TALES FROM THE CRYPT Take a final — and we do mean final — spin through the lives of the famous.

By Ed Leibowitz | Photography by Jake Michaels

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Officially opened in 1905, the cemetery sits on 2.5 square miles adjacent to the Westwood campus.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that the famous began to be buried here.

The crypt of crooner Dean Martin, which is inscribed: “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime””’

Legendary author Truman Capote and his dear friend Joanne Carson, the ex-wife of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, are buried together here. Their friendship was explored in Ryan Murphy’s FX limited series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

The crypt of Marilyn Monroe, one of the cemetery’s most visited

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The cemetery attracts its fair share of the mourning, the simply curious — and the occasional cyclist.

The landscape is understated, even by cemetery standards: There are no grand mausoleums or towering statuary. No 12-foot reflecting pool.

Finding the graves of the rich and famously departed can be a treasure hunt.

The humble, weather-worn marker for Eva Gabor, the famous Hungarian socialite and Green Acres actress.

Comedian Rodney Dangerfield, cracking one-liners to the end

Despite their tumultuous and fiery relationship, Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal are spending eternity together; the resting places of (clockwise) Billy Wilder, Merv Griffin and Jack Lemmon showcase the cemetery’s reputation for witty headstones.

(Left) The touching marker for singer and composer Mel Tormé; a fitting last tribute to comedian Don Knotts

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Beyond the famous, a resting place for the rest of us.

Modest markers note the lives of those whose names did not make a theater marquee or a film’s opening credits. More than a thousand people are buried in the cemetery.

Groucho Marx is actually buried elsewhere, but something he said resonates as you walk through the Westwood cemetery. “I intend to live forever,” he once quipped, “or die trying.”

The End

Credits:

Photography by Jake Michaels