"Famous" people that Find A Grave indicates are in Forest Lawn Glendale who either probably aren't there or definitely aren't there


By Chris Mills

Since this information is not static, I'm adding a link below that runs a database query against my site that will pick up any new people on this list who haven't been added to this page. If you click that link just make sure you open it in a new tab or window if you want to keep this page open

Run query against GLS search site for famous people alleged to be in Forest Lawn Glendale who aren't or probably aren't there

First, how do I know these people aren't there? I'll go into that on a case by case basis below. More generally, for the last two years I've been auditing every famous memorial in Forest Lawn Glendale (and a hell of a lot of non-famous memorials as well). The audit process has been painstaking, time-consuming and annoying, but ultimately productive.

Why are famous people listed in find a grave in this cemetery when they may not be there? It happens because people crave certainty. It's so much more satisfying to add a memorial to find a grave when you know where the remains physically are. Of course, that certainty can be misplaced, and I have found it is in quite a few cases on the find a grave website.

People also don't seem to understand that because someone was cremated at a cemetery, it doesn't mean they are inurned there. Much of the time they are, but sometimes they're not. Also, someone having a funeral service at a cemetery means NOTHING unless it's a graveside service. A cemetery chapel is a nice place to have a nonsectarian funeral (or a wedding, in the case of some of the Forest Lawn chapels). The funeral service by itself doesn't prove someone is buried at that cemetery.

You would think that the find a grave administration would take a little more care when vetting famous memorials for little details like this, but they don't. I won't say that they don't give a damn about accuracy, but let's put it this way, it's not very high up on their list.

As part of the audit process, I copied these people from find a grave to my database, just for the sake of completeness. So I also have records for them, wherever their mortal remains ended up.

This page is not an attempt to impugn the celebrity of any of these people, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of whether they are or are not in Forest Lawn Glendale.

There are two caveats in this whole process. One is that a lot of people are in Forest Lawn who are not on the Forest Lawn website, and this is the case for some of the celebrities. There are thousands of people in the different Forest Lawn memorial parks who are not listed on the website.

The second caveat is that (for sure in Glendale) there are locked gardens which require a key and there are also places in the Great Mausoleum where there are accessibility issues. Ask anyone who has ever gone near Michael Jackson's crypt on Holly Terrace and you may get an earful about that.

The locked gardens are why we may never know if Lauren Bacall is actually inurned with Humphrey Bogart (I've given her the benefit of the doubt which is why she's not on this list). The somewhat inaccessible locations in the Great Mausoleum wouldn't have been such a problem except that when Romper90069 went rogue in 2015 in an attempt to screw another graver working Forest Lawn, he accidentally got them to deny all access to the Great Mausoleum to gravers for several years. My understanding is this is not such a problem at the moment as apparently there is such a staffing shortage at Forest Lawn now that it is possible to get into the Great Mausoleum again and take photos for the first time in years, although some people on find a grave are still saying it's not possible and denying photo requests.

In any event, to the list:

Anne Barton AKA Anne Henderson Barton

Find A Grave only changed her memorial to famous in April 2022 but the memorial has been on the site for over 20 years, since 2001. The memorial creator claims to be her widowed husband, Dan Barton AKA Dan Berman, who died in 2009. This is at least plausible since if that is the case he created the memorial eight years before he died. On the plus side, her father, a brother, and an infant son of hers are all buried at Forest Lawn.

On the minus side, she is not with her father and brother, who are buried in the same lot in the Eventide section of Forest Lawn. There is an apparently completely unrelated man buried next to her brother, and no one else in the lot according to the Forest Lawn website as of 2011. Her mother is buried in Ohio. Her infant son is buried in a children only section of Forest Lawn called Lullabyland where there were no adult burials made. According to his find a grave memorial her husband Dan is buried in Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, a Jewish cemetery.

In addition to this, after being out there almost 21 years, there is still no plot location or marker photo on Anne's memorial. That in itself is rather telling, I believe.

I'm making a note to myself to check out the lot in Eventide where her father and brother are buried and see if anything comes up. But I have to wonder if she is not in Hillside with her husband Dan, and if the memorial he created may have been an attempt at obfuscation to keep his wife from being disturbed (assuming he put it in Forest Lawn Glendale himself and it wasn't moved by find a grave after the fact).

I have never actually been to Hillside but it would be very interesting to see if Dan Barton/Berman is actually there and if he is, who might be buried with him. I'm going to put that on my bucket list but it's not a priority right now.

Verdict: inconclusive but not promising for her being at Forest Lawn.

Mary Bear AKA Mary Baer

On the plus side: Nothing.

On the minus side, no plot location, no marker photo, no linked relatives who might be in Forest Lawn. The memorial was created 19 years ago tomorrow (it was tomorrow when I started writing this article and now it's today, hopefully I will get this posted by the end of today) and that is plenty of time for someone to divine a plot location or take a marker photo and post it.

Verdict: A dud. I don't know where she is, but I'm guessing it's not Forest Lawn.

Madge Bellamy

On the plus side: Even though there is no exact plot location or marker photo, the memorial does indicate the section she was buried in as Vale of Memory.

On the minus side: Her father and her husband are burial unknowns, and her mother is buried in Ontario, California, 30 or 40 miles from Glendale. She doesn't show up on the Forest Lawn website. I have the capability to do some pretty wild searches with my database, so I looked for everyone in Vale of Memory who was born in 1899 and died in 1990, and I only came up with Martha Berke Fieberts, who is NOT Madge Bellamy. There is a Blanca Delsalto who matches Madge's death date, but nothing else. There are no persons with the surname Bellamy in Vale of Memory, although that was probably her stage name, not her legal name.

Let me take a minute and see how she comes up in the California Death Index. She comes up in the CADI as Margaret Philpott. That name does not come up at all on the Forest Lawn website.

She doesn't show up under the name Philpott anywhere, not even on find a grave.

As far as the Vale of Memory section goes, I was part of a crew of gravers who tackled it almost seven years ago. We would have completely finished it except that the find a grave administration did some pretty vile things when we were most of the way through it and it completely derailed my involvement with find a grave, along with several of the other people in the group.

But I do know this much. Most of the people who have markers in Vale of Memory have memorials on find a grave with posted photos, we did get that far. And Madge Bellamy AKA Margaret Philpott is not one of them.

I have no idea where the contributor who added her to find a grave got the idea that she was buried in Vale of Memory. But there is nothing physical anyone has found to back it up. If she is not on the Forest Lawn website (which she does not appear to be under any of her names) if she is in fact buried there but with no marker, no one is ever going to actually find her grave.

My guess is, if she is buried anywhere, it is more likely to be in the same cemetery in Ontario that her mother is buried in. She is listed as having died in Upland, it is adjacent to Ontario and she would have been far more likely to be buried there with her mother than anywhere else.

Verdict: Not likely to be at Forest Lawn

Harry Peter MacNab Brown

On the plus side: Nothing, no reason to think he is at Forest Lawn

On the minus side: No plot location, no marker photo. His name is so common that I did find another Harry Brown in Forest Lawn who died the same year who is in Vale of Faith. I got a marker photo for him, and he's not the writer. He was born in 1909 not 1917, and his death date is different (11 September 1986 rather than 2 November 1986).

By the way, there is some other weirdness with this guy and find a grave. See this record for Harry S. Brown for some detailed notes on some monkey business that was going on with a memorial for a Harry Brown in Glendale, which may be tied to Harry Peter MacNab Brown. I have to clean up the notes on that page but I will do it since I actually got over to Vale of Faith and got a marker photo for the Harry Brown there. That information may be relevant to this Harry Brown, but I don't know.

Verdict: No reason to think he is in Forest Lawn.

Dolores "Dolly" Cepeda

There's no mystery here, Find A Grave actually lists this as her prior burial location because her remains were moved to Forest Lawn Cypress prior to 2009 (there is a separate memorial for her burial in Cypress).

Dolly was one of the victims of the Hillside Strangler (or stranglers, since it ended up being two men - I won't dignify their existence by naming either of them here, although one passed away in 2002).

For those of you who are interested in such things, the current occupant of Dolly's prior grave in Forest Lawn Glendale is Carlos U. Hernandez, who has been there since 2009 and has a marker. It's a lawn crypt so there may eventually be a second burial in that space.

I don't think there is any relationship whatsoever between Cepeda and Hernandez. It did get me to wondering what disclosures have to be made when cemetery property is resold, because I don't know anything about that. Hopefully Mr. Hernandez's family has no issues with this.

Jack Clark

On the plus side: Nothing, except his name is so common that he could be anywhere.

There is a Jack Clark with no death date listed in Section H, Lot 80. The only burial I can find near it with a date is from 1916. Since a lot of the burials in the older sections (as well as some parts of some of the newer sections) clump together by date, that implies it's not the same person.

(Quick note made on the 22nd: I tracked down the Jack Clark in Section H and found his d/c. He died on 14 February 1914, so -- not this Jack Clark).

Since Jack is a known nickname for John, I tried looking under names starting with Jon or John. There is another John Clark who died in 1988, but he died on a different date and has a completely different birth year than Jack Clark.

On the minus side: No plot location, no marker photo, no linked relatives buried in Forest Lawn. The memorial has been out there for over 19 years and in that length of time something tangible should have surfaced, and it hasn't.

Verdict: Not likely to be in Forest Lawn.

Don Drysdale AKA Don Scott

Like Dolly Cepeda, this is listed as a former burial location. Except it wasn't a burial, and it wasn't even a proper inurnment. According to the find a grave memorial, Don's ashes were kept in the Utility Columbarium, which is basically a huge storage closet for people who were cremated at Forest Lawn whose ashes were not inurned there, sent elsewhere, or claimed by family members.

If family did claim his ashes from Forest Lawn, they were most likely scattered, although it is of course possible his urn is sitting on someone's mantle somewhere. There is no other find a grave memorial for him which lists a different disposition than the prior burial location in Forest Lawn.

Joaquin Aguilar Garay

This is, I believe, the newest famous memorial in Forest Lawn Glendale that can't be properly accounted for. The memorial was created in February 2022, which was only three months ago as of this writing.

On the plus side: Nothing, there is no evidence he is here other than the find a grave memorial, and it has no verbiage listing any kind of source that might indicate why the contributor thought he was buried here.

On the minus side: He doesn't show up on the Forest Lawn website. There is no marker photo but since the find a grave memorial has only been out there three months that doesn't indicate much of anything.

What I find more telling is that it took someone over 31 years to make a memorial for him in this cemetery, but they couldn't bother listing any kind of source for this disposition? Also, there are no known relatives of his in Forest Lawn, they are all elsewhere. And you would think if he had been in Forest Lawn for the last 30+ years that someone would have stumbled across a marker for him by now just by blind luck if for no other reason.

Verdict: Doesn't seem likely.

Update on this one: Apparently someone at Find A Grave looked into this one and agreed with me. As of February 2023 his memorial has been changed to a burial unknown. Good to see someone is doing their job!

George Gebhardt

Stop the presses!

I had flagged him as unlikely because if he was buried there in 1919 there was a hundred year time span for someone to find him before his find a grave memorial was created in 2020 which definitely seemed shady (again, with no plot location and no marker photo).

He definitely does not show up in the Forest Lawn website under that name or any reasonable variation of it.

I looked up his death certificate since I knew that most of the Los Angeles city d/cs from around the time he died have been indexed on family search dot org. Sure enough, the death certificate is there, and it does show a burial in Forest Lawn (which at that time had to be Glendale since none of the other Forest Lawns existed, or had different names because they hadn't been purchased by Forest Lawn yet).

Based on the information in the death certificate I am taking him out of this category and slotting him into my "unknown section" listing for Forest Lawn.

This would be worth a call to the Forest Lawn records department since the d/c does say he went there. In any event, for now I am attaching him to Forest Lawn Glendale.

Herb Geller

Someone was way too clever here, too clever by half, as they say. But I'm not buying it.

His find a grave memorial shows what looks like a plot location, but whoever entered that information didn't seem to understand how the plot locations are recorded on the Forest Lawn website. The big tells are that they left off the section name (Commemoration, which is recorded on his wife's memorial, which I created) and there is a lot but no space. The plot also states that there is no marker for him in this lot.

The reason there is no marker for him in that lot is because he isn't in that lot! I pulled up everyone in that lot and it's his wife and three other people who do not appear to be related to her. According to the maps on the Forest Lawn website there are only four spaces in the lots in that area.

Just to be thorough I checked the lots above and below, 3892 and 3894, and the lots to each side, 3878 and 3938. All of them have occupants who are not Herb Geller, with the exception of 3938 Space 4, which was vacant as of 2011. I could check that space and see if there is someone there now, but even if there is I doubt if it will be Herb Geller.

(When I say I checked the lots is that I checked them in my online database, which started out as a reverse engineered copy of the Forest Lawn website but has grown to be much more useful as I have added oodles of information that is not on the Forest Lawn website)

What happened in this case is that someone wanted to find a cemetery to put Herb Geller in, and they chose his wife's cemetery (even though she died 55 years before him) because they were either too lazy to figure out where he actually was, or there just simply is no information as to what happened to his remains (in which case he may have been cremated).

In any event, the fact that they were willing to just "make up shit" about his plot location shows that whoever made this memorial or edited it is guilty of intellectual dishonesty and their guesses about his final disposition can't be taken seriously.

It goes without saying that he is not on the Forest Lawn website. But I just said it anyway.

Verdict: Highly unlikely he is at Forest Lawn, and definitely not where the find a grave memorial says he is.

Bessie Griffin

I was keeping an open mind about this one even though there was no marker photo or plot location. I did a bit more digging (if you'll pardon the expression) and I hit pay dirt.

She's not in Forest Lawn Glendale because she's in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

I'm going to go ahead and make the changes to her record and sort it out on my end, and make a few other notes on her page.

In any event (that really must be my phrase for the day, I gotta stop using it so much), confirmed, she's not in Forest Lawn Glendale. The memorial in IPC doesn't have a marker photo either, but it has a plot location and it has her legal surname at the time of her death, which was Jackson. That's good enough for me, it's sure as shit more than what the memorial in Forest Lawn has.

(22 February 2024. A short postscript on Bessie Griffin. I had been looking for her in Inglewood Park Cemetery but I don't get down there that often so it took a while. Plus, I finally found out I was looking for her in the wrong section, she was in a section adjacent to the section I was looking for her in. I just got a marker photo for her last weekend, posted it on the memorial for her in Inglewood Park Cemetery, then sent edits to Find A Grave on the famous memorial in Forest Lawn. They processed the edits the next day and merged the non famous memorial for her into the famous memorial, so now my marker photo is on the famous memorial. They also added the plot location in IPC which I sent them. So she can be struck from the list now).

Gordon Jones

This one was perplexing. It sat there for over a year in my database without me figuring out where the guy actually was. There is a marker photo but the marker is unlike anything I've seen in Forest Lawn Glendale. That and the fact that the FAG memorial had no plot location were highly suspicious.

There is a family search record for him and that made it a lot easier to track down where he was. I went through the sources on family search and this is what I got:

He was cremated at Chapel of the Pines in Los Angeles. They do have columbariums there but a lot of the people that have been cremated there have ended up inurned elsewhere. However, somewhere I found that his funeral was at Valhalla in North Hollywood, then I found a billion graves dot com record for him in Valhalla, then I found his name in a collection of paperwork on family search that has tablet orders from people who were interred or inurned at Valhalla.

The only thing I find really weird about the whole thing was how a marker photo from Valhalla ended up on a memorial that purports to be in Forest Lawn Glendale. It's not like they are next door to each other and you could wander from one cemetery to the other without noticing, they are over 10 miles apart from each other. That's just a head scratcher, that is.

Since I have now succesfully removed two "famous" people from Forest Lawn Glendale who weren't actually there (Bessie Griffin and Tito Torbellino) I might see what I can do with Gordon Jones now. But I would probably need to get over to Valhalla and get a marker photo for him. Theoretically not a big deal since it is closer to me than Forest Lawn Glendale is.

Verdict: In Valhalla, therefore not in Forest Lawn.

A quick postscript on Gordon Jones, I got over to Valhalla last month (April 2024) and it was actually quite easy to find his marker in the small cremation garden his urn was placed in. I had already created a temporary memorial for the purpose, posted the marker photos, and then put in the edits for the famous memorial, a few days later Find A Grave moved his memorial from Forest Lawn to Valhalla, clobbered my existing memorial, and moved the marker photos from my memorial to the famous memorial. So Gordon Jones is finally in the right cemetery, as of mid April 2024.

Bert Kramer

This is reminiscent of Herb Geller above, although at least this contributor had the decency to actually find someone on the Forest Lawn website with the right name, although it turns out it wasn't the right person.

In the write-up on the page I created for Bert, I lay out my theory as to what happened here. There is a "Bert" or Albert Kramer in the plot location they give for the man with the same name who died in 2001. Unfortunately for the person who created this memorial, that man died in 1933, here's a link to his record: Albert Karl Kramer.

As far as why there is a "no marker" photo attached to the spurious record for Bert Kramer, I'm pretty sure that's because Graceland and Liberty merge into each other without any kind of demarcation line. The person who posted that "no marker" photo on the memorial for Bert Kramer was looking for Graceland lot 488 and found Liberty lot 488 and took the photo without realizing they were in Liberty, not Graceland. I suspect the no marker shot that was posted is actually of this woman's grave: Lillian Mae Smith, but I need to confirm that.

All this tells us for sure is that if Bert Kramer is actually in Forest Lawn Glendale, he's not in the lot and space listed on his memorial, and nobody knows if he has a marker or not since the "no marker" shot posted is for a different lot and space than what's indicated on the memorial.

Verdict: May or may not be in Forest Lawn, but my money would be on not.

A postscript on Bert, in April 2024 I finally got to the part of Liberty in Forest Lawn where Lot 492 is located (where I thought the bogus no marker photo was shot) and sure enough, the photo posted on Bert's memorial actually is for Lillian Smith, who has no marker and is buried between Daisy Kennedy in Lot 488 space 4 and Caroline Conway in Lot 491 space 2.

BTW, Lot 492 of Liberty is full up with marked spaces, which is why the person who took the no marker shot had to find one in Lot 491, because all six people in Lot 492 had markers and none of them were named Bert Kramer. For anyone who is curious, they are, in order, Naomi Chandler, George Greenwalt, Wilbert Paul, Royal Main, Belle Harscher, and William Klespies.

So I've proved to my own satisfaction that the no marker shot on the famous memorial is completely bogus, it's not even in the right section, but that gives me no ammunition with which to have Find A Grave fix the memorial. It's easy enough to prove when someone is in a particular cemetery, but difficult to prove someone is not in a cemetery, even though there is zero evidence they are actually in that cemetery. So I'm not going to worry about it, but as I said above, it seems very unlikely that Bert Kramer is in Forest Lawn at all.

Peg La Centra

Plusses vs. minuses: No plusses whatsoever. She doesn't show up on the Forest Lawn website under her real name or her stage name, there is no marker photo although the memorial has been around for 11 years, her husband was cremated and his ashes ended up god knows where.

Verdict: Seems unlikely that she is in Forest Lawn.

Another update here for her, as of February 2023 her memorial has been switched from Forest Lawn Glendale to Cremated, Ashes Given to Friends or Family. I guess I should be thankful for whatever progress is stumbled towards here.

Spud Murphy

Same old, same old. Doesn't show up on the Forest Lawn website under any of his names. There is no marker photo but the memorial is almost 17 years old. And this time, not linked to any relatives at all, let alone any buried in Forest Lawn.

In my estimation, not likely to be at Forest Lawn.

Dennis O'Keefe

Wow, this is turning into a broken record. No listing on the Forest Lawn website under stage name or real name, no marker photo although the memorial is over 10 years old.

There is one interesting thing here. The link to his mother goes to a memorial in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills (not Glendale) but at least that is one positive sign. Let me check Hollywood Hills to see if there's anything useful there.

When I check his mother's lot (assuming it is his mother, which I can't verify without doing some research) there are no apparent relatives buried with her. Two of the other spaces in the lot are taken by people who died within four months of his mother, and the other person outside that range appears to have been the wife of one of the other people in the lot.

I don't remember seeing this before, but as of 2024 the FAG memorial doesn't have a complete plot location, but does show the section as being Wee Kirk Churchyard. However, there is still no marker photo and he still doesn't show up on the FL site under either Flanagan or O'Keefe. I am wondering if there was an obit floating around out there that showed a funeral service at the Wee Kirk and that is the source for the "plot location".

So he might be in one of the Forest Lawn memorial parks, but since his mom is (presumably) in Hollywood Hills he is more likely to be there rather than Glendale. So once again, I have to give a thumbs down on Glendale.

John S. Ragin

I was thinking John Ragin was going to be an utter bust, too, but I found this (attached as a source to his Wikipedia page, of all places):

http://forestlawn.tributes.com/show/John-Ragin-95718401

Now, it doesn't prove that Ragin is buried at Forest Lawn, but it does at least show (past tense) that his "Arrangements are under the direction of Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA.".

This at least warrants a phone call to the records office at Forest Lawn, if nothing else. That in itself moves this from the "almost certainly not" column to the "cautiously optimistic" column.

Of course, he still doesn't show up on the grave locator section of the Forest Lawn site, and there is the problem that his eight year old memorial doesn't have a marker photo as yet, which is a cause for concern.

Verdict: Unknown, still leaning towards him not being buried there, but at least I will admit it as a possibility, pending more information.

Jean Clinton Roeschlaub

This one is odd. She doesn't show up on the Forest Lawn website under her maiden name, her first married name, or her last married name.

BUT ... her first husband, her parents and her grandparents are all buried in the Kindly Light section of FL Glendale, which has got to worth something. Checking the lots they are in, though, it looks like they are all full up with no available spaces.

She had at least two brothers, one of whom predeceased her. It wouldn't surprise me if the other one has passed away by now also, but neither of them shows up on the Forest Lawn website also. I found the social security death record for her second husband, Ron Roeschlaub, but can't find anything about what happened to his mortal remains either.

I found four obituaries on her, but they all focus on the details of her death (it seems she was the victim of a homicide) and nothing lists what became of her body other than it was turned over to a local mortuary after an autopsy was completed.

I know she had children with her first husband, don't know about the second husband. So it definitely makes sense that she would be in Forest Lawn. It's also possible that her name was omitted from the Forest Lawn website because of the circumstances of her death.

Reading her find a grave bio and the obituaries, this is a really sad case because it seems like she was well liked and respected in the community, and it is absolutely senseless that someone would have murdered her. Welcome to the world we live in, I guess ...

Verdict: I'm leaving her as a maybe because of her strong family connections to Forest Lawn. But so far there isn't a shred of actual information placing her there (as I mentioned above, not on the Forest Lawn website, and there is no marker photo for her although the memorial has been there for almost 16 years).

Margaret Shelby

Most of the time when Find A Grave does this they have the decency to put the verbiage "original burial location" close to the top of the memorial, but they omitted it in this case.

In the fine print of the bio section it has the following:

"Originally buried in 'The Garden Of Honor' a private and locked section at Forest Lawn (Glendale), in the 1950s Mary Miles Minter had her remains cremated and scattered." (Mary Minter was Margaret's sister)

I'll take their word for it on this. I just wish it were more prominently displayed on the memorial.

Verdict: No (per Find A Grave itself)

Liz Sheridan

I misspoke farther up on the page when I said Joaquin Aguilar Garay was the newest questionable celebrity memorial in Forest Lawn, that distinction actually belongs to Liz Sheridan. The reason I got confused was because Garay's memorial was placed elsewhere on Find A Grave and then plopped (moved) into Forest Lawn after the fact, which I can tell because of the way I monitor the FAG page for Forest Lawn. So I don't actually know when Garay's memorial ended up in Forest Lawn, except that it was between the end of February and the middle of May 2022.

When I created a record for Liz Sheridan, her find a grave memorial showed a bogus plot location next to her last husband, William Wales. I pointed out in my notes on her record that it was clearly a bad plot location because that space was taken by William's earlier wife, Bonnie.

Apparently someone else figured that out because the plot location is now gone from Liz's FAG memorial.

The fact that the plot information was stealth edited out of existence doesn't mean that I can unsee it, and it calls into question the idea that she is at Forest Lawn (see my comments about intellectual dishonesty above re: Herb Geller).

The lack of a marker photo at this point is no big deal since she's only been dead for the last month. And the fact that she was a celebrity could be a factor in her not showing up on the Forest Lawn website under any of her names. However, looking at the totality of the information, I don't see any compelling reason to think she would be in Forest Lawn Glendale. Yes, her last husband is buried there, but he's buried next to his first wife and, as we know, three's a crowd. Her roots are in New York, I'm sure she spent time in California because of the television business, but that doesn't prove that she would be buried there.

Verdict: Possible, but not likely. I suspect she was either cremated or in New York, and possibly both.

J. Lewis Smith AKA Jacob Lewis Smith

This is one of my favorites because it was the first time I figured out that Find A Grave had fouled up a famous memorial. I'm not going to repeat all the verbiage from the page I wrote up on the actor because it's completely documented there, but I will briefly explain what I found out.

This is the person that Find A Grave thinks is the actor J. Lewis Smith: Lewis James Smith.

The guy who created the memorial, John Griffith, mixed up the actor J. Lewis Smith with a guy named Lewis James Smith. They died four days apart, both in Los Angeles County. You can look up the California Death Index entries on both of them. The actor's family search ID is LTX5-D9B and the other guy's family search ID is GSL6-83B.

One of the reasons I have not brought this up with find a grave is I have seen them do so many idiotic things before I am afraid if I brought this to their attention they would merge the non-actor's find a grave memorial into the famous memorial and they would then think they fixed it. This is clearly not the case, and I would love to be proven wrong on this, but I don't think it's going to happen.

I also documented this on the find a grave page for the non-actor, I need to copy that elsewhere in case find a grave clobbers it: James Lewis Smith find a grave memorial 85520590

Verdict: I don't know where J. Lewis Smith is (he might actually be in Forest Lawn) but he is not in Vesperland Lot 1292, that is a different person. So I'm going to go with maybe, but not likely.

Tito Torbellino AKA Tomas Tovar Rascon

If the case of J. Lewis Smith above represents an honest mistake (mainly because the surname Smith is so common) what Tito Torbellino represents is a stupid mistake.

It's very simple, and it was obvious to me from looking at the marker photo (see the similar story above for Gordon Jones). The marker for Tito Torbellino is a style that is not used in Forest Lawn Glendale. It just isn't. I have looked at tens of thousands of markers in FL Glendale and that's not a style they use. It's not quite as obvious as seeing a cross emblem on a marker in a Jewish cemetery, but it's close.

The bio is also badly written, so it's no surprise the memorial is a train wreck in other ways. I notice the contributor has changed their find a grave handle to inactive. I'm guessing they screwed up so much stuff and got so much hate mail on the site that they are keeping a low profile now.

I forget how I figured this out, but it wasn't too difficult. Torbellino AKA Tomas Tovar Rascon is buried in Glendale, Arizona, not Glendale, California. There is a nonfamous memorial for him in the correct cemetery, 130870576. It's a lower numbered memorial than the famous one but I'm pretty sure if they ever fix this they will clobber the nonfamous memorial in the correct cemetery and replace it with the famous memorial from the wrong cemetery. It's just easier for find a grave to do that. They did it to my memorial for Diana Miller Melford even though my memorial was in the correct cemetery before the famous one, they just clobbered it because it was easier for them to deal with.

I think the answer to why the famous memorial for Tito Torbellino is in the wrong cemetery is very simple. When you are adding a find a grave memorial from the main page (not from a cemetery page) you have to choose a cemetery name and location combination. I honestly don't know exactly how this turkey did it because I can't replicate it, but when they were looking for Glendale they somehow selected Glendale California rather than Glendale Arizona. They got the cemetery name wrong too which displays an even more alarming level of incompetence.

This is why when I am adding find a grave memorials (not nearly as many as I used to) if they are in a particular cemetery I always start from that cemetery, not from the main screen. It's too easy to screw up the cemetery if you're having to choose from too many options at the same time.

Anyway, the verdict: Clearly not in Forest Lawn because he's in Glendale, Arizona.

(22 February 2024. A short postscript on Tito Torbellino. Some time last year I sent Find A Grave some edits on his famous memorial in the wrong cemetery, and they accepted them a few days later and moved him out of Forest Lawn into the cemetery in Glendale, Arizona. So his memorial can finally be struck from the list)

This is a little bit off topic but I am going to mention something I became aware of a year and a half ago and finally attempted to fix this last week (just to show I'm not a complete grinch when it comes to find a grave, just a gadfly).

Lyda Roberti/Lyda Roberti Ernst has two famous memorials on Find A Grave in Forest Lawn Glendale, 10362 and 11611896, one under her stage name and one under her married name. I sent find a grave an email last week pointing this out. The email is copied on my notes on her record. It will be interesting to see how long they take to fix this, or if they try and tell me there's not enough information to tell if the person is a duplicate (which they have done several times before, even when it's pretty obvious the people are duplicates). Anyway, I tried. If they don't merge the two I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. But if they don't merge them it will just prove to me again what jerks some of the find a grave admins are.

A quick postscript to that one, I reported the dupe to Find A Grave and they merged the two memorials a few days later. So hers at least got sorted out.

As of February 2023 I am auditing the famous memorials again in Forest Lawn (it does get easier since I already went through so much garbage last year). I found six more famous memorials alleged to be there which I will look at when I get a chance. Some of them were either already in Forest Lawn but not marked famous, or moved into Forest Lawn from a different disposition. I will try and update this at some point with my determinations of how likely these people are to actually be there:

June Allyson
Jack Bailey
Stephen Laurel Boss
Ivis Goulding
Philip Baker Hall
Helene Millard (not the Helene Millard whose stage name was June Caprice, who is listed under her stage name -- I suspect someone has mixed the two up but won't know for sure until I look into it).

27 February 2023. I got a chance to look at the new names over the last couple of days. Ivis Goulding and Helene Millard are in fact there, they were listed under different last names on the Forest Lawn website (a fairly common experience when dealing with stage names), but they were in fact there.

June Allyson and Jack Bailey are a bit of a conundrum. They both have spouses buried or inurned at Forest Lawn, but there is no actual trace of them. For now I have given them the benefit of the doubt and have attached records for them to the database, although I am going to express some reservations about the situation in the notes for those records.

I had not originally located Stephen Laurel Boss but in the intervening year or so someone has posted a marker photo and his FAG memorial has a plot location which is corroborated by the Forest Lawn website. So his name has now come off the list.

Philip Baker Hall is still a confirmed no show. It is a year since I last looked for him but he still isn't on any of the Forest Lawn sites that I can find, and he has no links to any known family in Forest Lawn. Absent some additional information, there is no reason to think he is buried or inurned there. And, there is still no plot location listed.

BTW, someone put out a photo request on Philip Hall and in July 2023 I marked it with a problem and left a note that he didn't show up on the Forest Lawn website and that someone would have to call the cemetery records office to see if he was actually buried there or not. The photo request is still out and is still marked with the same problem, so you can draw your own conclusions from that nugget of information.

I did notice something weird when I was looking at these entries. The FAG site for Forest Lawn Glendale used to be pretty accurate in the "famous" memorial count on the main page. For some reason now it is broken. The counter is stuck at 1109 famous entries, and has been for several months. If you click on the View Famous button, it will build a list with the correct number, which is now at 1113 entries. But it's not refreshing that number on the main screen for the cemetery.

As of February 2024 the number is actually at 1113, so it may be accurate now. I don't actually know because I haven't downloaded the entire list again to see if there are any new entries.

I am going to do a followup article to this in the near future, "People in Forest Lawn Glendale that Find A Grave should have marked as famous who aren't". I will post a link to it here when it's up. That might prove useful for anyone fishing to get more famous bio credits on find a grave, which I'm not.

It's interesting, since I wrote this article last year two of the people on my "should be famous but aren't" list were made famous by find a grave, showing that somewhere there are at least a couple of users and/or administrators who have a clue.

If anyone reading this has any more information on any of the people mentioned on this page (especially ones where the information on them is ambiguous) please let me know. I'm not promising I will update anything on find a grave, but I will at least update the records in my database.


Page created 20 May 2022
Page updated 27 February 2023
Page updated again 11 May 2024

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