By Mike Harden
Dispatch columnist
Three years ago, when a free-lance writer began stalking Hollywood celebrities, police did nothing.
His prey were dead.
"What's the one place in Hollywood where you're guaranteed the chance to get up close and personal with real celebrities?" asked Mark Masek, who lives in nearby Pasadena.
The answer: the cemetery.
Masek trekked through 14 "cities of the dead" in the Hollywood area, chasing down anecdotes about the glitterati for Hollywood Remains To Be Seen (Cumberland House, $17.95).
His sleuthing yielded an intriguing treasure-trove of material.
Al Jolson's grave sports a 120-foot waterfall.
The bodies of rock stars Frank Zappa and Roy Orbison are buried in unmarked graves.
The chief housekeeping problem at Marilyn Monroe's crypt involves cleaning the lipstick off the marble.
"To see where Marilyn Monroe is buried was a big thrill but not in a ghoulish way," Masek said. "Westwood was a low-profile cemetery on the edge of town until Marilyn Monroe was buried there. She was the first celebrity buried there. Now that seems to be the cemetery du jour for the Hollywood elite -- Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, Dean Martin, Mel Torme."
Despite his largely melancholy mission, Masek found more than a little irony along the way.
Florence Lawrence -- the first movie star, who appeared in almost 300 films -- rested in an unmarked grave for decades. She was severely burned in a studio fire in 1915 while trying to rescue a fellow performer.
After recovering from her injuries, she had trouble finding work. She killed herself in 1938 by taking poison.
Decades passed before actor Roddy McDowall bought a marker for her grave.
The Lawrence grave may have been neglected at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, but Hattie McDaniel -- the first black to win an Oscar -- couldn't get past the front gate.
She requested burial in the cemetery, then known as Hollywood Memorial Park -- which in 1952 enforced a whites-only policy. She was buried instead at Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles.
In 1999, when the new Hollywood Forever owners offered to move McDaniel to their cemetery, her family declined.
Bing Crosby died rich, leaving an estate reportedly worth more than $400 million.
So the pinchpenny arrangement at the family plot can be blamed either on poor planning or on the stinginess of which his children accused him.
After his father died in 1950, the crooner purchased only four plots -- two for his parents, one for his first wife -- at Holy Cross Cemetery.
Only one grave remained by the time Crosby remarried.
Accordingly, before his death, he specified that his grave be dug to a depth of 9 feet to allow his second wife's casket to be placed atop his -- if she wished.
On the day Masek visited the grave of Jerome Howard (aka Curly of the Three Stooges), the writer discovered pennies arranged to spell out "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk" -- his catchphrase.
"Curly had a weakness for wine, women and song," Masek said, "and his wild life eventually did him in."
He died in 1952 at age 48.
Fans paid for his headstone, Masek said he has heard.
While assembling Hollywood Remains To Be Seen, the author added an appendix, "Exit lines," to showcase last words.
Douglas Fairbanks Sr. reportedly uttered, "I've never felt better in my life."
Joan Crawford supposedly used her last breath to chasten her praying housekeeper: "Damn it, don't you dare ask God to help me."
Perhaps the most fitting postscript comes from George C. Scott, who portrayed a Broadway producer in the film "Movie, Movie."
Musing about fame and death, the actor once reflected: "Funny, isn't it? One
minute you're standing in the wings. Next minute, you're wearing them."
Mike Harden is an Accent columnist.