Los Angeles Travelogue Part Two: Ghosts of the Past

photo: John Wilson

It’s probably unavoidable to have one’s vacation in Los Angeles not be influenced by the movies. In the previous column, I mentioned the connection between The Dresden Room and Swingers, the film that I’m convinced lured as many hopefuls to Los Angeles in the 1990s as any showbiz fable did during the 1940s. I don’t know if the genesis of Swingers coffee shop had anything to do with the movie of the same name, but its retro location and attitude wouldn’t be more appropriate if it did. At Swingers I fell with all the reverence of my western upbringing upon their huevos rancheros, a good plate of which is as challenging to find in New York City as good pimento cheese, unless you make them yourself. I liked Swingers so much I even bought the t-shirt.

Swingers is housed in a retro hotel in the Fairfax district of Hollywood. Fairfax is a neighborhood of enviable bungalows and vintage furniture shops with which to appoint them. Followers of Top Chef might recognize the neighborhood as home to Jar, Suzanne Tracht's restaurant. But Swingers and Jar are not Fairfax’s only connection with good food. For, in a distance so short you can commit the heresy of walking it from Swingers, at the famous corner of Third and Fairfax awaits the Farmers Market.

The Farmers Market is a true Los Angeles legend. For eighty years, this landmark has been as central to Los Angeles as the movies themselves. When Arthur Fremont Gilmore initially purchased these 256 acres in the 1870s, they were a dusty tract of the Wild West that he intended to use to raise dairy cattle. However, the land turned out to be oil-rich, and by the turn of the century, the dairy farm had become the Gilmore Oil Company. Gilmore Oil went on to become the largest such operation in the west. In 1934, Arthur's son Earl Bell (E.B.) was approached with the idea of using some of the land to create a village square. The Farmers Market, as it was envisioned, would be a place where local farmers and artisans could share their work with the area's increasingly urban populace that had moved there, by and large, to work in the movies.

The Farmers Market is not a farmer’s market in the traditional sense. It is an enclosed area where a variety of storefronts and food counters dispense good eats and drinks, alongside shops selling everything from scented candles to vintage ephemera. Among the treasures under the cantilever are a French market with an enviable selection of mustards and flavored syrups, a store devoted to a mind-boggling and mouth-searing selection of hot sauce, a counter devoted to soda pop, and a lunch counter where they crown the lunch plates with half-peaches just like Mildred Pierce did.

photo: Eric Diesel

At the back of Farmers Market, on the other side of a corridor which houses real working phone booths and which leads to the adjacent carny clamor of The Grove, you will find Bob’s Doughnuts. Your first (not to mention your many, many subsequent) bite of a Bob’s doughnut reveals why these doughnuts are the stuff of legend. Your doughnut arrives in a waxen envelope, just as doughnuts were dispensed to working men from wagons ages ago. The doughnut is perfectly textured marvel: the dough is poised just exactly between airy and substantial, while the glaze is balanced just exactly between sticky and sweet. Although the best meal I had in L.A. was at Beso, the single best thing I ate was a Bob’s glazed doughnut.

Bob’s doughnuts are not the only reason to love the Farmers Market. Any foodie or traveler knows the truth of the adage to eat where the locals eat. Another thing everyone said would be true about L.A. and was: locals forage at the Farmers Market. Not only can you buy groceries there – Huntington Meats & Sausage is a marvel – but there are numerous vendors of prepared food. At Phil’s deli, we shared counter space with a gaggle of dudes from a nearby apartment complex, bonding over perfectly rendered old-fashioned patty melts worthy of a Woolworth’s lunch counter. The woman in line with me at Bennett's Ice Cream promised with a surety born from extensive research that the Cabernet Sauvignon sorbet was worth the wait. She was right. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to what I'm told is the 1930s movie set of Du-Par's for a meal – oh well, next visit.

That special vibe in the Farmers Market is the sense of history that permeates the place. Perhaps because it’s devoted to food and not centered around movies, the nostalgia evoked by the Farmers Market remains charming without tripping into fantasy. Yes, the whitewash, the handmade wooden produce carts, the food pavilions and retro storefronts evoke the Market’s pivotal role in Los Angeles history. But it’s the simple open-air camaraderie that makes the Farmers Market a lovely, old-fashioned experience, and one we liked so much we visited multiple times.

Another thing everyone said would be true about L.A. and was: you will see celebrities. As a New Yorker, I’m used to that; in L.A., our first such encounters occurred at Swingers and the Farmers Market. Celebrity encounters are odd. You cannot plan on them, and the only gracious way to respond to such a sighting is to behave as if you didn’t notice. Out of respect I don’t want to gossip about who we saw (though I will report that what they were doing was eating). But if you are hell-bent on sighting the famous, there is a collection of locations in Los Angeles where I can guarantee you will find them.

It was inconceivable that we would visit Los Angeles without visiting some of the city’s cemeteries. As anyone who engages in it knows, haunting graveyards is an entire sub-culture, but its devotees in Los Angeles raise the practice to a level of accomplishment I’ve encountered nowhere else save Salem, Massachusetts. It was also inconceivable that we would embark upon our first Hollywood cemetery tour without our friend Lissa. We’ve had a lot of adventures with Lissa -- such as our first nighter's tour of Old Hollywood -- but none would be truer to our long and wonderful friendship than an entire day of indulging the ultimate expression of film fandom: visiting celebrity graves.

photo: John Wilson

You enter Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park through a cluster of office buildings in Westwood – off the Hollywood track, but easy enough to locate. I have since heard from many Los Angelinos that this is their favorite cemetery to visit, and I can see why. It is small and immaculate, with wonderful architecture and landscaping that place it aesthetically between a picnic grounds and an English garden. As it should be, the beauty and peacefulness of the grounds are expressions of the sacred duty of preserving memories. Every stone tells the story of a life, and it is important to remember that all lives matter. Most of the plaques and gravestones are marked with carvings and notations about parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, husbands and wives. Another thing everyone said would be true about L.A. and was: no matter where you are or what you’re doing, the movie biz is never far away. Many stones indicate the final resting place of costumers, makeup artists, hair stylists, editors, electricians, camera operators, producers, publicists, musicians, writers, cooks, secretaries and, touchingly, fans.

From the marquee, Marilyn Monroe is interred here, always attended by the urn of fresh red roses that her legend dictates. Also true to legend -- and, one senses, just as she wants it -- her wall marker is punctuated by lipstick kisses from fans. Just down the open-air corridor is Dean Martin’s resting place with, as you’d expect, just as many kisses. Pierce Brothers is also the site of Farrah Fawcett’s grave – Lissa flipped her hair and jiggled in memoriam. Further va-voom interred at Pierce Brothers includes Eva Gabor, Dorothy Stratten and Bettie Page. But, after Marilyn’s, the most visited grave? Natalie Wood.

From Westwood, with its cluster of office buildings that were the closest to a New York vibe we encountered, Captain John braved the Los Angeles freeway system to pilot us back to Hollywood and the central stop on our tour of last respects: Hollywood Forever. Sprawling across sixty acres in the shadow of the Paramount water tower, this cemetery, founded in 1899, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Aside from the hundreds of film luminaries interred here, it played an another integral role in the birth and growth of the movies: Paramount Studios was built on part of the cemetery's original land. Hence the watchful eye of the water tower.

Another thing everyone said would be true about L.A. and was: go to Hollywood Forever. We had seen The Young and the Dead on tv, so a visit to Hollywood Forever was a foregone conclusion. Hollywood Forever is the splashy blockbuster to Pierce Brothers' message picture. There are well-attended movie nights here during the summer, and well-respected Dia de la Muerte activities in the autumn. But there is no ritual in Hollywood Forever -- or for that matter in Hollywood, forever -- as timeless and moving as visiting Rudolph Valentino's grave.

When the movies were young -- not quite an infant, but literally just about to start talking -- there was no star more beloved by his audience than Rudolph Valentino. That audience was primarily women, to whom the dashing man was a romantic ideal, the perfect image for the screen onto which they projected their dreams. Upon his early and unexpected death in 1926, over 100,000 mourners crowded the streets near the New York City funeral home where his body was held -- a number so high that police and the press considered the crowd a riot. Countless additional fans lined the tracks of the train that moved Valentino's body in state back to California. Valentino arrived in Los Angeles to an estimated 80,000 mourners, with an airplane showering the processional with rose petals from above.

photo: Eric Diesel

Unfortunately, Valentino, who was still young when death struck, had not provided for his own eternity. June Mathis, a friend and colleague from Valentino's film career and a name recognizable to fans and students of silent cinema, and her husband owned two crypts in the Cathedral Mausoleum at Hollywood Forever. They arranged to use one of the crypts for Valentino's body until a suitable Valentino monument could be built on the cemetery grounds. But Mathis herself died within a year and her husband sold the Valentino crypt to the Valentino estate. Mathis is, in fact, buried next to Valentino, and along with the Lady in Black, who is interred on the grounds, is Valentino's most faithful companion.

Valentino's crypt is at the rear back of the Cathedral Mausoleum, marked by a simple plaque attended by flowers and bathed in rays of sun slanting through stained glass. I was not prepared for how moving an experience visiting this grave would be. Valentino was said to believe very strongly in the spirit world, as both the son of a small European village and a man of mystery and dash. I always detect a touch of the occult in his screen presence -- who's to say that this mystery doesn't transcend the screen? After all, movies are moments frozen in time. Who's to say that the actors' spirits aren't frozen with them?

Stepping back into the sunlight, you pass the peacocks fittingly attending the entrance to the mausoleum where Valentino resides. A few feet away, a cluster of swans nudges you towards grandiose steps, framed by palms and leading down to a terrazzo. From here, you encounter a reflecting pool that runs nearly the length of the mausoleum's outside wall, culminating in the white marble dais that is the fittingly theatrical resting place of Valentino's contemporary and some would say rival: Douglas Fairbanks.

Up the hillock behind you, you will find additional residents. Positioned in line with Fairbanks, Johnny Ramone's marker is a statue of him playing onstage. Here Lissa paid homage. Hattie McDaniel's marker is ultra-modern in coral marble. But the showstopper is Tyrone Power's marker, which is a white marble bench attended by comedy and tragedy scrollwork, and every bit as elegant and moving as this leading man's screen presence is. Simpler markers in the grass include the legendary costume designer Adrian, whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, as were the names of nearby residents Jayne Mansfield, Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray. Of these graves, one of the most moving is John Huston's -- slightly grown over and ever attended by a bottle of Bushmills.

photo: John Wilson

Movies give us memories, so perhaps that's why movie star grave sites beckon. As an audience we connect with an actor's screen presence, and the connection does not fade over time. However, it is anchored in time, for even if they are set in the distant past or the far-flung future, movies, like any expressive medium, always reflect the times they happened in. How fitting that while we were in Los Angeles, an important event in film history occurred: the release of a restored version of Fritz Lang's silent masterpiece Metropolis, containing 25 minutes of original footage whose existence, location and restoration has long been a holy grail in filmdom.

This film is an artistic document of how this artist at this time envisioned the future. Through the machinations of the film industry at that time -- the same film industry that was building studios on cemetery land -- numerous deletions and re-edits resulted in the alteration of Lang's vision. Though die-hards believed, many thought that the original excised footage, on delicate stock, must have long since vanished forever. How fitting that the technology of the world of the future, that is in turn part of what Lang was discussing in Metropolis, has played a role in returning this film to the closest version of its creator's vision since its release over 80 years ago.

Back in Fairfax, the silent screen has a home in Hollywood forever in the Silent Movie Theatre. Another thing everyone said would be true about L.A. and was: communities gather around places. Hollywood Forever, with its famous residents, film screenings and gift shop, is one such. The Silent Movie Theatre is another. Friends who reside in Los Angeles have told me that, aside from film programming both inventive and curatorial, the theatre hosts well-attended cookouts. What a lovely idea: bonding with your fellow audience over burgers and moving pictures. Wherever you are -- grabbing a bite at the Farmers Market; sliding into a booth at Swingers after a day of visiting cemeteries -- the past has never really departed in this corner of L.A.