Six Feet Under: Death becomes them

When Tyler and Brent Cassity took over Hollywood Memorial Park, resting place of stars of the silent screen, it was on its last legs. Now, it has inspired a hit TV series, writes Susan Compo

For a city that hosted a "Coroner to the Stars", a celebrity undertaker is probably not that big of a stretch. In the four years since Tyler Cassity took over at what was then called Hollywood Memorial Park, the 32-year-old has become something of a cause célèbre among the Old Hollywood set, and even landed himself a slot as a technical adviser on the US TV series, Six Feet Under. The series, about a dysfunctional family that takes over an undertaking business, is written by Alan Ball, who wrote American Beauty, and it arrives in the UK, on a wave of critical acclaim, via Channel 4 next week.

In 1998, Cassity, son of a Missouri insurance broker, and his older brother Brent acquired the cemetery in a sealed bid for $375,000. It was a place in total upheaval. The grounds, which held such luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Tyrone Power, Cecil B deMille, Peter Finch, John Huston, Harry Cohn, Marion Davies, Barbara LaMarr (the silent siren billed 'Too Beautiful to Live"), Mel Blanc and Bugsy Siegel, were in ruins. More bodies were being carted out than coming in (this proved financially lucrative), crypts were cracked, mausoleum ceilings leaked, and statuary was vandalised. Earthquake damage went unrepaired. The yearly memorial event for Valentino had been suspended, and many of the graves were as sunken as an ageing starlet's ambitions.

Cue the Talking Tombstones.

"I had developed an archival system involving photos and videos plus a biog [of the deceased], and I presented this at the National Funeral Directors' Convention in Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas," Cassity explains, unable to hold back a smile. The tribute system, accessed through a computer, is then situated throughout the cemetery grounds, housed in kiosks, cupboards... and tombstones.

"Someone at the convention suggested I stop by this property in Hollywood, so, on my way back to the airport, I did. I walked around the grounds here and they just took possession of me. They were fantastical, like ancient ruins, only the spirits liked them more. Four years later, the place is bustling. This whole endeavour wasn't my dream – I had studied English literature at Columbia University in New York and worked for the PEN Foundation – but it has become my dream. Last year, an agent asked me to write a book, but now I just don't have time."

The cemetery's transformation has been remarkable, even by entertainment-industry standards. Investing some $3m, changing the name to Hollywood Forever Cemetery, implementing a silent-film series to coincide with the Valentino memorial, hosting night-time literary readings and an upcoming Woody Herman (he's buried in the mausoleum) Jazz Festival, have all considerably raised the profile of the graveyard, if not the dead. Its Gower Gulch location is at once glitzy and humble: steeped in show business from the days when extras from silent-era Westerns once frequented the area, the intervening years have found it equally put-upon. To the south are Paramount Studios, and to the north, a Nineties mini-mall that gives the impression that the cemetery might be one huge storage facility.

"There are efforts under way to get the mini-mall replaced by a park," says Joe Sehee, Hollywood Forever's publicity director. "Kids also play soccer on the grass in front, but we've managed to restrict that to one day a week now."

The crematorium may be out of commission – the last body it served was that of Mama Cass Elliott – but an offsite facility, part of Forever Enterprises, handled George Harrison's remains. A new mausoleum will add an additional 100,000 spaces, but they are not all earmarked for celebrities. As Cassity puts it, "Hollywood is many things. Its place in the imagination notwithstanding, a cemetery addresses a five-mile radius and as Hollywood changes, so do we. We serve the Thai, Armenian, Russian and Mexican community, and offer any service anyone desires."

Last November, Hollywood Forever was the first American cemetery to sanction a traditional Mexican "Day of the Dead" celebration. "We've been called things like 'The Disneyland of Death', but in the past year, what corporations such as Microsoft and Kodak have come around to is the concept of the preservation and storage of memories," Cassity says. "Memory has changed, it's no longer granite and stone. It's not even photos and videos: it's digital."

Rumours – the latest concerns Mae West – persist that the cemetery-owners keep their feelers out, sometimes a bit zealously, for additional famous remains. Two years ago, when Jim Morrison was going to be turfed out of the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, Cassity stepped up and offered him a slot in Hollywood. Instead, former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek stumped up the cash to keep Morrison in Paris.

A cemetery brochure certainly uses the famous dead as a selling point, pointing out that the park is, "the final resting place of over 300 Hollywood legends." However, regardless of the lofty neighbours and the rising cost of Los Angeles real estate, the plots are priced to move.

"We offer the lowest prices in the city," Sehee explains. "In an industry where a 300 per cent mark-up is the norm, there is no incentive to have further dealings with the bereaved. Our philosophy encourages affinity. I use a fast-food analogy of horrible places with uncomfortable chairs to keep customers moving. We want them to stay."

Forever Enterprises also owns properties in St Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, but Cassity has his eye on Utah. "The Mormons, with their emphasis on genealogy – it would just be fascinating..."

In a situation ripe for satire ("I know," sighs Cassity, 'The Loved One'..." ) there is a distinct lack of criticism surrounding Hollywood Forever. In fact, it's near impossible to, well, dig any dirt. "It'll come," Cassity says, when asked about a backlash. "I worry sometimes that the voice I heard when I was walking through the grounds that first day was that of the former occupant of this office, Jules Roth. He died the year I got here – he was 98 to the cemetery's 99 years – and his reputation was ruined. He was a rogue, a playboy – he'd squandered entire endowments – and the place had become just like him, hunched over, broken, barely able to walk.

"When he was buried here, they brought him in the back of a pick-up, under cover of night. I fear," Cassity pauses, "I do sometimes fear becoming him."