Pardon My Hearse: A Colorful Portrait of Where the Funeral and Entertainment Industries Met in Hollywood

Even celebrities die—and author Allan Abbott was the man who picked up the bodies! He ran the leading hearse, mortuary, and funeral services company in Hollywood and got an unprecedented glimpse of how celebrities really live and die.

The Forrest Gump of the funeral industry, Abbott was everywhere celebrities died, from helping to prepare Marilyn Monroe’s body for burial to standing next to Christopher Walken at Natalie Wood’s funeral. Now in his memoir Pardon My Hearse, Abbott tells the rag...