Grand View via Glendale News-Press; Hollywood Forever via LA Weekly
The management at Hollywood Forever turned that cemetery around after a late-nineties bankruptcy and it thinks it can do the same at Glendale's Grand View Memorial Park, which has been troubled since 2005, when an investigation found that 4,000 bodies had been buried improperly. A class-action lawsuit followed, and the settlement requires that Grand View be sold. The state will have to approve any sale. Hollywood Forever has made a formal offer on the cemetery and says it has "a list of ideas" for making it profitable, according to the Glendale News-Press.
Paramount-adjacent Hollywood Forever is home to Otises, Chandlers, DeMilles, Fairbankses, and Ramones, but by 1998 it had gotten shabby--homeless people would set up hammocks on the grounds--and the owner was selling off unused pieces along Santa Monica Boulevard, according to a 2008 article in the New York Times.
That year, Tyler Cassity of Forever Enterprises bought the cemetery for $375,000, and soon the summer film series Cinespia was helping to pay for renovations and stained-glass ceiling repairs. A decade later, you have to take half a day off work to even get your blanket on the grass at a screening of "California Split."
· Troubled cemetery draws buyer interest [Glendale New-Press]
· Where Hollywood’s Stars Are Interred, but Live Forever on Screen [NYT]
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