Where Are They Buried? (37 page)

The freewheeling television program originally titled
NBC’s Saturday Night
first aired October 11, 1975, showcasing zany comedy sketches by the “Not Ready for Primetime Players.” The program represented a bold leap for television and was an immediate hit; within two years, its name by then changed to
Saturday Night Live
, it was the highest-rated late-night show in America and since then,
Saturday Night Live
has hardly looked back.

Over the years, regular players have come and gone while the show’s main elements have remained the same: a celebrity host and a musical guest, comedy sketches, commercial parodies, and a news segment.
Saturday Night Live
has proved to be a springboard for the careers of many previously unknown talents including, to name just a few, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Billy Crystal, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, and, of course, the four entertainers profiled here.

JUNE 28, 1946 – MAY 20, 1989

As a child, Gilda Radner was severely overweight, had a speech impediment, and few friends, and she later attributed her keen sense of humor to these setbacks. After majoring in drama at the University of Michigan, she landed a job playing a clown on a Canadian children’s television show and in 1973 began performing with an improvisational troupe at Toronto’s Second City comedy club. The following year Gilda joined Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi (both also Second City alumni) on the
National Lampoon Radio Hour
in New York. In October 1975, after answering Lorne Michaels’ call for actors and comedians, the three debuted as regular cast players on the new program that would come to be known as
Saturday Night Live
.

Gilda frequently eclipsed her female costars on the show and she developed a number of memorably beloved and zany characters, many of which contributed catch phrases to the slang lexicon. There was, “It just goes to show you, it’s always something,” from the prickly mock-news commentaries of squinty-eyed, fright-wigged Roseanne Roseannadanna. The near-deaf, inept, spinsterly media analyst Emily Litella ended her tangents with “Never mind,” and schoolgirl geek Lisa Lupner coined “That was so funny I almost forgot to laugh.”

Gilda left
Saturday Night Live
in 1979 and moved on to Broadway, starring in a one-woman show that she co-wrote,
Gilda Radner: Live From New York
, and the next year she married
SNL
guitarist G.E. Smith. By 1982 things seemed to be going great for Gilda, but privately, she was suffering from nervous exhaustion, her marriage was crumbling, and she was battling bulimia, which she had overcome once before. Nonetheless, Gilda teamed with Gene Wilder in the comedic adventure
Hanky Panky
that year and, during filming, the two became romantically involved. They were married two years later.

In 1985 Gilda suffered chronic fatigue and mysterious bouts of unexplained illness and pains that her doctors dismissed as the flu or overwork, but the following year she collapsed and was found to have been suffering from advanced ovarian cancer. Through nearly three years of treatment, Gilda retained her sense of humor and when she lost her hair during radiation therapy, she opted to wear her gravity-defying Roseanne Roseannadanna wig. Gilda appeared for the last time, as herself, on
It’s Garry Shandling’s Show
in 1988. Her last able days were spent penning her memoir,
It’s Always Something
, and bolstering the spirits of other cancer patients with impromptu visits.

While her own spirits never seemed to fail, the physical toll finally became too great and, with Gene at her side, Gilda died in Los Angeles in 1989.

In the wake of her death, Gene and her family and friends worked to found Gilda’s Club, a nonprofit psychological- and social-support organization for cancer patients whose flagship center in New York has since spawned branches all over the world. The clubs offer free workshops and counseling, and a special program for children called “Noogieland,” so-named because of the noogies Gilda was often forced to endure while playing her character Lisa Lupner.

At 42, Gilda was buried at Long Ridge Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From the center of Stamford, follow Route 104 north for five miles. Turn left on Erskine Road and the cemetery is a short distance ahead on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Along the road, about two-thirds of the way down the cemetery’s length, you’ll see a few old stairs that lead into the cemetery. Just about 50 feet directly behind these stairs, near a small bench, Gilda’s grave is marked with a flat stone.

JANUARY 24, 1949 – MARCH 4, 1982

John Belushi was another original member of the
Saturday Night Live
troupe, and he quickly became an audience favorite for his maniacal style, luxuriating in a comedic netherworld a tick away from categorical insanity. For six years, John delighted in his uniquely manic and belligerent characters on the show, portraying everything from a Samurai warrior to a Greek luncheonette hamburger-slinger.

John quickly parlayed his popularity into a spate of comedy films. His biggest hit was 1978’s crowd-pleaser for the college set,
Animal House
. In it, he starred as the classic crude, flunking, frat-house drunk, Bluto, who bashed beer bottles over his head and incited riots. Later, John and his partner in crime, Dan Aykroyd, developed personas as the Blues Brothers, decked-in-black blues singers who caused havoc everywhere they went. Their portrayals became the basis of a movie of the same name.

In March 1982 John was staying in Bungalow Number 3 at the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. After partying it up at the nightclub On The Rox, John returned home where, for a short time, a few friends, including Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams, joined him. When everyone left, John, always needing a little more action, had his friend Cathy Evelyn Smith shoot him up with a drug concoction called a speedball, a mixture of heroin and cocaine.

After John had seemingly passed out, Cathy left the room. A few hours later it was discovered by another of John’s friends that he was no longer just passed out, but was quite dead. The cause of death was classified as a drug overdose and, after Cathy related her story to a tabloid, she was arrested for supplying the drugs and served thirty months in prison.

Atop his motorcycle, Dan Aykroyd led the funeral procession to Abel’s Hill Cemetery in Chilmark, Massachusetts, where John was buried at 33. However, the story doesn’t end there.

Weary of fans tramping around the cemetery’s grounds looking for John’s grave, a large boulder simply marked “Belushi” was installed at the cemetery’s entrance in 1985. This monument helps
to minimize foot traffic in the cemetery and, surrounded by a split-rail fence, the picturesque patch offers dignified sanctuary. But, almost surely, John is not actually buried beneath.

It’s believed that John’s body was never moved to the new monument. Instead, the original “Here Lies Buried The Body of John Belushi” gravestone that marked his plot in the rear of the cemetery was removed and, while gawkers flock to the new boulder at the cemetery’s entrance, John enjoys some peace and quiet a few hundred feet away.

But we’re not done yet. It’s also been reported that even before the new monument was installed, John’s family, fearing that drunken pranksters might try to dig him up some night, had John moved to a new grave just fifteen feet from his original grave to thwart such an attempt. So far, that makes three possible gravesites.

Finally, after John’s widow remarried in 1996, John’s name was engraved on his family’s stone in Illinois. Possibly, since John’s tenuous ties to Martha’s Vineyard were effectively broken once Judith remarried, his family decided to inter him in the family plot alongside his deceased parents. Cemetery officials at Elmwood Cemetery in Illinois, where the Belushi plot is located, unequivocally maintain that although John’s name was added to the family memorial, his body was not interred there. But celebrity graves have often been hidden by diversionary fibs and outright lies.

So, where is John? To their credit, John’s family pulled a fast one and only they, along with the few people who actually moved, or didn’t move, John’s body, really know for sure.

DIRECTIONS TO ABEL’S HILL CEMETERY IN CHILMARK, MASSACHUSETTS:
This is the cemetery where John was definitely buried in March 1982. He may be under the big “Belushi” boulder at the entrance, or he may be in an unmarked grave near the back row of the cemetery. To get to the cemetery, you first must first travel from the mainland to the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Ferries to the Vineyard are available from a few mainland towns, but the one that docks at Wood’s Hole is the only one open year-round. If you plan on taking your car across, reservations are required during the high season. From the Oak Bluffs ferry landing on Martha’s Vineyard, follow the main road toward Chilmark and, after ten miles, you’ll see Abel’s Hill Cemetery on the right.

DIRECTIONS TO ELMWOOD MEMORIAL CEMETERY IN RIVER GROVE, ILLINOIS:
This is the cemetery where the Belushi family has a plot and, though John’s name has been inscribed on the
family stone since 1996, cemetery officials say his body was never interred there. To get there take Exit 48B off of I-90/94 and follow Route 64 west for eight miles. Turn north on Route 171 and the cemetery is 1¼ miles ahead on the right.

DIRECTIONS TO BELUSHI FAMILY PLOT AT ELMWOOD:
Enter the cemetery and continue straight until you see the Manof mausoleum. Make a right there, then a left at the “T,” then take the next right. After the road winds a little bit, you’ll see Section 7 on the right, and the Belushi plot is there near the drive.

SEPTEMBER 24, 1948 – MAY 28, 1998

Phil Hartman came into comedy by way of an improv troupe, The Groudlings. After co-writing
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
with fellow troupe-member Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens, he joined
Saturday Night Live
in 1986 and remained on the show for eight seasons. Phil excelled at playing treacherous and weaselly characters, which he nailed with his insincere grin and comically smug demeanor. But he was probably best known though for his over-the-top impersonations, dozens of them, including Frank Sinatra, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.

Phil left
SNL
in 1994 and got himself a new job as the arrogant, egotistical, news anchor Bill McNeal on the sitcom
News Radio
. Phil also lent his memorable baritone to a number of characters on
The Simpsons
, including attorney Lionel Hutz and spokesman Troy McClure.

One night in May 1998 Phil’s wife, Brynn, who had a history of substance abuse and instability, went out partying with a few friends. For reasons known only to Brynn, upon returning home around 2:00 a.m. she executed Phil while he lay sleeping in their bed, shooting him in the head, neck, and arm.

In a panic she fled the house, leaving the couple’s two school-aged children sleeping in their beds, and went to a friend’s house. Brynn told her friend, “I shot Phil,” but because she was so wired and her story so outlandish, he didn’t believe her. Later, while Brynn dozed, he found and confiscated a revolver from her purse. Together they went back to the Hartman residence but, upon arriving, Brynn grabbed a second gun and locked herself in the master bedroom with Phil’s body.

The friend called 911 just after 6:00 a.m., and police were escorting the couple’s children, who’d slept through everything, from the house when another shot rang out. As Phil lay dead beside
her, Brynn had put the gun’s barrel into her mouth and pulled the trigger while officers struggled to break in through one of the bedroom windows.

At 49, Phil was cremated and his ashes scattered around Emerald Bay at Catalina Island, California.

An autopsy confirmed that Brynn had consumed alcohol and cocaine as well as the antidepressant Zoloft. Brynn’s family brought a wrongful death suit against Zoloft and it was settled out of court.

FEBRUARY 15, 1964 – DECEMBER 18, 1997

After graduating from Marquette University, Chris Farley studied at the Improv Olympic theater school and was performing at Chicago’s Second City when he was discovered by
Saturday Night Live
producer Lorne Michaels in 1989. The next year Chris became a regular
SNL
player and his boisterous, fat-guy schtick quickly won him wide appeal.

One of Chris’ most hilarious characters was a giddy and flabby Chippendale’s strip-club dancer who competed in an audition against Patrick Swayze, his jiggling gut spilling over his waistband. But his signature bit was the sweaty, tightly-wound, motivational speaker Matt Foley whose identity was predicated on Chris’ fog-horn voice and whose vein-popping speeches invariably ended with him smashing through the furniture in a froth, his polyester leisure suit bursting at the seams.