Travel
Not fade away
by John Marshall
Los Angeles is a great city for celebrity-spotting, even when the celebrity in question is dead.
The cemetery workers think I’m in love with her. As I sit beside Marilyn Monroe’s grave among roses and lipstick kisses, noting down the pencilled messages etched above her name, one of them asks if I’m writing her a letter. I tell them that I’m here to see who visits the dead pop-culture icon on Valentine’s Day and they fill me in on the status of today’s grave-watch. I am Marilyn’s first Valentine this year, but it’s before nine in the morning and most people probably don’t know that the cemetery is open yet.
At around 9.30am, a Pontiac pulls up next to the gravestone and a blonde bombshell of uncanny resemblance to the late movie star emerges. “I’m the cemetery freak,” she tells me. Her name is Carla Orlandi and she is the Immortal Marilyn Fan Club’s official LA representative. She replaces drooping roses with new ones, waters flowers and places a huge heart-shaped Valentine’s Day card into the crypt-face vase. “I have a special cleaner for the marble,” Orlandi says, anxious because she has left it at home. “I’ll have to bring it over later today.”
Orlandi is a model and actress who, in 2004 wrote, directed and starred in Cover-Up ’62, a short film that chronicled the movie star’s final days. There isn’t really anywhere to put the huge mosaic of Valentine’s Day cards given to her by the members of the Immortal Marilyn Fan Club, so I suggest that maybe we could use Hugh Hefner’s vault, since it’s next to Monroe’s, and he isn’t quite dead yet.
“I think that’s a good idea,” says Orlandi, but a cemetery worker approaches us and declares that the space is “reserved”.
For ordinary star-gazers, visiting the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery is a dead-celebrity treasure hunt. Hidden behind a corridor of high-rise buildings between the city limits of Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, the site was, ironically, chosen by Monroe’s ex-husband Joe DiMaggio for its obscurity. Her burial transformed it almost overnight into one of Hollywood’s most desirable final resting places. Every day there’s a steady trickle of tourists staring at the crypt as if it were a Greek monument.
But what separates Marilyn’s true fans from the casual cemetery-goers is whether they care that it’s Valentine’s Day. Randy Fessler, a lean, brown-haired enthusiast in his forties, recalls a story from his plethora of graveside encounters that span more than a decade. When he was in his early thirties, his hair dyed platinum blond, Fessler used to live within walking distance of the cemetery. Scars on his arms bear witness to his attempts, after nightfall and a bottle of wine, to scale the cemetery fence and make his weekly delivery of flowers. Apparently there was a cemetery vandal back in those days, so Fessler needed to assure the police that his intentions were honourable.
“I just want to see Marilyn,” he says, “to talk to her, to bring her flowers.” In those days Fessler worked at a department store, and some weeks he would be awarded a diamond chip on his name-badge for excellent customer service. He always gave it to Marilyn: the crypt face used to be a lot wobblier than it is today, and sometimes the diamond chip would just slip into a crack. “They’re probably still there,” Fessler says, “but you know, diamonds are a girl’s best friend, so I thought it was fitting.”
Carla returns to the burial site with her marble-cleaning formula, a combination of disinfecting wipes and LA’s Totally Awesome spot-remover. Fessler is impressed. “That looks great,” he says. “You even got the pencil off.” “Thanks,” responds Carla. “Someone has to do it. The cemetery staff are never going to.”
At dusk, the shadow of a parking building creeps across the cemetery lawn. Fessler and Orlandi bid a reluctant farewell to their dead role-model. It may come as some consolation that, in this celebrity-crazed metropolis, Monroe will be remembered forever by people who never met her. “Happy Valentine’s Day, honey,” reads an inscription in pencil. “Love, Terry.”
www.immortalmarilyn.com
www.carlaorlandi.com
