Deep inside the columbarium at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles are five vast vaults with no public access. Each is stacked floor to ceiling with hundreds of small cardboard boxes, arranged in perfect rows. The labels tell their own story of time: names written in faded blue biro or neatly typed and glued, spotted with yellow and brown, a testament to the years.
These box urns hold the cremated remains of actors and artists, directors and producers, stuntmen, and vaudevillians. There are chorus girls and cowboys, screenwriters, set designers and cinematographers – these are the people who gave us the movies. Yet they remain in this strange waiting room for eternity, unclaimed, unexplained.
A year ago, I saw a YouTube series called Hollywood Graveyard[1], hosted by Arthur Dark, who gained rare access to the Chapel of the Pines. I waited in suspense as the camera moved past each vault before stopping at the last one.
In Vault 5, one of those boxes hold an actress from Australia. Her name is Lotus Thompson, you’ve probably never heard of her, and I can barely believe that I have found her. I spent so many years piecing together the fragments of my great-aunt’s life, only to find that in death, she had been left on the shelf. Not even a burial.
For the girl from Queensland who moved to Sydney and starred in eight films before dancing her way into Hollywood at nineteen, this is a tragic ending; separated from the love of her life who lies just seven miles away at Forest Lawn. A case of crossed wires, perhaps, or a misunderstanding – but they both lie alone.
Technology opened the door to the past. Apart from a handful of references in film history books and a scant Wikipedia entry -ending with, Mother and daughter sailed away to Hollywood, she remained extremely obscure.
I trawled archives, sifted through stories and family photos of the child and the chorus girl, until the motion picture actress emerged. Lotus Thompson played in over sixty films in her relatively short lifetime. She may be obscure, but she never gave up – and she gave the cinema her all.
Lotus Thompson: Silent Film Star 