Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery
Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery is located at 10621 Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood and Burbank, California. The cemetery has an entrance called the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation that is the final resting place for aviation pioneers—barnstormers, daredevils and sundry architects of aviation. It has memorials to Amelia Earhart and others, honoring their accomplishments. Among those interred are celebrities from the entertainment industry. The shrine, with a colorful tiled dome and female figures stretching their arms to the heavens, was built as the entrance to the cemetery. It was named for the  palace of Odin, the Norse god of slain heroes. Founding. Valhalla was founded in 1923 by two Los Angeles financiers, John R. Osborne and C. C. Fitzpatrick. The Spanish Mission Revival entrance structure was designed by architect Kenneth McDonald Jr. For the decorative stone castings, McDonald hired Italian-born sculptor Federico A. Giorgi, who had created statues of elephants and lions for the 1916 epic film "Intolerance", and helped to craft the exterior of downtown's Million Dollar Theater. The gateway to the new cemetery cost $140,000. The rotunda was dedicated March 1, 1925, with a concert by English  contralto Maude Elliott. Picnickers spread blankets on the surrounding grassy expanse between three reflecting pools and flat cemetery markers, which were a new concept at the time. It became a tourist attraction and was used for concerts that were broadcast over radio station KELW by station owner Earl L. White. Just five months after the dedication, Osborne and Fitzpatrick were convicted of fraud. They had repeatedly sold the same burial plots—as many as 16 times—and netted a profit of $3–4 million, according to the "Los Angeles Times". They were fined $12,000 each and sentenced to 10  years in prison, but served less than three years. State control. The cemetery was taken over by the state of California. It is unclear how long the state owned the cemetery, but Pierce Brothers bought it in 1950 and, within two years, closed the rotunda to vehicle traffic and moved the entry to the cemetery from Valhalla Drive in Burbank to Victory and Cahuenga boulevards in North Hollywood. There, they opened a two-story office building and mortuary. On December 17, 1953—the 50th anniversary of Orville and Wilbur Wright's 12-second powered hop at Kitty Hawk—the rotunda  was rededicated as the Portal of the Folded Wings, through the efforts of aviation fan and cemetery employee James Gillette. During the ceremony, the cremated remains of Walter R. Brookins, the first aviator to take a plane to an altitude of a mile and the Wright brothers' first civilian student, were interred. When sculptor Giorgi died in 1963, he was buried outside the structure, near his masterpiece. Gillette was also buried outside, near the shrine he helped found. The memorial was featured in "Visiting... with Huell Howser" Episode 426. Earthquake. The cube-like shrine building was heavily damaged in the  1994 Northridge earthquake but restored and rededicated in 1996. Two years later, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sale of property. In 1958, Pierce Brothers sold its family-owned chain of Southern California mortuaries and cemeteries to Texas financier Joe Allbritton, who sold of Valhalla for development. In 1991, the cemeteries and mortuaries were acquired by Service Corp. International of Houston, but the Pierce Brothers sign remains at Valhalla. Pioneers' resting place. Beneath the memorial tablets rest the remains of other aviation pioneers, including: Notable burials. Note: this is a partial list. Use the following alphabetical  links to find a name.