Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Industries Met in Hollywood (12 page)

Ready for cruising through Hollywood on Allan’s Triumph motorcycle in 1964.

Kathy and I drove from our apartment in Inglewood to Hollywood almost every weekend. This was a time when it was a magical place. People would cruise back and forth on Hollywood Boulevard. The high-powered searchlights used during World War II did not go to waste after the war, because movie theaters purchased them to light up the sky whenever they were showing a big movie premiere. People would get in their car and drive to where the lights were just to see what was being shown there. Big premieres were always taking place in the numerous famous theaters in Hollywood, and it was very exciting to see the latest epic film.

After we saw a movie in Hollywood, Kathy asked me to show her Inger Stevens’s apartment, which was only a couple of blocks away. As we turned onto Martel Avenue, we could see the lights were on in her apartment. There were no available parking spaces on the street, so we pulled into the driveway of the house next door. It was an exceptionally balmy August night, and the apartment windows were open. The only thing separating us from her front door was a six-foot hedge.

We could clearly hear a man’s voice talking on the telephone, and it was the same voice from behind the door a week earlier. He was attempting to get a date for that night, but these ladies all turned him down because it was already after 10
P.M
. His next call was to some male friend. During this phone conversation he repeatedly mentioned Inger by name and started to talk about her sexual preferences. He concluded by saying that he was going to go to the Ash Grove to see if he could “get lucky.” While the cat’s away. . . .

This seemed like a good time to leave, but as we were backing up, he exited the apartment very quickly. Before we had time to turn left toward home, he passed in front of our car and was illuminated by the headlights. We were caught a little off-guard for a second, because he was a black man. He drove away in a new Chevy Impala, and Kathy wanted to see where he was going so we followed him. When he parked near the front of the tavern, I got out and looked into the open window and there was a box of business cards, which read: “Isaac Jones, President of Kell-Cole Productions.”

Inger Stevens in 1961.

A month later, we got another order to pick up Miss Stevens at the same apartment for
another airport run. Here was the same voice on the other side of the same door, telling me the same thing about her taking her own car again. It was like that Yogi Berra line about déjà vu all over again.

A week later, we went to another movie in Hollywood, so we visited her apartment again. We parked in the same neighbor’s driveway. The living room windows were open, and we could clearly hear the occupants having an argument. As they were yelling back and forth, we heard Isaac say that Martin Luther King was a “jerk” and an “opportunist.” She was infuriated by his remarks and said that he should be ashamed of himself, because King had done great things by using a nonviolent approach to attain civil rights for his people. Then she started asking Isaac where he had spent the previous night and when he finally screamed, “It’s none of your goddamned business!” She yelled back, “I have a right to know, I am your wife.”

We just sat there in stunned silence, but what happened next really knocked our socks off. There were sounds of some kind of altercation. Then it clearly sounded like he had picked her up and went stomping upstairs. Their subsequent roll in the hay sounded much more graphic than the adventures of “John and Marsha.” It may have been hard to believe they were married, but we had just heard it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Now it all made sense. The studio probably didn’t have a clue about her relationship with Isaac. Had Inger used the limo, the driver might have told someone at the studio he had observed a man at her apartment. Taking her own car assured them that there would be no witnesses, and when the studio got the limo bill, they paid it, assuming she had used it. Those were the bad old days, when the studios had almost total control over an actor’s life.

Ironically, Inger had starred in a film called
The World, the Flesh and the Devil
that touched upon the issue of interracial relationships. The story was about the last three people in the world surviving a nuclear exchange. Along with Inger, it starred Harry Belafonte and Mel Ferrer. The subject matter was so controversial at that time the studio shot three endings to the film: one where she chooses Mel Ferrer, another where she goes off with Harry Belafonte, and the third where she convinces the two male rivals that they can all live in peace and harmony as they walk off into the sunset. After test showings of the film during which each of the possible endings was judged, the studio chose the third kiss-and-make-up ending.

Kathy started paying particular attention to the articles about Inger in the movie magazines. She had told many of her girlfriends about what we had heard, and their reactions were dubious. Even my mother asked me how this could possibly be true after so much was being written about Inger and Burt Reynolds dating. Hey, if your own mother doesn’t believe you, you’re in big trouble.

After dating Burt for about a year, they had a knock-down, drag-out fight one night, and Burt allegedly told her he would never marry her. A close girlfriend of hers told a reporter that he had gotten physically abusive with her, and the next day her body was discovered on her kitchen floor. According to one of her closest friends, Inger had called her immediately after the fight. She was crying and telling her friend how hopeless things had gotten. The cause of death was listed as a suicide from ingesting a combination of sleeping pills and alcohol.

In 1990, there was an article in a book club newsletter about a writer working on a book to be called
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Inger Stevens
. He was asking anyone who knew anything about her to contact him by phone in nearby Studio City. During our phone conversation, he wanted to know if he could interview me. This was about twenty years after she had died, and by this time he had already interviewed nearly a hundred people. He confirmed the accuracy of all my facts and later gave me a manuscript of his book, along with a beautiful studio photo of her.

Because of the paparazzi, it was very difficult to have to a private funeral and maintain any kind of security. The mortuary that directed Gary Cooper’s funeral in 1961 called us for cars and drivers. The mortuary went to great lengths to keep the funeral as private as possible and did a good job weeding out spectators. The interment was at Holy Cross Cemetery in “The Grotto,” the most prodigious section of the cemetery where Bing Crosby and Béla Lugosi are buried. The graves in this area are quite expensive because they went to great lengths to bring in rocks and form a shallow cave, with exotic flowers growing between the rocks and many bonsai trees, cut in the traditional Japanese fashion, on each side of the opening.

Just across the street from the cemetery was Fox Hills County Club, so one journalist hired a limo and had it wait there until the funeral cars entered the cemetery. Then the limo driver was instructed to fall in at the rear of the procession. No one questioned the extra limo, so at the
graveside service, he lowered his window and started shooting photos of everyone present.

We also furnished limos for the wedding of Ricky Nelson to Kristin Harmon, whom he had met at Hollywood High School. We were instructed to report to the very exclusive Beverly Hills estate of the famous sportsman turned sports radio announcer, Tom Harmon. Kristin and other family members had gathered there to be taken to the church in four limos.

Sports never interested me, but everyone knew who Tom Harmon was. Ron even agreed to drive one of the cars, in spite of his total lack of interest in the entertainment industry. We were lined up in the long driveway of the Harmon estate. The grounds were quite large, even for this affluent part of town. The backyard looked to be about half the size of a football field, replete with a tennis court. Their wedding was held at Saint Martin of Tours Catholic Church on Sunset Boulevard.
Life
magazine named it “The Wedding of the Year.”

Years later, while doing a shoot at Hollywood Cemetery, we were asked to provide a hearse for the TV show
Reasonable Doubt
with Mark Harmon, Kristin’s brother, and Marlee Matlin. The baseball bug must have bitten Mark like his father because every time they would yell “cut,” he would walk off camera, pick up his glove and baseball, and start throwing a few balls with one of the crew members. There is often more downtime than actual filming.

Tom Harmon was married to film star Elyse Knox, who played Jane in some of the Tarzan movies. Ricky and Kristin eventually had a daughter, Tracy Nelson, who had her own TV show and made some movies, including
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
. Ricky Nelson’s song “Travelin’ Man” is still played on some of the oldies stations, which brings me great pleasure as it was the number one hit while Kathy and I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii in 1961.

Kathy approached me one month with a celebrity magazine that had a beautiful layout featuring Kim Novak at her home in Big Sur, twenty miles south of Carmel. One photograph was taken of her in a bubble bath, with an ocean view from the window above her bathtub. We were planning a trip to nearby Monterey, so Kathy asked me if it would be possible to locate her home. She received my absolute assurances that it would be easy to do. When we drove to Big Sur from our motel, it was
simply a matter of looking at homes along the shore of Highway 1. We kept working our way up the coast until we reached Carmel Highlands, just south of Carmel.

We turned onto Spindrift Road, where there was only one spot from which you could not see the ocean. The only access to this property was down a narrow dirt road posted Private Property—No Trespassing. The shoreline in the area was all sheer cliffs about twenty-five feet above the water, exactly what you would expect to see when looking out the window shown in the magazine. A quarter-mile north of these cliffs, Spindrift went downhill until the road was only about eight feet above the shoreline, but it was extremely rocky. The only way to see what was at the end of the road without crossing private property would be to backtrack along these rocks.

Kathy wasn’t sure if she wanted to take this circuitous route just on my hunch that it had to be the right place, but after about ten minutes of somewhat risky climbing, we were standing at the bottom of a huge cliff well below what had to be her home. We started climbing up the cliff face just far enough to get to a fairly flat part of the rocks, about eight feet above the waterline. Then, all of a sudden, we were accosted by her attack dog. Well, it wasn’t exactly a dog, but her pet billy goat, which put us in great peril as we clung precariously to the rocky face of the cliff. The goat was taking great pleasure in butting us, and although Kathy was laughing nervously, she was using her purse like a shield while yelling at it to go away.

The commotion finally drew Kim’s attention as she was standing in her living room, painting at her easel. She spotted us just as we were starting our descent. Her young companion came out onto the balcony and threatened to call the sheriff on us. I informed him that we were on tideland and not private property. At that point Kim joined him on the balcony and they stood arm in arm, watching us climb down. I paused just long enough to point my movie camera at them and record the moment, at which time Kim gave us a nice friendly wave. Cameras often have that effect on movie stars.

In December 1961 we purchased three brand-new 1962 funeral coaches. When a funeral home had a service for someone famous, they wouldn’t use their own funeral cars because many were ten to fifteen years old. The reason was that hearses only had to be replaced after many years of service because they get limited use. They’re not the kind of cars you drive when dropping your kids off at school or doing your grocery shopping.
Wait a minute, that’s exactly what I did
. Well, at least normal people don’t do that.

In the early hours of August 5, 1962, the night watch commander of the West Los Angeles Police Station, Sergeant Jack Clemmons, received a call from a man identifying himself as Dr. Hyman Engelberg. He said Dr. Ralph Greenson had informed him of the death of Marilyn Monroe from an overdose of Nembutal, a suicide. Clemmons immediately assigned another officer to take over from him, jumped into a squad car, and set off for 1230 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, one of twenty-five short culde-sacs in the neighborhood.

Westwood Village Memorial Cemetery received a call from the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, instructing them to make the removal from her home. Manager Guy Hockett arrived on the call, noticed immediately that her body was in the early stages of rigor mortis, and discussed his observation with the policeman.

This condition can set in as soon as six to eight hours after death, depending on many outside factors, but it seemed suspicious since he was told death had occurred only about three hours prior to his arrival. Guy made the removal and returned to the mortuary. Deputies were later sent to the mortuary to bring her body downtown instead.