Remembering David White
...forever Larry Tate

by Wizzy and Ronny G

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Recently, fellow Bewitched fan, Ronny G, and I met at lunchtime to visit David White's memorial.

We drove by Sunset-Gower Studios (formerly Columbia Studios) and took photos from the outside of Bewitched's former home, Stage 4. Then we took another photo from inside the studio's main gate facing the street with the Hollywood sign in distance.

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Columbia Studios was David White's place of employment on Bewitched for eight seasons. It's where he became a household name as Darrin's "son-of-a-gun" boss, the irascible Larry Tate, and part of an enduring TV classic.
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A short 3-minute drive down the streets of Hollywood's industrial area, past the prop/scenic warehouses with unusual displays outside, we arrived at the gates of Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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The Cemetery is a beautifully maintained place with monuments to some of Hollywood's elite.
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Douglas Fairbanks, once dubbed "The King of Hollywood" has an enormous tomb with a long reflecting pool and manicured lawn.

Other luminaries from Hollywood's Golden Age buried here are Cecil B DeMille, Tyrone Power, Marion Davies, Columbia Pictures founder: Harry Cohn, and probably the most famous tomb is that of Rudolph Valentino in the Great Mausoleum.

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Inside the marble walls of the Great Mausoleum, we went and paid our respects to David White.
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Like his character on Bewitched, David White also had a beloved son named Jonathan.

In 1988, four days before Christmas, while on a flight bound for New York, Jonathan White died (at age 33) in the Pan Am 103 bombing, which occurred over the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland.

He was one of the 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground who were killed by the terrorist act initiated by an agent of the Libyan government.

On November 26, 1990, two years after his unimaginable and shocking loss, David White passed away from a heart attack at age 74.

In June 2004, David and Jonathan White's remains were inurned inside a memorial niche at Hollywood Forever's Valentino Shrine section.

The niche contains their urns and photos of David looking adoringly at his son, first as a child and later grown-up at Jonathan's UCLA graduation. Also included are chess pieces and David White's illustrious credit-filled resume.

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The focal point of the niche is the "Larry Tate" bust sculpture, a prop from a 1969 Bewitched episode that provides a look at the life mask of David White, age 53.

The niche is a moving tribute to a father's pride in his son, as well as a family's pride in the lives of these two men. It conveys a sense that this father and son were an inseparable part of each other's lives, and now in death, rest together in peace.

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David's wife died in childbirth years earlier. They are survived by David White's daughter, Alexandra.

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