Tuesday, July 14, 2020

STILL DEAD #4


3 comments:

Roger Smith said...

This marker is in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. It is in the same general section as Parley and Ernestine Baer. I've stood right there, and what I saw there doesn't appear to be a gravesite. I'm not sure if this is Mr. Laurel's resting place, or only a centotaph mounted on this wall.

This happens when someone is not present, but still memorialized. Some may remember the child star, Bobby Driscoll. Tragically, he remained anonymous for decades after his passing, and was only identified by a chance fingerprint search. He is interred in the potter's field cemetery island off New York City, but has a centotaph placed for him in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which I have also seen.

Charles Hanson said...

Bobby Driscoll...What a sad story...The boy who had it all and in the end had nothing to show for it. I read that he said, "I was served up on a silver platter and then dumped". One of the Disney stars....

Roger Smith said...

In 1950, Bobby Driscoll was awarded a juvenile Oscar for two 1949 films--SO DEAR TO MY HEART, and THE WINDOW. In 1968, two boys playing in an abandoned tenement in New York City's East Village discovered his body. The autopsy confirmed he had died of drug use. There was no ID present, and after fingerprinting, he was interred in a "city burial". This potter's field is on Hart Island, off The Bronx, in Long Island Sound. Inmates at Riker's Island Prison are paid 50 cents an hour to bury both unknown persons, and victims of pandemics. Currently, some 900 Covid victims are buried there.