Where Are They Buried? (28 page)

Jackie was in his mid-30s and just when he needed a stroke of fortune, he got one: he was signed as host of the
Cavalcade of
Stars
, a comedy-variety television program that perfectly suited his talents; the show’s format required that the host be able to move seamlessly between sketches and Jackie’s years of emceeing had made him a master of the segue. Television close-ups captured the extravagant mugging and grandiose gestures that were often lost when he worked on stage.

Jackie was so successful that within two years he headlined his own show,
The Jackie Gleason Show
, over which he was given full authorial control and a lavish budget. There, he honed the formula that had worked so well for him and developed his signature opening routine. Asking the bandleader for “a little travelin’ music,” Jackie danced wildly across the screen and froze stage right to announce, “And awa-a-ay we go,” which led viewers into an hour of sketch comedy and guest appearances by top musical acts.

The Honeymooners
was the show’s most popular sketch and the pairing of Jackie as a nervous and quick-tempered Ralph with his dim-witted upstairs neighbor Ed Norton (Art Carney) yielded one of television’s first great original comedy teams. During the 1955–56 season, Jackie repackaged the sketch into a filmed half-hour situation comedy of 39 episodes, and they became one of the most successful commercial properties in show-business history. Unlike other popular series, those 39 episodes of
The Honeymooners
were all that were ever made, and they have run countless times each, gathering new generations of fans. Jackie explained that “the excellence of the material could not be maintained, and I had too much fondness for the show to cheapen it.”

Perhaps the most remarkable and little-known aspect of Jackie’s showbiz career was in the record business. He composed many songs, including the theme songs for both
The Honeymooners
and
The Jackie Gleason Show
. Because he could not read a note of music, Jackie would hum the melodies for transcribers. He also recorded what he called “pure vanilla music,” popular songs with moody, string-laden orchestrations. In 1955 he assembled an orchestra and, personally wielding the baton, recorded his own lush arrangements of old standards. That first release,
Music for Lovers Only
, sold more than half a million copies and Jackie followed with 36 more.

Now a television superstar, Jackie’s services were in high demand for feature movies, too. In 1961, he was cast opposite Paul Newman in the film
The Hustler
as the legendary pool player Minnesota Fats and performed his own pool shots; the role earned him an Academy Award nomination. In the 1970s he played the
cantankerous, drawling redneck lawman Buford T. Justice in the S
mokey and the Bandit
series, and in 1985 he reunited with Art Carney for the television movie
Izzy and Moe
.

“Life ain’t bad, pal,” Jackie once told an interviewer. “Everything I’ve wanted to do I’ve had a chance to do.”

Jackie died of colon and liver cancer at 71 and is buried at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Cemetery in Miami, Florida.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From the Florida Turnpike (Route 821), take Exit 26 and follow Route 836 east for ¼ mile to 107th Avenue. Turn north on 107th and, after one mile, make a left onto 25th Street. The cemetery is a half-mile on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and proceed to the “T” at the flagpole. Make a left and park at the circle at the end of this drive. On your right, 150 yards across the lawn, you won’t miss the large white memorial that marks Jackie’s plot.

JULY 10, 1926 – JULY 2, 1993

The lumbering six-foot, five-inch tall Fred Gwynne followed a complicated path to his destined role as the fumbling and sweet-tempered Herman Munster.

The son of a successful stockbroker, Fred was packed off early to a prestigious Massachusetts preparatory school and, after graduation, he enlisted in the Navy and served on a World War II sub chaser. Later, Fred spent a year at a design school developing his dormant drawing talents and then entered Harvard University on the G.I. Bill. At Harvard, he presided over and contributed cartoons to
The Harvard Lampoon
and after a few performances in the Hasty Pudding Club’s farcical productions, Fred decided that his future was on stage.

Most casting directors found Fred too tall or unattractive, but he did manage to appear in a few Broadway plays and even had a bit part in
On the Waterfront
, though work as a commercial artist was really paying the bills. Finally, in 1961, he was hired to co-star in the TV sitcom about two hapless cops,
Car 54, Where Are You?
and upon its cancellation three years later, Fred finally found a tailor-made role in
The Munsters
as Herman Munster. Actually, Fred wasn’t completely perfect for the part—he had to wear five-inch-high platform soles—but he was right at home as a lovable Frankenstein, and audiences adored him.

The Munsters
flashed only briefly and after its demise Fred found to his chagrin that the Herman role had typecast him for life. But eventually, as his hair thinned and his facial features became patriarchal, he returned to Broadway and film, usually as a booming, authoritative character. Fred’s career took on new zest in 1992 when he played an autocratic Southern judge in the comedy film
My Cousin Vinny
.

But Fred decided to go out while he was still on top and, even as the accolades for
My Cousin Vinny
poured in, he withdrew and purchased a farm in rural Maryland. After just a short period of tranquility, Fred was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Surgery and chemotherapy followed, but the cancer continued to spread. He died at 66.

Fred was buried at Sandymount United Methodist Church in Sandyville, Maryland.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
Follow I-795 to its northern terminus, then follow Route 140 another four miles north. Turn left on Sandymount Road and once you reach the stop sign, you’ll be able to see Sandymount Church across the street to your left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Walk into the cemetery behind the church and near the back is a distinctive brown Shannon stone. About twenty feet in front and to the left of the Shannon stone, Fred is buried in a grave that, but for the grass covering it, has no marking of any kind.

SEPTEMBER 24, 1936 – MAY 16, 1990

As a child, Jim Henson was fascinated by television, and in the summer of 1954 he learned that a local station needed someone to perform with puppets on a children’s show. Jim wasn’t particularly interested in puppets, but he did want to get on TV, so he and a friend made a couple of puppets, and they were hired. That show ended quickly but, within a few months, Jim landed a new program on a local NBC-affiliate station and called it
Sam and Friends
.

Having realized that it was necessary for television puppets to have “life and sensitivity,” Jim’s proto-Muppets on
Sam and Friends
were much different from traditional puppets. Kermit the Frog was there right from the start, and he looked and sounded much as he always would (until his death, Jim provided
the voice and animation of Kermit); even at this early time he had a face that was pliable, he could move his mouth in synchronization with his speech and could gesticulate in ways that were impossible for a marionette.

Throughout the early 1960s, Jim’s creations made appearances on variety and talk shows, but it was on
Sesame Street,
the public television program for preschoolers that first aired in 1969, that his Muppet crew won the hearts of a generation. With wit that also appealed to adults, Oscar the Grouch, innocent Big Bird, considerate Bert, fun-loving Ernie, and the rest of the lovable gang helped youngsters learn about everything from numbers and the alphabet to birth and death.

But despite the Muppets’ success on
Sesame Street
and their demonstrated appeal to adults as well as children, no U.S. network would give Jim a show of his own. Finally in 1976, after a British producer offered Jim the necessary financing,
The Muppet Show
was born. It ran until 1981, when Jim decided to end it lest its quality begin to decline. Later, Jim turned to the big screen and produced three box-office hit Muppet films.

At 53, Jim died suddenly of an especially aggressive bacterial infection known as streptococcus pneumonia. He arrived at a New York hospital suffering from an inability to breathe and was immediately treated with high doses of antibiotics but, despite the aggressive regimen, the infection overwhelmed his body. Within twenty hours of walking into the hospital, Jim died of uncontrollable bleeding into his lungs. Before contracting the illness, Jim had been in excellent health and had never even had a personal physician.

He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at his ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.

MAY 12, 1907 – JUNE 29, 2003

The strong-willed movie characters portrayed with a trademark feisty spirit and often-imitated voice of a well-bred New Englander made Katharine Hepburn a beloved film heroine for most of the twentieth century. With a no-nonsense manner, she gained standing as a unique independent who rejected the phony Hollywood façade. By declining roles she didn’t like and refusing to be fawned over by the press, her rebellion gained her a reputation for being ornery and snobbish
though she viewed it as a byproduct of strict adherence to absolute honesty.

Katharine became a movie star quickly and by just her third movie, 1933’s
Morning Glory
, had earned the first of her four Academy Awards—though she never showed up to collect any of them. But, after a number of flops over the next few years, her status declined almost as meteorically as it had risen. Katharine took charge of her situation in a way few women dared in those days. After earning “free-agency” status by buying out her contract with RKO Pictures, she persuaded sometimes-beau Howard Hughes to help purchase the rights to the hit play
The Philadelphia Story
. Katharine then shrewdly sold the property to MGM with stipulations that she would play the lead and have ultimate control of casting. Once Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart signed on, the movie was destined for greatness and she never lost control of her career again.

On the set of
Woman of the Year
she began a romantic relationship with Spencer Tracy and it was this pairing that, perhaps, most fascinated her fans. Tracy remained married for the duration of their tryst, which lasted through nine films together and 27 years. It was a mystery why she remained with him since, besides the fact he was married, he was given to drinking binges and violent outbursts. “I honestly don’t know,” she said, long after his 1967 death. “I can only say that he was there and I was his.”

As the years advanced and her health declined, Katharine one day considered the future from the solitude of her Connecticut oceanside estate. “I think people are beginning to realize I’m not going to be around much longer. And you know they’ll miss me, like an old monument. Like the Flatiron Building.”

Katharine expired of old age at 96 and was buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-91, take Exit 28 to Routes 5 and 15, and then immediately take Exit 85 to Route 99 south. Turn right on Jordan Lane (Route 314) and one mile later, turn right on Ridge Road. After another half-mile, the cemetery is on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Drive straight into the cemetery, stay left at the flagpole and bear right at the next fork. Then, at the funky five-way intersection, stay more or less straight and Section 10 will then be on your left. About halfway around this section, the Hepburn plot is between two big spruce bushes.

JANUARY 21, 1925 – APRIL 20, 1992

The British comedian Benny Hill worked as a radio performer during the 1940s and for the next two decades appeared on a variety of programs in that medium as well as on television. In 1969, writing nearly all of his own material, Benny began making a series of sketch comedies for Thames Television and, when 111 half-hour long compilations of the sketches debuted on American television as
The Benny Hill Show
in 1979, he achieved international cult status.

Benny was a master of the double-entendre, and his sketches featured skimpily clad women, sight gags, a lot of cross-dressing, and a healthy dose of
The Three Stooges
. With his own uniquely comic twist, he turned ordinary slapstick into something entirely new. A typical Benny skit might find Benny and a pretty young woman walking arm in arm along a path when they come to a puddle. Like a gentleman, Benny removes his coat and lays it over the water so his lady might cross without wetting her feet. But, of course, the water is deeper than expected and the woman is immersed up to her neck.