This evening, Sparrow Morgan will take part for the first time in the centuries-old Mexican tradition known as Day of the Dead.
As part of the observance, participants erect colorful altars at the graves of family members with candles, marigolds, candy skulls and other festive ornaments inviting the dead to return -- at least in spirit.
Morgan will do the same. But her altar will pay homage to the film and television actors who have played the legendary Spanish lover Don Juan.
The Hollywood film historian will decorate her shrine with photographs of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Errol Flynn and John Barrymore.
It's all part of Hollywood Forever Cemetery's seventh annual Day of the Dead observance.
"In Hollywood, we have a tendency to adopt other people's legacies, because we don't have much of a history of our own," Morgan said. "I feel these people are our ancestors, like they are my family."
Day of the Dead -- traditionally marked on Nov. 1 and 2 -- is a warm, sometimes whimsical celebration. It dates to the Aztecs, was transformed by the Spanish Catholic Church and crossed the border with millions of Mexican immigrants. Today, many people are adopting and remaking the tradition as their own.
Nowhere is that more evident than at Hollywood Forever, where organizers expect more than 100 altars to be erected this evening. Most participants will be non-Latinos such as Morgan who have added a quirky, only-in-L.A. sensibility.
"We're about moving forward ... and forgetting about the past" in Los Angeles, said John Hunt, a director at CBS, who will build an altar for the first time. "Maybe some people have realized they need to take a moment and remember the past. It's really nice to have a forum that's not weird and creepy."
This is fitting for the Santa Monica Boulevard cemetery -- perhaps most celebrated as the resting place of silent screen legend Rudolf Valentino -- where layers of L.A. history lie buried as if at some precious archeological site.
Since it opened in 1901 -- on land owned by Isaac Lankershim and Isaac Van Nuys -- Armenians, Thais and World War I vets from the Midwest have been laid to rest near the likes of Tyrone Power and Cecil B. DeMille.
Dozens of Russian Jews, after a lifetime in the pall of war and totalitarianism, lie buried under swaying 50-foot palms a few yards from Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, whose tombstone cheerfully declares, "That's All Folks."
