The San Fernando Valley, spreading west, is "the Valley" to most Angelenos: a sprawl of tract homes, mini-malls, fast-food drive-ins and auto parts stores. It has more of a middle-American feel than anywhere else in LA, inhabited - at least, in the popular LA imagination - by macho men and bimboesque "Valley Girls," speaking their own fractured dialect. In the gateway town of
GLENDALE
, eight miles north of downtown,
Forest Lawn Cemetery
at 1712 S Glendale Ave (daily 9am-5pm; free) was immortalized with biting satire by Evelyn Waugh in
The Loved One
. Those buried here include Errol Flynn, Walt Disney (contrary to urban legend, not frozen), Clara Bow, Nat King Cole, Chico Marx, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, in a marble-lined room paid for by her fiancé William Powell. If seeing the gravesites of the famous isn't enough for you, check out the replicas of the highlights of art history (such as a stained-glass
Last Supper
) spiced with a healthy dollop of religious kitsch, all rendered with maximum vulgarity.
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