on the site is often used as a music venue The only cemetery actually in Hollywood, Hollywood Forever was founded in 1899 on and named "Hollywood Cemetery" by F. W. Samuelson and (first name unknown) Lombard. In 1897, the two men were the owners of a tract of land near Hollywood in
Los Angeles County. In that year, they—along with Mrs. M. W. Gardner of
Santa Monica, Joseph D. Rodford, Gilbert Smith, and Thomas R. Wallace—formed a corporation known as the "Hollywood Cemetery Association". The cemetery sold large tracts to
Paramount Pictures, which, with
RKO Pictures, bought by 1920. Part of the remaining land was set aside for the Beth Olam Cemetery, within the grounds of Hollywood Forever, a dedicated
Jewish burial ground for members of the local Jewish community. Jules Roth (1900–1998) was a convicted
felon and millionaire. In 1939, Roth bought a 51% stake in the cemetery, then known as Hollywood Memorial Park, which is the interment site of his parents. He used the money from the cemetery's operations to pay for his personal luxuries, and by the 1980s, the cemetery began to show signs of neglect and disrepair. Actress
Hattie McDaniel, best known for her role as Mammy in the epic movie
Gone with the Wind (for which she became the first African American to win an
Academy Award) had expressed a desire to be interred at Hollywood Memorial Park. At the time of McDaniel's death in 1952, Hollywood Memorial, like other cemeteries, was
segregated. Despite McDaniel's expressed wish, Roth would not allow the actress to be interred in the cemetery, as it was not desegregated until 1959, seven years after her death. In 1999 (the 47th anniversary of McDaniel's death), the cemetery's new owners Tyler and
Brent Cassity dedicated a
cenotaph in her honor at a prime location south of Sylvan Lake. In July 1974, the
crematory was shut down following the cremation of singer
Cass Elliot. According to cemetery grounds supervisor Daniel Ugarte, the crematory was in such disrepair that bricks began falling in around Elliot's remains. The crematory remained closed for twenty-eight years until it was repaired and re-opened on November 28, 2002 with the cremation of an unidentified man. The first cremation to be conducted at the cemetery since the incident, just under a year before the official reopening, was that of
George Harrison on November 29, 2001. By the 1980s, the California Cemetery Board began receiving regular complaints from the families of people interred there. Family members complained that the grounds were not kept up and were disturbed to hear stories about vandalism on the cemetery grounds. The heirs of well-known makeup artist
Max Factor (who was interred in the Beth Olam Mausoleum in 1938) moved his and other family members remains to
Hillside Memorial Park in
Culver City after the mausoleum sustained water damage that discolored the walls. In 1986, a Los Angeles woman and 1,000 other plot owners filed a class action lawsuit against the cemetery for invasion of privacy after they discovered that Roth allowed employees of
Paramount Pictures to park in the cemetery while the studio's parking structure was undergoing construction. In the late 1980s, Jules Roth sold two lawns totaling that were facing the
Santa Monica Boulevard front of the property. It was reported that the property was paid for with cash. Those lawns are now strip malls that house, among other businesses, an auto parts store and a laundromat. After the
1994 Northridge earthquake, Roth could not afford to repair the roofs and other damage the earthquake caused to crypts. By that time, Hollywood Memorial was no longer making money and only generated revenue by charging families $500 for disinterments. In 1997, Roth became ill after he fell in his
Hollywood Hills home. He had been embroiled in a scandal regarding another cemetery he owned, Lincoln Memorial Park, in
Carson, California in which hundreds of families came forward with a class-action suit over poor record keeping and missing bodies. Several months before his death, Roth was bedridden and disoriented, and during this time, his will was changed to provide for his business associates and maid, who were the only witnesses to his signature. His relatives, who were listed in his previous will, were written out. Roth died on January 4, 1998, and he was interred next to his wife, Virginia, his father, and his mother in the Cathedral Mausoleum. After Roth's death, the cemetery's subsequent owners Brent and Tyler Cassity, aka Tyo, LLC, discovered that the endowment care fund—meant to care for the cemetery in perpetuity—was missing about $9 million. investing millions in revitalizing the grounds and also offering documentaries about the deceased that are to be played in perpetuity on kiosks and are posted on the Web, as well as organizing tours to draw visitors. Music events take place in the cemetery as well. On June 14 and 15, 2011,
The Flaming Lips played at the cemetery in a two-night gig billed "Everyone You Know Someday Will Die", a lyric from their 2002 single "
Do You Realize??". The cemetery contained a
Confederate Monument, erected in 1925 and maintained by the
Long Beach chapter of the
United Daughters of the Confederacy until August 15, 2017. On August 17, 2013, electronic/industrial musician
Gary Numan recorded a live album at the cemetery during his Splinter World Tour. It was released on February 19, 2016. Also in 2013, Brent Cassity and his father, James Douglas Cassity, admitted guilt in a $600 million Ponzi scheme involving their control of National Prearranged Services, Inc. Brent Cassity was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison; James "Doug" Cassity was likewise sentenced to 9 years and 7 months. James Douglas Cassity died of natural causes in 2020, following his release by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in an effort to mitigate the spread of
COVID-19. Plans for the Gower Court Mausoleum, a 100-foot-tall mausoleum, began in 2014. A "highrise for the dead," two of the mausoleum's five floors sold out prior to its January 2025 opening. The mausoleum opened with capacity to house over 50,000 deceased, in crypts or niches. ==Cultural references==