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How to Visit Hillside Memorial Park
- 1). Head to the main entrance of the cemetery at 6001 West Centinela Avenue, in Culver City, California. Hillside is pretty hard to miss. It's on the east side of the San Diego Freeway and is dominated by a lofty monument that looks like a fancy water tower, but is in fact dedicated to the memory of Al Jolson. The cemetery is open Sunday to Friday from 8:30am to 4:30pm..
- 2). Go just past the mortuary and chapel and hang a left and you'll see a long line of outdoor "rooms." Turn in at Love. Go southwest in Love and into the triangular Alcove of Love. Here you'll see mobster Meyer "Mickey" Cohen at A-217 and Moe Howard of the Three Stooges at C-233. Retrace your steps, turn right outside Love and right again between Love and the Chapel. You'll find yourself in the Court of Dedication, just in front of the Alcove of Dedication. Here, next to a tree, at Block 2, plot 72, space 4B , is the grave of Sorrell Booke--"Boss Hogg" from "The Dukes of Hazzard."
- 3). Retrace your steps again and head out to Memorial drive and follow the curve to the right or northwest. Take the first road to the left, then turn left again onto Mount Zion Way. To your right on the north side is the Canaan and Canaan Crypts section. In Plot 8.4 in the Wasserman Family Estate of Canaan, you'll see the grave of legendary Hollywood mogul and MCA founder Lew Wasserman. Warner Brothers animator Isadore 'Friz' Freeling--a name you'll no doubt remember from countless Saturday morning cartoons--is in Canaan Section E-249.
- 4). Turn westward on Mount Zion Way and on the right in Mount of Olives, Block 5 is actor Vic Morrow, star of "Combat!," who was decapitated in a freak accident while filming "Twilight Zone: The Movie." Sixties political activist and Yippie Jerry Rubin is located at Mount of Olives, 14-466-3. Now turn back around and head east, turn right onto the first road--the one you were on earlier--and turn left and left again onto Circle Drive. Follow this around to the back or east side of the cemetery, then turn right onto Knoll Drive and follow it around to the left until you get to the front of the Mausoleum and the Al Jolson Memorial and Waterfall. The Memorial is at the top of the hill and consists of a dome with the image of Moses. The dome is held up by a circle of columns and covers Jolson's black stone sarcophagus. A statue of Jolson is nearby, while the waterfall runs down the hill. The story goes that the owner of Hillside had wanted to attract more customers and figured he needed a big name tenant to do that, so he approached Jolson and promised him the elaborate monument if he agreed to be buried there.
- 5). Enter the Mausoleum on the east side, pass through the circular entrance hall and into the courtyard in back. Comedian George Jessel and "Fugitive" star David Janssen are out here--Janssen in the black crypt down at S 16, and Jessel four crypts above him at 516. Continue going east and back inside, and turn right, left and right into the Hall of Graciousness. Bug-eyed comic Eddie Cantor has a crypt to the left, while further down, also to the left, is the large black sarcophagus of Jack Benny. Turn right, walk down the corridor a bit, then right again and in the Columbarium of Hope, 513, is the niche of comic Allan Sherman, best-known for the song "'Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh." Go back into the corridor, make a left at Jack Benny and at the end of the Hall of Graciousness turn right and go outdoors. Here on the left is a row of outdoor rooms with glass doors. The last room on the left has "LANDON" on the back wall, and next to it the crypt of Michael Landon, star of "Bonanza", "Little House on the Prairie" "Highway to Heaven."
- 6). Walk straight ahead, turn left, then right and you'll pass the crypts of make-up experts Max Factor Sr. and Jr. at U-112. The wall here then slants away to the southeast and here you'll find author Irving Wallace at Isaiah V 136, baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg at Isaiah V 140 and singer and longtime talk-show host Dinah Shore at Isaiah V 147. North of this, out in the Lawn Crypts, you'll find "Bonanza" star Lorne Greene at 5-800-8B. Producer and character actor Sheldon Leonard is a few spaces to the right of Greene, buried under his full name, Sheldon Leonard Bershad.
- 7). Proceed around to the front or east end of the Mausoleum, follow Knoll Drive southeast, then turn right onto Circle Drive. Two-time Oscar winner and notorious memoirist Shelley Winters is buried to the right at Hillside Slope, Block 11, Plot 358, grave 8. Off to the left is Acacia Gardens. At the end of one of the blocks of crypts you'll see a mural of a rabbi. Facing the mural, turn right and on the left hand corner at MM-#354-B is comedian Milton Berle.
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