Notable Residents

At Hollywood Forever Cemetery by sunset, when the gates are closed and sunlight streams down its peaceful pathways, celebrities sleep amongst legends from film, television, music, theater and more. Right there with them should be the memory of Homer Alba. Homer died on May 14, 2025, at age 79. He served Hollywood Forever as Senior Vice President for 38 years, then Vice President Emeritus. After his retirement, Homer continued to contribute in any way possible. He loved Hollywood Forever beyond words.

Illusions have always run deep in Hollywood. During the early decades of the twentieth century séance parlors popped up like popcorn stands at movie theaters, the golden age of spiritualism bringing hope no science could deliver. Dr. Edward Saint—magician, investigator, skeptic, and confidant to Harry Houdini—stood at the uneasy intersection of belief and exposure, a man determined not to destroy wonder, but to protect the living from deception masquerading as hope.

In the vast machinery of early Hollywood, where fame was fleeting and anonymity was the rule rather than the exception, Louis “Dad” Troester occupied a quiet but beloved corner of the film colony. Born August 7, 1856, in Bohemia, Troester came to motion pictures late in life, carrying with him the physical poetry of age—long white hair, a flowing beard, and the gentle authority of a man who looked as though he had lived many winters. It was an appearance that endeared him to audiences and children alike, and one that would ultimately define both his livelihood and his fate.

Time, fame, and money have always traveled lightly in Hollywood, and few lives illustrate that cruel arithmetic more poignantly than that of Pierre Collings, a gifted screenwriter who reached the industry’s highest summit only to disappear almost immediately into obscurity and poverty.

By the summer of 1947, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel stood out as one of America’s most complicated crime figures. He had once been the country’s most feared gangster and, by 1942, led the New York syndicate’s Murder, Inc. on the West Coast. Later, Siegel reinvented himself as a well-dressed Hollywood insider, making friends with actors and studio executives while promoting his Las Vegas projects as legitimate businesses. Some people thought he was trying to go straight, while others saw a gangster who had become too noticeable and costly.

Over fifty people convened on Saturday afternoon, November 22, 2025, under windy skies at Hollywood Forever Cemetery's Gower Mausoleum rooftop chapel. Floating above the city, the chapel is an airy space. On that day, wind wafted through it, blowing across L.A.—and murmured a few attendees, Morris Kight himself. How apropos to celebrate the life of someone who spent decades working toward visibility, toward building community, and toward showing up.

Long before Hollywood learned to manufacture scandal, Marguerete Favar had lived a life that was enough to make a dozen scripts. A dancer whose beauty blazed across the vaudeville circuit from sea to shining sea, her life ended in a murder that remains one of the decade’s most sensational unsolved crimes. It was also one of its most decadent.

In December, the poinsettia comes to the doorsteps, the church aisles, the store windows and the dinner tables by some form of instinct. It is so familiar, its origins seem at once mythical and lost. But behind that explosion of red and green is a quiet immigrant tale of loss and resilience, Hollywood soil and a Swiss-born farmer named Albert Ecke, whose patient experimentation and stubborn faith turned an obscure Mexican weed into North America's Christmas flower.

This is the story of a boy star in the first days of vaudeville in Los Angeles, when the silent studios were humming with promise. A child singer of exceptional talent, Howard Enstedt was one of the city's youngest prodigies. His was a voice like no other: innocent, yet penetratingly strong, startlingly mature. It was a voice that made people listen. For a while, at least, the boy's future looked as bright as the lights of Broadway. He would conquer both the stage and the screen. But it was Hollywood, and his was another story, destined to end all too soon.

In the bustling world of early Hollywood, where aspiring actors arrived by the trainload and studio lights burned late into the night, few performers embodied their name as sincerely as Sunshine Hart. Born July 6, 1886, in the small river town of Vevay, Indiana, she grew up far from the glittering dream factories of Los Angeles. Yet, through determination, comic talent, and an unmistakable warmth, Hart carved a place for herself on stage, in vaudeville, and ultimately in silent films—leaving behind a brief but memorable legacy.

In the constellation of rising Hollywood talent, few shone with the otherworldly magnetism of Harry Hains, the Australian-born actor, model, and artist whose brief life left an unmistakable mark on the worlds of film, fashion, and queer representation. Born December 4, 1992, in Melbourne, Hains grew up in a creative family and soon gravitated toward the arts, driven by a restless imagination and a desire to explore identity beyond traditional boundaries. 

Long before animation became an empire of studios, franchises, and billion-dollar “content,” it was a precarious little corner of the movie business—short subjects sold on faith, shipped on schedules, and sustained by the nerve of a few dealmakers who could spot a character with staying power. In that rough-and-tumble world, one name deserves far more recognition than it gets: Margaret Winkler, a pioneer who helped define the commercial survival of animated cartoons in the 1920s—and who, in one of film history’s most consequential early decisions, placed a young Walt Disney on the road that eventually led to Mickey Mouse.