flower shop, and even just a simple map of the grounds will set you back a sawbuck. But you won’t need those.

Enter the cemetery, turn right after the information booth, then make a left and stop in front of the Hollywood Forever Mausoleum (sometimes referred to as the Abbey of Psalms), which is the huge building on your right. Walk into the mausoleum and turn right into the Sanctuary of Memories hallway. Iron Eyes is three-fourths of the way down this hall, on the left-hand side in the third row from the floor, at number 3301.

JULY 13, 1928 – JUNE 29, 1978

From 1965 to 1971 Bob Crane played Colonel Hogan on
Hogan’s Heroes
, an improbably popular television comedy set in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. It featured a wily group of World War II prisoners who each week outsmarted their German captors, Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz.

Before
Hogan’s Heroes
, Bob had been a drummer with the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and a radio disc jockey, but after the show’s cancellation he turned to dinner theater. His new travel schedule enabled him to pursue his desperate sexual compulsion on a more or less full-time basis, and Bob slept with hundreds of women, recording the encounters in still photography and then, once the technology was available, on videotape. That extravagantly promiscuous and meticulously documented sex life seems to have, at the least, been a contributing factor to his death, and his subsequent tabloid notoriety has eclipsed his rerun celebrity.