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 rags-to-shroud story of how we went from a young man with a hearse to the funeral driver to the stars—a rollicking, unexpectedly hilarious story of glamorous funerals, mishaps with corpses, and true-life glimpses of celebrities at their most revealing moments. Pardon My Hearse is an eye-opening look at secret Hollywood from the man who literally knows where the bodies are buried.

Allan Abbott is the co-founder of Abbott & Hast Mortuary, Inc., Southern California’s leading funeral home and mortuary service company.

Greg Abbott, Allan’s son, is the former managing editor of Abbott & Hast Publications, producers of Mortuary Management magazine.