Why Fairbanks Lawn matters.
Fairbanks Lawn is an open-air cultural ground where Hollywood's cinematic heritage meets cemetery landscape, outdoor film projection and large-scale performances beneath the palms of Hollywood Forever.
Set within Hollywood Forever Cemetery near its eastern grounds and just north of the Fairbanks Reflecting Pool, the lawn occupies a broad grass field beside the marble monument of silent-film actor Douglas Fairbanks. The open field sits amid mature trees, memorial architecture and burial plots, creating an unusually expansive gathering ground inside the cemetery's 62-acre landscape. Fairbanks's monument, designed by Howard Seidell, rises beyond a long reflecting pool as the principal architectural feature adjoining the grass, connecting the lawn physically with a performer who co-founded United Artists in 1919 and became the first president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The field's broad dimensions support audiences numbering in the thousands without permanent seating or an enclosed auditorium, preserving the grass as part of the active cemetery between scheduled programs. The result is a substantial outdoor cultural ground where memorial architecture, mature planting, an uninterrupted grass field and Hollywood history create an unusually direct setting for cinema and live performance.
What defines Fairbanks Lawn.
Fairbanks Lawn is best known for becoming the home of Cinespia's outdoor film screenings, a Los Angeles summer series launched at Hollywood Forever in 2002 by John Wyatt. Wyatt had been searching for a setting for classic and cult cinema when the cemetery approved his proposal, placing projected film inside a property already deeply connected with actors, directors, studio founders and other figures from Hollywood history. The first Cinespia screening presented Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, and its success initiated a partnership that has continued for more than two decades. Screenings take place after sunset with films projected onto the west wall of the Cathedral Mausoleum, converting the building's immense pale surface into the visual endpoint of the grass field. Hollywood Forever schedules the outdoor series through the summer season, and thousands of people gather on the grass with blankets and low chairs as pre-show DJs and themed photo installations accompany selected programs. The format has supported repertory programming spanning Hollywood studio cinema, cult films and later popular releases, creating a recurring public encounter with film history inside the city where much of that history was produced. Cinespia's longevity has made the lawn one of Hollywood Forever's principal cultural sites and tied a functioning burial ground to a major strand of Los Angeles repertory-film culture.
Live music developed as a separate chapter once Hollywood Forever began using its outdoor grounds for larger productions alongside performances inside the Masonic Lodge. By 2011, Troubadour booking agent Brian Smith and Hollywood Forever's Jay Boileau were developing a concert calendar that divided programming between the smaller indoor hall and Fairbanks Lawn, reserving the grass field for artists requiring greater production capacity and audience space. Bon Iver, Belle & Sebastian, Hope Sandoval, the Swell Season and Broken Social Scene belonged to the early wave of musicians appearing at the cemetery as live music expanded beyond the film program. Later Fairbanks Lawn bookings extended across multiple musical forms, with Hollywood Forever continuing to stage ticketed outdoor concerts on the field; Toro y Moi, for example, brought the HOLE ERTH Tour there in September 2024. The grass has retained a ceremonial function alongside entertainment programming, with Hollywood Forever making Fairbanks Lawn available for funeral services as one of the cemetery's formal outdoor settings. Morning yoga added another recurring use after outdoor group practice began there during 2020, further expanding the range of organized activity conducted on the field. Fairbanks Lawn occupies an unusual position inside Hollywood Forever, remaining part of an active cemetery even as film, music, ceremony and community programming repeatedly convert the same grass field into a large public gathering site.
How Fairbanks Lawn fits.
Fairbanks Lawn works as the anchor for a Hollywood outing connecting studio production, twentieth-century popular music and the architectural experimentation that helped redirect residential design in Southern California.
Begin at Paramount Pictures, whose corporate ancestry reaches Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, founded in 1912 after his release of Queen Elizabeth starring Sarah Bernhardt. Jesse L. Lasky's company was simultaneously producing in Hollywood, where The Squaw Man became the first feature-length film produced in Hollywood before Famous Players and Lasky merged in 1916 and consolidated with Paramount's distribution business. The company moved into its present Hollywood studio era when Lasky oversaw construction of a new lot in 1926. The production campus subsequently expanded from 26 acres and four stages to 65 acres and 30 stages, preserving a major operating studio beside the cemetery as filmmaking passed through sound, television and digital production. Continue to Hollywood Palladium, Gordon B. Kaufmann's Streamline Moderne ballroom completed in 1940 on ground associated with the original Paramount lot. Film producer Maurice Cohen developed the venue with $1.6 million supplied by Los Angeles Times publisher Norman Chandler, and Tommy Dorsey's orchestra opened the ballroom on Halloween night with Frank Sinatra as vocalist. Big-band programming dominated its early decades before the Lawrence Welk Show, rock, punk, hip-hop, political gatherings and awards events expanded its cultural role. A 2008 rehabilitation restored the Sunset Boulevard facade toward its 1940 appearance, including the neon pylon sign, grid elements and dancing figures, earning a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award the following year. Conclude at Hollyhock House, commissioned by theater producer and oil heiress Aline Barnsdall and built between 1919 and 1921 as Frank Lloyd Wright's first Los Angeles commission. Rudolph Schindler and Lloyd Wright supervised completion during Wright's absences, and the project became an important early catalyst for California Modernism. Barnsdall gave the house and surrounding acreage on Olive Hill to Los Angeles in 1927 for public appreciation of art and architecture. Municipal recognition followed in 1963, National Register inclusion in 1971 and National Historic Landmark designation in 2007 before Hollyhock House joined seven other Wright buildings on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2019, becoming Los Angeles's first UNESCO World Heritage property. The progression moves from Paramount's consolidation of early Hollywood production through Kaufmann's ballroom for successive generations of popular music and culminates at Wright and Barnsdall's experimental architectural project, connecting filmmaking, performance and California Modernism across Hollywood.
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