The American Way of Death Revisited

by Jessica Mitford

  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 Lawn by 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.”

  Just when all seemed lost, the strains of “Home Sweet Home” suddenly filled the night air. This proved to be too much for the desperadoes; silently they slunk away back down the hill. “ ‘Looks like He took a hand,’ the foreman said grimly, wiping the tears from his cheeks unashamed. ‘We’d better give thanks, the way I see it,’ Eaton said.”

  From then on, miracles dogged the footsteps of Hubert Eaton. The next thing that happened to this Child of Destiny was that his mine failed. “That night Hubert Eaton spent longer on his knees, which he had been taught was the proper way to say his prayers, than usual. Since the earth was created for man’s use, a man had a right to ask God to help him locate the vein of gold that’d been in his own mine.” To no avail, however. Fortunately for Eaton, Destiny had other plans for him this time. He had lost a mere million in the mining venture, a trifle indeed compared with what lay in store for him in future years as he pursued his Dream. And it is to the site of the Dream that we are now led.

  The year was 1917; the place, a run-down, weed-infested cemetery called Forest Lawn. Hubert Eaton, as he stood regarding this scene, was trying to make up his mind whether or not to accept a job as manager of Forest Lawn. “If you suggest to Dr. Eaton, in his late seventies, that Destiny
led him there, he will give you an I’m-from-Missouri look and say gruffly, ‘There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation, does there?’ ” In any event, he went back to his hotel room and there wrote out his vision of a future Forest Lawn: “filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statues, cheerful flowers, noble memorial architecture … where memorialization of loved ones—in sculptured marble and pictorial glass—shall be encouraged.… This is the Builder’s Dream; this is the Builder’s Creed.”

  The Memorial-Park idea was born. Thus it has come about that today Forest Lawn is “a garden that seems next door to Paradise itself, an incredibly beautiful place, a place of infinite loveliness and eternal peace.”

  Dr. Eaton lived by certain moral precepts learned in childhood at his daddy’s knee. They are: Perseverance Conquers All; A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place; Anything That Is Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well; and Let the Chips Fall Where They May. In the course of pursuing his Dream, he also developed a sort of informal business partnership with God. For “unless God was with him, this was a pretty lonesome business.” As he told a Rotary Club meeting, “Christ in Business is the greatest thing that can happen to business. We must in return give business to carry on for Christ.” In his own bluff, Missouri way, he interprets the New Testament, including his Partner in his plans, at every turn: “No, he could not see anything in the Teaching against abundance.… Everybody wasn’t called upon to don the brown robe and sandals of St. Francis.”

  Eaton’s search for art treasures with which to adorn Forest Lawn led him to Europe on several occasions, and was frequently aided by divine intervention. There was some difficulty getting permission from the Vatican authorities to have a copy made of Michelangelo’s Moses, but a “Man who could tell the Red Sea to stand still so the Children of Israel could get across ahead of the Egyptians ought not to have any trouble getting his statue reproduced,” said Eaton, and “Of course, a lot of it was prayer. But I figure we got at least an assist from Moses.” The firing of the stained-glass reproduction of The Last Supper gave some trouble, but “ ‘Nonsense and balderdash,’ Hubert Eaton shouted. ‘Of course God wants it finished.’ ” And finished it was.

  If much of the Forest Lawn statuary looks like the sort of thing one might win in a shooting gallery, there’s a reason for that, too. Some of it was bought at fairs—over the objection of the board of directors—but “as [Eaton] became a benevolent and paternalistic dictator and despot over his Dream Come True, he always met opposition with a gay and somehow endearing determination to win.”

  While the Builder’s soul is something of an open book, facts about the temporal aspects of the Dream—how the “nonprofit” association works, the amount of money involved, how it is distributed—are harder to come by. Forest Lawn executives have shown a marked disinclination to discuss the financial side of the operations. Such reticence, understandable in the world of business, seems not in keeping with the nonprofit, tax-exempt status of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks, which, declares the Dreamer, “are builded … for the living sacredly to enjoy and be benefited and comforted by.”

  There are some, however, cynical enough to assert that Eaton’s cemeteries are builded for profit, and the occasional glimpses of the financial structure of Forest Lawn afforded by disclosures made in legal proceedings in which it is from time to time embroiled support the view that the memorial parks are, for Eaton, a fantastically profitable form of real estate development.

  The United States Board of Tax Appeals, in a 1941 decision, describes the advent of Hubert Eaton to Forest Lawn more prosaically than does Mrs. St. Johns. He was hired in 1912 not as manager but as sales agent for “before-need” sales of cemetery lots. Before he arrived, most of the sales had been made at the time of death—“at need”—and total sales had amounted to only $28,000 in the previous year. Eaton’s door-to-door selling efforts on behalf of that mean, ugly little cemetery upped sales by 250 percent—and this was five years pre-Dream.

  By 1937 annual sales of cemetery space had passed the $1 million mark, and sales of other commodities and services (flowers, postcards, urns, bronze tablets, and undertaking services) added another $800,000. By 1959 annual sales exceeded $7 million, of which over $4 million represented sale of cemetery space.

  What happens to all this money? Is it really all plowed back for beautification of the Park? If so, it would pay for an awful lot of fertilizer and statuary.

  The Forest Lawn Art Guide poses this question: “Again and again people ask: How can Forest Lawn afford to assemble and maintain all of these treasures in such a beautiful place, and open it freely for all to see and enjoy? How can it be that resting places sharing all this loveliness are well within the means of everyone?” The answer is inscribed on a sign by the steps to the Hall of the Crucifixion: “Forest Lawn Memorial-Park is operated by a non-profit association. Excess income, over expenses, must be expended only for the improvement of Forest Lawn.”

  Well, yes. Only the operative phrase there is “over expenses.”

  Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Association, Inc., the nonprofit cemetery corporation, was the sun around which clustered a galaxy of Eaton-controlled commercial corporations and holding companies. One of these, the Forest Lawn Company, a Nevada corporation, was a land company. Another, a holding company, owned over 99 percent of the land company’s stock; one was a life insurance company (since sold); one was a mortgage and loan company. To the nonprofit corporation, owning no land, was entrusted the actual operation of the cemetery—the mortuary, the flower shop, the sale of graves, crypts, vaults, statuary, postcards, souvenirs. Discreetly behind the scenes was Eaton’s land company, skimming off 50 percent of the proceeds of sales of lots, plots, and graves, and 60 percent of the gross on all sales of niches, crypts, vaults, and other mausoleum space (exclusive of sums collected for endowment care).

  It seems curious that the additional land that is needed from time to time for expansion of the existing “Parks” and the development of new ones is not acquired by the cemetery directly. This would save for the beautification of the cemeteries and the ennoblement of mankind the middleman’s profit that is now taken by the land company. Direct purchase of land by the cemetery company would result in substantial tax savings as well, since the land which is taxable in the hands of the land company would be tax-exempt if owned by the nonprofit cemetery. More curious still is the fact that the land company buys and develops the land with money which it borrows from the cemetery at only 3 percent interest. As of 1959 Eaton’s land company had borrowed over $5 million from the nonprofit company at this exceptionally favorable rate.

  All in all, Eaton’s commercial companies seem to come off astonishingly well in their dealings with the friendly Memorial-Park company. In a stupendous display of Christ-in-businessmanship, his land company in 1959 sold the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather and two other churches to the nonprofit company for eighteen times their depreciated cost, thereby realizing a bonnie profit of over $1 million. To ease the pain of the capital gains tax on this transaction, the Memorial-Park is paying the purchase price, plus 4 percent interest, in installments of $100,000 per year.

  As Mrs. St. Johns says of Dr. Hubert Eaton, “He was a businessman-idealist with an inspiration, whose plan’s greatness lay in its simplicity.”

  The Dreamer is not through yet. In 1954 he announced his discovery of the Memorial Impulse. He says he might have called this force of nature the Memorial Instinct, but preferred to defer to “psychologists and scientists” who feel the term “instinct” is imprecise. The Memorial Impulse is a primary urge founded in man’s biological nature, and it gives rise to the desire to build (as one might have already guessed) memorials. It is also an indispensable factor in the growth of any civilization.

  There are a number of ways to turn the Memorial Impulse, “as old as love and just as deathless,” to cash account. “Let every salesman’s motto be: Accent the spiritual!” says the Dreamer, an
d, “It is the salesman’s duty to measure the force of the Memorial Impulse in his client and to persuade him to live up to that noble urge in accordance with his means.… Most important of all, every salesman should understand that if properly inspired the Memorial Impulse will do more for him than he ever did for himself, but let your financial desire be tempered with the morality of the Memorial Impulse.”

  The Memorial Impulse can also be channeled to remedy what was perhaps a tactical error in the early days of the Dream: insistence upon the use of small, uniform bronze grave markers.

  Eaton mused that while there was universal agreement that the elimination of tombstones was a good thing, nevertheless the tombstones did serve a purpose: they were a “great assist” to the Memorial Impulse. The “great assist” that was unwittingly discarded, we learn, is the good old epitaph. There just isn’t room for it on the 12-by-24-inch bronze tablets currently in fashion. True, the little markers permit of vast, almost unbroken areas of grass—the “sweeping lawns” of the original Builder’s Creed—but since bronze markers are priced by the square inch, more or less, their size also limits the amount that can be charged for them. Now that the Impulse has been discovered, this can be corrected, and the epitaph was slated for a comeback that may radically alter the appearance of the memorial park, transforming its sweeping green lawns into seas of bronze. Eaton suggests that cemetery owners should be thinking in terms of “ever-larger” bronze tablets, big enough, in fact, to contain complete epitaphs and historical data—big enough to cover the entire grave! This, he says, would be a most “convenient outlet” for the client’s Memorial Impulse.

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  Cremation

  Cremation is not an end in itself, but the process which prepares the human remains for inurnment in a beautiful and everlasting memorial.

  —CREMATION ASSOCIATION OF NORTH AMERICA