Where Are They Buried? (39 page)

Ed died of heart failure at 73 and is interred at the Ferncliffe Mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-87, take Exit 7 in Ardsley and follow Route 9A North for 1¼ miles. Then, at the traffic light, turn right onto Secor Road and Ferncliffe is a short distance ahead on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter Ferncliffe at the first entrance, bear left and park toward the left-hand side of the main mausoleum. Enter the mausoleum through the front bronze doors and turn
left, right, left, left, and right. Then go to the end of the last hall and Ed’s crypt is along the wall near the elevator.

JANUARY 24, 1943 – AUGUST 9, 1969

Sharon Tate was a Texas homecoming queen who aspired to be a movie actress. After a number of insignificant appearances in film and television, Sharon landed the more visible role of Jennifer North in 1967’s
Valley of the Dolls
and gave a breakthrough performance. By the time of her marriage to the director Roman Polanski the following year, Sharon’s star was on the rise.

At her Los Angeles estate one warm summer evening, while Roman was away finishing a project in London, an eight-months pregnant Sharon and her four houseguests, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steve Parent, and Jay Sebring, were stabbed, shot, beaten, and strangled to death by unknown assailants. The murder scene was particularly gruesome: Cryptic expressions had been written on the walls in the victims’ blood, and a rope fastened around Sharon’s neck snaked through the bloody pools.

Not surprisingly, the murders made headlines but, before authorities were able to even to catch their balance, the killers struck again the following night, slaughtering grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in equally grisly fashion. Hysteria gripped Los Angeles, sales of guard dogs and home alarms boomed, and, though a number of theories for the seven apparently motiveless murders were put forward, it later turned out that the actual motive was even more grotesque than, perhaps, the murders themselves.

Charles Manson was a deranged, self-styled guru who presided over a gaggle of equally troubled disciples at his squatters’ manor, an isolated and abandoned movie ranch in the desert mountains. Through some perverse twist of illogic, Manson came to believe that a kind of apocalyptic racial war in which black men would prevail and oversee the demise of every white was imminent. While the conflict raged, however, Manson and his “family” would be living safely inside the earth, only to emerge and seize power from “the black man” to rule the world.

Manson was obsessed with this vision. The only other thing that intrigued him equally was the Beatles because, as Manson considered himself the fifth angel, Jesus Christ, the Beatles were the other four angels. In 1969 the Beatles released what became known as the
White Album
. (How much of a clearer signal could they send Manson?) The recording was interpreted by Manson as a message from his angels that the time for the
race war was nigh, and he adopted the title of one of its feature songs, “Helter Skelter,” as the name for his imagined Armageddon. In his mind, the Helter Skelter war was to be initiated by indiscriminate killings of whites by blacks, but when the blacks failed to act, Manson became frustrated and decided it was his responsibility to get things moving.

To that end, Manson handpicked a few of his apostles and instructed them to select a house within a distinctive neighborhood and massacre its white occupants, while making it somehow look like the crime was committed by blacks.

Manson and four of his followers were convicted of the murders and sentenced to death. When California abolished its death penalty, their sentences were changed to life terms. Every few years they are each eligible to apply for parole, though to date they’ve been repeatedly denied it.

As for Sharon, she was 26 at her death and now resides at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-405, take Slauson Avenue east for ½ mile. The cemetery is on the left at #5835.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery, turn left, and start up the hill. One hundred yards on the left is the Grotto Lawn and an altar and to the left of the altar is another level, St. Ann’s Garden. Sharon’s grave is in that garden, third row from the top.

JANUARY 6, 1914 – FEBRUARY 6, 1991

Beginning his life as Muzyad Yakhoob, Danny Thomas was an enduring television entertainer whose comedic talents were surpassed only by his shrewd production activities and his well-known philanthropy. He began his career as the stand-up comic Amos Jacobs, developing his storytelling shtick into a familiar routine of lengthy narratives peppered with a blend of Irish, Yiddish, and Italian witticisms. Quite often these routines tended toward sentimentality, only to be rescued in the end by what he called the “treacle cutter,” a one-liner designed to undercut the mushy sentiments with irony.

After a USO tour with Marlene Dietrich, Danny was cast in his first film,
The Unfinished Dance
. He refused to surgically alter his trademark nose, a decision that may have contributed to the short-lived nature of his film career, but he performed to good reviews
for his appearance in 1951’s
The Jazz Singer
, and a costarring role in
I’ll See You in My Dreams
.

Meanwhile, Danny anxiously pursued a television series. He soon got one,
Four Star Review
, but its fast-paced sketches were ill suited to his expository style. In 1953 Danny came up with the autobiographical premise of
Make Room for Daddy
, which revolved around the absentee-father dilemmas of a traveling singer-comic named Danny Williams. The show was a domestic comedy that incorporated Danny’s singing and storytelling talents and it became one of television’s most successful comedies, remaining on the air until its cast left to pursue new avenues in 1964.

Danny had an enormous impact upon the growing medium of television; he invented the concept of a “spinoff” series and his off-camera stand-up routines for the studio audience were imitated and institutionalized as the now commonplace “warm-up.” While starring on
Make Room for Daddy
, Danny met Sheldon Leonard and together they established Thomas-Leonard Productions. The powerhouse production company became responsible for a multitude of successful series including
The Andy Griffith Show
,
The Dick van Dyke Show
,
Gomer Pyle,
and, in 1965,
The Danny Thomas Hour
.

In the 1970s semiretirement from television production allowed time for live appearances, and Danny traveled the globe to perform in front of longtime fans. He formed an act with Milton Berle and Sid Caesar appropriately called “The Legends of Comedy” and, in 1990, they filmed a movie,
Side By Side
.

And of course, Danny was renowned the world over for his humanitarianism. While his television career skyrocketed in the 1950s, Danny assembled fund-raisers and benefits for a new children’s hospital that would become his legacy. In February 1962, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital opened in Memphis, and Danny told the crowd that had gathered for the dedication, “If I were to die this moment, I’d know why I was born.” For the remainder of his life, he organized and performed at fund-raising events for St. Jude, a world leader in research and treatment of childhood disease and, in 1984, was presented the Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts.

Danny died of a heart attack at 77 and now rests in his own Memorial Garden at his beloved St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
From I-40, take Exit 1B and follow the signs on Danny Thomas Boulevard to the hospital. Just inside the gate, on the left past the guard shack, is the beautiful courtyard that contains his tomb.

The act that was to become television’s
The Three Stooges
started in 1922 as a vaudeville act. In 1930 came the trio’s big-screen debut in
Soup to Nuts
and, four years later, the Stooges were offered a contract by Columbia to make their knockabout-style, slapstick comedy shorts. They made about 200 in all, setting a record for the longest-running comedy series in Hollywood. Their humor, tasteless and repetitive, was punctuated by pokes, grunts, screeches, and various bits of bedlam, and it was also liberatingly funny. Moe was the know-nothing, know-it-all leader who committed cheerful acts of mayhem against his partners that magically never seemed to harm them; Larry was the innocent with a porcupine hairdo who just wanted to get along; and Curly was the bald, round, wacky, “nyuck-nyuck,” wild man with a hilarious habit of reducing to rubble everything he touched.

The team, with four different Curlys over the years, enjoyed a quarter-century of success before finally being released by Columbia in 1958. But shortly afterwards, a whole new generation discovered the trio and, in the twilight of their lives, the Stooges were hotter than they had ever been. A cult of sorts was spawned, complete with marathon film festivals, fan clubs, lunch boxes, and coffee mugs, and the Stooges cashed in with personal appearances and a few feature films. Failing health finally shut down their act but the shows are in endless syndication on television.

Though the most familiar incarnation of the trio consists of Larry Fine, Moe Howard, and his brother Jerome Howard as Curly, the part of Curly was also played by Moe’s older brother, Shemp, by Joe Besser, and finally, by Joe DeRita.

JUNE 19, 1897 – MAY 4, 1975

In 1922 Moe, his brother Shemp, and friend Ted Healy ad-libbed a hilarious stage act that was, though they didn’t know it, the first incarnation of the Three Stooges. Moe later sold real estate for a time (would you buy a house from this man?) and, as the only Stooge with any business experience, he handled all of the business particulars for the group.

After completing his memoirs in May of 1975, Moe succumbed to lung cancer at 77. He’s lying quite peacefully at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

DIRECTIONS TO CEMETERY OF MOE:
This cemetery borders the east side of I-405 at the Centinela Avenue exit, which is immediately north of the La Tijera Boulevard exit.

DIRECTIONS TO MOE’S GRAVE:
Enter the park, make a left after the flagpole, then drive about 100 yards and stop. Walk down the stairs of the Court of Love, which is on your left. Across the court is the Alcove of Love where Moe rests in Crypt C-233.

OCTOBER 5, 1902 – JANUARY 24, 1975

Before becoming the happy-go-lucky Stooge, Larry was a professional violinist. Keeping a low profile, always trying to keep the peace, and almost never delivering funny lines, he was considered insignificant by some fans, but it’s doubtful the show would have gone anywhere as
The Two Stooges
. When Larry suffered a stroke in 1970, the Stooges’ act finally ended forever.

Larry died five years later at 72 from complications of his stroke, and he lies at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

DIRECTIONS TO CEMETERY OF LARRY:
From Highway 2, take the San Fernando Road exit and turn northwest. After a mile, make a right onto Glendale Avenue and the park’s entrance is immediately to the right.

DIRECTIONS TO GRAVE OF LARRY:
Stop at the booth, get a map, and drive up to the Freedom Mausoleum. Walk in the front entrance, make a left, and go down the stairs. At the bottom of the
stairs, turn right and then right again. The last hall on the right is the Sanctuary of Liberation. It’s where you’ll find Larry’s crypt.

OCTOBER 22, 1903 – JANUARY 18, 1952

Replacing his brother Shemp in 1932, Jerome shaved his head for the mundane purpose of looking starkly different from Moe and Larry, and he became the first Curly with that look. He constantly forgot his lines and his “woo-woo-woo-woo” trademark was originally an improvisation for when he was stuck for words. It stuck.

During the filming of the Stooges’ 97th short in May 1946, Jerome suffered a stroke while on the set. He recovered enough to get married again and have a daughter but he didn’t return to acting. After a few more strokes, he died in 1952. At 48, Jerome was buried at Home of Peace Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

DIRECTIONS TO CEMETERY OF JEROME AND SHEMP:
Just west of the intersection of I-5 and I-710, Home of Peace is at 4334 Whittier Blvd.

DIRECTIONS TO JEROME’S GRAVE:
Enter the park, bear right, take the next right and the next left. Stop on this drive about 100 feet before it makes an abrupt left. On the curb to the right are markings for the Western Jewish Institute. Jerome’s stone can be found five rows back.