Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Industries Met in Hollywood (27 page)

About a third of our customers didn’t even own their own funeral cars, and the ones who did often had more than one service at the same time, in which case we filled in. Of all our customers, only three firms stopped using us, and even they were all back in less than a year.

After the renovation, we ordered a sign that read “Abbott and Hast—Funeral Directors.” We had never had a sign before because we were never open to the public, but now we needed to identify ourselves as a mortuary. The day the sign was being installed, Ron and I were standing on the corner of the property watching with great pride as a crane picked up the sign and placed it into the hole that was dug for it.

We had such good relations with many of the owners of family mortuaries that every year, at Christmas time, Ron would throw a party at his house. He would always try to have some new twist to make it more interesting. One year, he rented a commercial video recorder and taped everyone without his or her knowledge. This was before that kind of equipment was available to the public, and video recorders were very expensive. Ron didn’t play the tape until the end of the party, which was after he had served his guests drinks all evening. Although there was a slight degree of embarrassment for some, most seemed to enjoy the good-natured spirit of it. Another year, he had a drawing, the door prize being “two round-trip tickets to Paris.” When the winner was announced, the couple were given an envelope, which contained Greyhound Bus tickets to the dusty desert town of Perris, California.

Without a doubt, the best prank he ever played was to purchase a live chicken from a poultry market. Ron wrapped it up, and because it was in the dark, the chicken never made a sound. The lady who won that year’s drawing opened the box and out came the white chicken, clucking and flapping. For some reason, the lady who won it decided not to take it. Ron promised it to his longtime housekeeper/cook Louisa. When my kids found out that Louisa was planning on cooking it, they asked if we could
take it home, so we ended up with a new member of the family. Ron had to go and buy another one for Louisa.

The chicken, which came to be known as Lulubell, had a surprisingly good nature and the kids loved her. She resided in a cage on our patio but caught a cold one particularly chilly winter’s night. I gave her medicine from an eyedropper for a few days and she was able to recover. From that time on, the cage sat in the corner of our kitchen, where it was always toasty warm. Loodle, as the kids called her, stayed in her cage at night, but we put her on top of the cage during the day. When we went out for dinner and she heard me open the front door upon our return, she would always greet us from the kitchen with a loud squawk.

Abbott & Hast postcard, similar to the one made by the business before theirs.

One weekend in 1981 we were driving back home from a trip to Santa Barbara and the news on the radio reported that Natalie Wood’s body had just been recovered from the waters off Catalina Island. Kathy immediately began sobbing uncontrollably. Not only had she and Natalie grown up in the same church, but Natalie’s birth name was Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, very similar to Kathy’s maiden name Katerina Pavlana Zarenko, so she probably felt some degree of kinship. Needless to say, it was a big shock for her.

Natalie’s superstitious mother, Maria Gurdin, grew up in Harbin, China, where a Gypsy fortune-teller prophesized before her daughter’s birth that she would be famous around the world, but that she would die in “dark water,” a warning that Maria often used to frighten Natalie with. Understandably, water became Natalie’s greatest fear, and she echoed this in a 1980 television interview, saying, “I’ve always been terrified of water, dark water, sea water. . . .” This happened just one year before she drowned off Catalina.

When Natalie married British movie actor Richard Gregson, the ceremony was held at the same Russian Orthodox church we attended, Holy Virgin Mary Church in Silver Lake. Father Dimitri Gazetti, the same priest who had married Kathy and me, performed their marriage, so naturally we attended. Only two well-known actors were at the service, Robert Redford and David Niven, and we got some good photos of everyone present.

After Natalie’s death, Westwood Village gave us the order, so I drove the family car and picked up Natalie’s mother and her sister, Lana Wood. The security provisions at her service were the highest of any funeral we had ever witnessed and were overseen by Gavin de Becker, who had provided security for President Reagan’s inauguration. Each security man had a microphone up his sleeve to communicate with other security men in the cemetery. With their gray suits and cropped hair, these guys all looked like FBI agents.

Robert Redford stands next to Richard Gregson and Natalie Wood at their wedding in 1969.

When Robert Wagner and his family arrived in their own car for the graveside service, everyone ignored Natalie’s mother and sister. Even James and Clarence Pierce weren’t attentive to them, which upset me. So I went back to my limo, where the funeral director would have normally greeted them, and personally escorted them to their graveside chairs.

After giving the pallbearers some instructions, we carried the casket from the hearse and placed it on the lowering device. Then they lined up at the foot of the grave while I stepped to the head of the casket to assist the priest. Moments before the service began, a man wearing a plaid sports jacket came over and stood next to me. At the time, I didn’t know who he was or why he had chosen to stand next to me instead of joining the rest of the people behind the chairs.

The science fiction movie that Natalie had been working on when she died,
Brainstorm
, was nearly complete, but the dilemma was to edit the story and finish it without her. Kathy and I went to see it, and when her love interest came on the scene, I realized he was the one standing next to me at her funeral. It was Christopher Walken.

There has been a tremendous amount of speculation from the media because on the evening she died, Natalie and Robert hosted Christopher at Catalina Island aboard their yacht,
Splendour
. The controversy was about an argument that allegedly took place at a restaurant that evening and the drinking that was done as well. That may have accounted for his decision not to stand with the others.

Natalie’s body had gotten battered on the rocks. The coroner’s pathologists had surgically removed some bruised tissue that was examined very closely. Bill Pierce, the son of one of the mortuary’s owners, was a licensed embalmer who dressed her and did the cosmetology. He spoke with me later about some of the details. He said that the bruised areas were not visible while the casket was open because she was dressed in a full-length fur coat. Next to Marilyn Monroe’s funeral, Natalie Wood’s service was the most memorable and every bit as sad for me.

Many years later, a movie aired on TV with a beautiful girl who looked to be in her early twenties. When the credits came up I wanted to see who this attractive actress was. Her name was Natasha Gregson Wagner, and I suddenly realized this was Natalie’s daughter by Richard Gregson. I imagine that Robert Wagner adopted Natasha when Natalie remarried him some years later. It seemed like so few years since we had attended her wedding to Richard, but considering Natasha’s age, it really made me think about how quickly time passes.

Bizarre events occurred periodically in our business, but one seemed as though it was choreographed by some tortured soul. A young man contacted me about the possibility of purchasing an inexpensive old hearse. I had one worth about $1,200 that was available, so he came in to see it. He explained that he had only $700 available in cash and asked if he could make two payments. I agreed but said that he wouldn’t get the title until the bill was totally paid. In a few months, a money order arrived with the balance, so I mailed him the pink slip.

About eight months later, I gathered up some old files and threw them out. Three days later, a call came in from a Northern California police investigator, asking if we had sold a hearse to a young man by the name of Sanders. When I confirmed that fact, he asked if I knew the man’s address. After I explained that the envelope had been discarded a few days earlier, it occurred to me that the trash might not have been picked up yet. The detective held the line while I reluctantly went dumpster diving, and he was extremely pleased when the information he needed was provided.

Some months later, a detective pulled into our garage to thank me for my assistance in the case. He said that because of my information they were able to arrest a real sicko. Sanders used the hearse to discreetly enter the Pacific Crest Cemetery in nearby Redondo Beach, dig up the casket containing the body of his male lover, place the casket in the hearse, and drive it to a location in Northern California.

Later, he bragged to some patrons in a gay bar about what he had done. One of them went to the police. The person didn’t know where Sanders lived but did recall him saying that he had purchased the hearse in LA. The police had spoken to some funeral homes in our area, and two or three had mentioned my name. Armed with the information I provided, the police got a search warrant and went to the address. They found a hidden compartment in a wall that contained the casket and body he had snatched.

The detective showed me a plaque presented to him, acknowledging his skill as an investigator, with a small casket handle mounted on it. As usual, the local newspapers had a field day with the story, but they couldn’t explain everything. Sanders must have dug up the grave a few days after the burial, but it seems strange that he could have pulled the casket out of the ground without some help. It also seemed impossible that workers at the cemetery hadn’t noticed that the grave had been tampered with. If I hadn’t experienced this kind of bizarre story firsthand, it would be difficult for me to believe that such a strange thing could even take place.

One evening I observed something that looked out of place, based solely on my years in the funeral business. Kathy’s parents lived in Hollywood, where we had gone for the evening to have dinner together. Moments after we left, something caught my eye. I noticed a man standing on the corner holding a large calculator, and for some reason he was wearing pallbearer’s gloves. They were very familiar to me because we had been issuing them for years. My curiosity was aroused, so I called the Hollywood division of the LAPD. Within a few minutes, two undercover police officers arrived in an unmarked car. After I explained my suspicion and gave them his description, they spotted him half a block down the street, where they arrested him. They were able to determine that he had broken into the Carver Escrow Company and stolen their calculator.

There were no other witnesses, so they had only my testimony at his trial. The public defender tried to discredit my story because the police never recovered the gloves. He told the jury that anyone could have been wearing gloves, so seeing them was of no consequence and certainly no basis for probable cause. I explained that it wasn’t cold that night and that these gloves are thin and disposable, intended for a single use at funerals. He was subsequently found guilty.

Another interesting situation occurred when one of our staff made a first call in the middle of the night. Early the next morning, the family called and said they had changed their minds and wanted to have the body returned, so naturally we assumed another mortuary would be making the pickup. Relatives of the deceased arrived at our mortuary in a small Honda. When we inquired who would be contacting us to transport the body, to our utter disbelief they responded, “We’re going to put him in the trunk of our car.”

There had been no preparation of the body since the family hadn’t made their wishes known, so what we didn’t realize was that the deceased’s legs had been amputated as a result of poor circulation brought on by severe diabetes. The couple couldn’t understand our confusion because they didn’t know that we were not in possession of all the facts. With no legs, he fit nicely in the trunk.