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Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Section Sunrise Slope Lot 3433 Space 5
Filename IMG_0220.JPG
Image © 2022 by Christopher Mills

People Names and Dates


Full Name	Diana Roberta Wilson Fitzmaurice Cousins
AKA Full Name	Diana Kane
People ID	122669
Title
First Name	Diana
AKA First Name	Diana
Nickname
Middle Name	Roberta
AKA Middle
Patronymic/Matronymic
Priorsurnames	Fitzmaurice
Surname	Cousins
AKA Surname	Kane
Father's Surname	Wilson
Mother's Surname	Stock
Suffix
Gender	Female
Full Birth Date If Known	1897-01-10
Birth Year	1897
Birth Month	1
Birth Day	10
Full Death Date If Known	1977-04-20
Death Year	1977
Death Month	4
Death Day	20

Events, Dates and Places

Event	Date	Geo Top Level	Geo 2nd Level	Geo 3rd Level	Geo 4th Level	Geo 5th Level	Notes
Birth	1897/01/10	USA	Pennsylvania
Death	1977/04/20	USA	California	Los Angeles

Relationships

Relationship	Related To	Relative's People ID	Relative's Birth Year	Relative's Death Year
Daughter of	Andrew Kenly Wilson	631736	1869	1940
Daughter of	Grace Lois Stock Wilson	705624	1873	1897
Stepdaughter of	Constance Barbara Dooling Wilson	632017	1876	1950
Sister of	Lois Wilson	632955	1894	1988
Half Sister of	Janice Wilson Stroub	564286	1900	1982
Wife of	George Fitzmaurice	183997	1885	1940
Wife of	Ralph P. Cousins	122680	1891	1964
Mother of	Sheila Fitzmaurice Shay	705637	1929	2013
Mother of	Michael Fitzmaurice	183999	1931	1931
Mother of	Patricia Fitzmaurice Baxter	183996	1931	1963

Military Service

No military service added for this person

Rank If Known Or Highest Or Final Rank	Branch of Service	Beginning Date if Known	End Date if Known

Military Actions Served During

No military actions added for this person

Interment, Inurnment or Memorialization Information


Cemetery	Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Address	1712 S. Glendale Avenue
City/Town	Glendale
County/District	Los Angeles
State/Province	California
Postal/Zip Code	91205
Country/Principality	USA
Section	Sunrise Slope
Map	1
Lot	3433
Space	5

Organization
Property Type	Ground
Has Marker	Yes
No Marker
Is Cenotaph
GPS/LatLong Coordinates	34.1246333333333, -118.246919444444
End of Interment Record	If there are additional interments or cenotaphs for this person they will appear below

Sunrise Slope
Filename P1320902.JPG
The Chapman Memorial - base of Sunrise Slope along Valley Way
GPS Coordinates Not Recorded
Image © 2023 by Christopher Mills

Sunrise Slope
Filename P1330082.JPG
Below the Temple of Santa Sabina (Doheny Mausoleum) near the top of the hill
GPS Coordinates Not Recorded
Image © 2023 by Christopher Mills

Inscription Information


Diana Fitzmaurice Cousins Beloved Wife, Mother, Grandmother 1897 - 1977

Biographical or other information about the person

https://mills-sfv.com/Genealogy/GLS/People/Text/122669.txt

Diana Wilson Fitzmaurice Cousins (AKA Diana Kane) was an actress who married two quite successful men, director George Fitzmaurice, and after his death, Air Force General Ralph Cousins. She came to my attention because I was wandering around the Sunrise Slope section of Forest Lawn Glendale and found the markers for her and her husbands and several of her family all clustered together.

I took a closer look at her once I had gone through the photos because something was bothering me. Even though her marker says she was born in 1897, everyone thinks she was born in 1901. This got my spidey sense tingling and I started going through the family records on Family Search Dot Org to see if I could make some sense of it.

BTW, I know that both markers and official records get garbled all the time, so there are people out there with minor discrepancies between the markers and the records and in some cases we will never know which dates or years are correct. I've written whole articles online on researching these kind of problems.

I spent altogether too much time looking at the online records for her and her family before I came to a startling conclusion. Everyone who had worked on her record thought she was the daughter of her father's second wife, Constance Dooling Wilson. I realized she was a daughter of Andrew Kenly Wilson's first wife, Grace Stock Wilson, who died in 1897.

I was grasping towards this truth but I didn't clinch the deal until I realized the proof was in the birthdate of Andrew and Constance's oldest daughter, Janice Wilson Bell Stroub. There are two sets of records that show Janice's birthdate, the California Death Index and the Social Security Death Master File. The CADI shows her born 28 October 1901, the SS DMF as 28 October 1900. I don't know how many people know about this bug (I've documented it on my website) but many people the CADI shows as being born in the year 1901 were actually born in 1900. Since Janice's marker shows a birthdate of 1900 which matches the SS DMF, I think we can safely assume she actually WAS born in October 1900.

Here's the problem for the people who haven't worked this through and think that Diana Wilson was born on 10 January 1901. If you do the math, that's only 43 days after the birth of Janice. Either they are the most screwed up set of twins the world has ever seen, or Diana had the shortest gestation period of any human that has ever lived. That is, of course, assuming she and Janice are actually full sisters, rather than half sisters.

This is where Occam's Razor comes in. Since it was known (from the 1900 and 1910 census records) that Andrew Wilson and Grace Stock Wilson had two daughters, Lois and Roberta, doesn't it make more sense that Roberta (who never shows up again after the 1910 census) later turned into "Diana" Roberta Wilson and gave out the correct day and month for her birthday, but started fibbing about what year she was born either out of vanity or to make sure she was still considered to be young and fresh while she was looking for acting jobs?

We know the January 1901 birth date doesn't hold water, it just doesn't work. If one of the two girls was adopted that would make it work, but there's no evidence for that either.

In the 1920 census in Los Angeles, Andrew, Constance, and three of the four daughters show up in the same house. In 1930 Janice was still living with her parents, but was married and had a husband and a seven year old son. Her half sister Lois was there in 1930 as well. Her younger sister Constance ("Connie Lewis") was also married in 1930 and living in Bevery Hills with her husband George Lewis and George's son George Jr. (I haven't figured out yet if George Jr. was her son or not, he might still be alive so I haven't tried to research him yet). Also in 1930 Diana Wilson was married to George Fitzmaurice and living in Los Angeles. They had a daughter Sheila and would later have a twin boy and girl, although the boy only lived to be two weeks old.

I haven't found Diana in the 1920 census to see if that would shed more light on things, but it probably wouldn't. I do know that by 1930 she was telling the census enumerator that she was born in 1901 in Alabama. There is a germ of truth in this, her family did live in Alabama in 1910, but none of the four girls was born there. The earlier census records show Lois and Diana were both born in Pennsylvania. Some sources list Pittsburgh as Lois's birthplace and it's possible that's Diana's as well.

Lest we judge Diana too harshly for her petty fibs which have muddied the waters so many years later, it's worth bearing in mind that even now the acting industry is still very focused on youth and good looks. It's a truism that actresses, no matter how many talents they possess, are well advised to start looking for jobs as directors or producers before the ravages of age start to make them less appealing. A case in point: The Top Gun movie sequel to be released next year will star Tom Cruise (of course) but Kelly McGillis, who gave such a wonderful performance in the original movie, will not be in the sequel. I guess we should count ourselves lucky that Jennifer Connally, who's only 50 now, is going to be starring in the movie.

At this point, I couldn't tell you if Diana was born in 1896 or 1897, but I think it's safe to say it's one of those two years. I haven't found any birth records to corroborate either date. The 1900 and 1910 census records favor 1896, but her marker clearly says 1897. Since it's obvious from the 1900 census and the impossibility of her being born after her half sister Janice, we do know that she was born before 1900 and that she was Grace's daughter, not Constance's daughter (Grace died in late 1897).

I am curious as to where the information on her marker came from. I know her half sister Janice was still alive at the time of her death, so she might have known the real date all along.

2021/10/18: A quick postscript on Diana

I was looking at the funeral records on her son Michael Fitzmaurice who died at 2 weeks of age in 1931. They state his mother's birthplace as Pennsylvania. I didn't need the confirmation but I do feel a bit of satisfaction that there is another piece of evidence tending to confirm my hypothesis.

No keywords added for this person


Small notes (field in database 50 characters max)
Family Search ID	GS3N-H73
Find A Grave 1	72396151
Famous per Find A Grave
Famous per Consensus
Find A Grave 2
Find A Grave 3
BillionGraves Record ID
Other websites
Record Entry Date	2011-12-06 01:00:00
Record Last Edit Date	2022-11-08 07:21:41

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