Forest Lawn’s “life size replica” of Michelangelo’s Davidwas toppled from its pedestal and demolished, fig leaf and all, in the Sylmar earthquake of 1971. Another replica, sans fig leaf, installed a decade later fared no better. David was removed when ladies’ groups took exception to his full frontal nudity.
While Forest Lawn operates funeral parlors and flower shops in each of its locations, the sale of burial plots is still the core of its business. Medium-priced graves are now priced at $5,580 in the Vale of Faith to $10,900 in the Terrace of Brilliant Star; 15 percent is now added for perpetual care. Should you want something better, $27,000 will get you into the Terrace of Sunlit Skies, and for $31,000 you may join even more select company in the Garden of Honor (which features piped-in pop hymns, a feature that might make it, for some, their idea of perpetual purgatory). You may if you wish install an approved statue, but to do so you must buy four or more grave spaces.
The population of Forest Lawn, over 200,000 in 1961, has been augmented by new arrivals at the rate of 6,500 a year. On all sides one may see the entire cycle of burial unfolding before one’s eyes. There is a museum in Chicago containing an exhibit of hatching chicks; the unhatched eggs are in one compartment, those barely chipped in another, next the emerging baby chicks, and finally the fully hatched fledglings. The Forest Lawn scene is vaguely reminiscent of that exhibit. Here is a grass-green tarpaulin unobtrusively thrown over the blocked-out mound of earth removed to ready a grave site for a newcomer. Near it is a brilliant quilt of mixed orchids, gardenias, roses, and lilies of the valley, signifying a very recent funeral. Farther on, gardeners are shoveling away the faded remains of a similar floral display, possibly three or more days old. Between these are scores of flat bronze memorial plaques bearing the names of the old residents. In the distance, the group of people entering one of the churches could be either a wedding party or a funeral party; it’s hard to tell the difference at Forest Lawn.
Other sights to visit are the hourly showings of the Crucifixion(“largest oil painting in the world”) and a stained-glass reproduction of The Last Supper. Mrs. St. Johns says of the Dreamer, “In Missouriese, he had always been a sucker for stained glass.”
Behind the Hall of Crucifixion are the museum and gift shop. The purpose of the museum and the method used to assemble its contents are explained by Eaton in Comemoral. If a museum is established, people will become accustomed to visiting the cemetery for instruction, recreation, and pleasure. A museum can be started on a very small—in fact, minimal—scale, perhaps to begin with in just one room with just one statue. Once started, it will soon grow: “I speak from experience. People begin to donate things with their names attached, and bring their friends to see them on display.” The result of this novel approach to museology is an odd assortment of knick-knacks—old coins, copies of the shekels paid to Judas for his betrayal of Jesus, a bronze tablet inscribed with the Gettysburg Address, some suits of armor, Balinese carvings, Japanese scrolls, bits of jade, some letters by Longfellow, Dickens, etc., and lots more.
The museum received front-page publicity in the Los Angeles press in 1961 on the occasion of the Great Gem Robbery. With his enviable flair for showmanship, Dr. Eaton managed to turn the robbery and even the actual worthlessness of the “gems” to good account in a half-page advertisement in which he made one of the most touching appeals ever addressed to a jewel thief: “We feel that you cannot be professional thieves, or you would have known that neither the black opal named ‘The Pride of Australia’ nor the antique necklace could be marketed commercially. These two are valuable principally for their worth as antiques…. The emerald and diamond necklace has small retail value today, because the cut of the stones has been obsolete for many years, and it would be difficult to sell it except as an antique.” But it is when he speaks of the need to care for the black opal (named by whom “The Pride of Australia,” one wonders) that he is at his most affecting: “We do hope that you bathe it every few weeks in glycerin to prevent it from shattering.” Kidnappers! From the bottom of a mother’s heart I beg you to give my baby his daily cod-liver oil!
A deeper purpose for the maintenance of a museum in a cemetery is also explained by Dr. Eaton: “It has long been the custom of museums to sell photographs, post cards, mementos, souvenirs, etc.” The visitor is summoned to the gift shop (“while waiting for the next showing of the ‘Crucifixion’ ”) by one of those soft, deeply sincere voices that often boom out at one unexpectedly from the Forest Lawn loudspeaker system. Among the wares offered are salt and pepper shakers in the shape of some of the Forest Lawn statuary; the Builder’s Creed, printed on a piece of varnished paper and affixed to a rustic-looking piece of wood; paper cutters, cups and saucers, platters decorated with views of the cemetery; view holders with colored views of the main attractions. There is a foldout postcard with a long script message for the visitor rendered inarticulate by the wonders he has seen. It starts: “Dear———, Forest Lawn Memorial-Park has proved an inspiring experience,” and ends: “It was a visit we will long remember.” There is a large plastic walnut with a mailing label on which is printed “Forest Lawn Memorial-Park In A Nut Shell! Open me like a real nut… squeeze my sides or pry me open with a knife.” Inside is a miniature booklet with colored views of Forest Lawn. There is an ashtray of very shiny tin, stamped into the shape of overlapping twin hearts joined by a vermilion arrow. In one of the hearts is a raised picture of the entrance gates, done in brightest bronze and blue. In the other is depicted the Great Mausoleum, in bronze and scarlet with just a suggestion of trees in brilliant green. Atop the hearts is an intricate design of leaves and scrolls, in gold, green, and red; crowning all is a coat of arms, a deer posed against a giant sunflower, and a scroll with the words JAMAIS ARRIÈRE. Never in Arrears, perhaps.
Forest Lawn pioneered the current trend for cemeteries to own their own mortuary and flower shop, for convenient, one-stop shopping. The mortuary “is of English Tudor design, inspired by Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire, England. Its Class I, steel-reinforced concrete construction is finished in stone, half-timber and brick,” the guidebook says. There are twenty-one slumber rooms and a palatial casket room, with wares ranging in price from $325 (gray, cloth-covered wood flattop) to $25,000 (48-ounce bronze, protective lock, plush beige velvet interior).
The Forest Lawn board of trustees says of Hubert Eaton, “Today, Forest Lawn stands as an eloquent witness that the Builder kept faith with his soul.” It is to the official biography of Eaton, and to his own writings, that we must turn for a closer glimpse of that soul.
If a goal of art is the achievement of a synthesis between style and subject matter, it must be conceded that First Step, Up Toward Heaven: The Story of Dr. Eaton and Forest Lawnby Adela Rogers St. Johns is in its own way a work of art. Mrs. St. Johns is best known as one of the original sob sisters, a Hearst reporter in her youth and later editor of Photoplay, the first Hollywood fan magazine.
Dr. Eaton, apparently born under whichever star it is that guides a man to seek his fortune below the earth’s surface rather than above, started life as a mining engineer, and in short order acquired a gold mine in Nevada. He and his cousin Joe organized the Adaven Mining Company and built a company town named Bob. It was here in Bob that Dr. Eaton ran slap-bang into his first miracle—the first of many, it turns out. One night a group of union organizers (or, in Mrs. St. Johns’s words, “a gang of desperadoes bent on murder”) came threateningly up the hill towards the mine—no doubt, Eaton thought, armed with dynamite. “ ‘Unless God takes a hand,’ Hubert Eaton said, his voice cracking, ‘there’ll have to be bloodshed.’ The foreman beside him nodded grimly.”