I made a very strange discovery at Calvary last week.
A couple of years ago I made a project of finding the fictional burial site of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather. I am not a Godfather fanatic by any estimate but as a Calvary wanderer it was fun to step through the funeral scene of that movie and do a then-and-now series of pictures ending at the exact spot at which the scene was filmed. Information about this filming location did not seem to exist anywhere in the enormous volume of discussion of this much-analyzed film. I thought this was strange since every other Godfather filming location seems to have been pinpointed.
The Godfather connection at Calvary is not an ongoing concern of mine but I know of a few fanatics of that film who found my web site have made a pilgrimage to the fictional burial site of Vito Corleone. I like to imagine that others have added Section 1W of Calvary to their tour of New York City Godfather filming locations.
Corleone’s fictional burial site is in Section 1W, behind a real tombstone which still stands today. That tomb belongs to a Daly family, and reads “ERECTED BY THE CHILDREN IN MEMORY OF THEIR BELOVED PARENTS” followed by the names and death dates of Thomas, Bridget, and Joseph Daly.
The marker is of a common style, though certain of the details are notable: The structure is not a single cast but it is built of multiple pieces. Also notable (for the purposes of this discussion) is the period at the end of the Daly name.
Last week, in a different section of Calvary, I noticed this marker.
This is not the same Daly marker as seen in The Godfather but it sure looks like it. As I approached it from the back I noticed that the Daly name had a period after it. I also noticed that the cross had fallen from the top of the marker. The top of the Daly marker seen in The Godfather appears to have been similarly toppled at some point after the scene was filmed.
Somewhat bemused by the coincidence of the Daly name appearing on such a similarly-styled marker I stepped around to see the front. I was alarmed to see that the first two names on this marker were the same as the first two names on the other one. This marker was built by Thomas Daly in honor of his wife Bridget and their three children who died in infancy — one of those children who died young was named Joseph. The other marker was built by the children of Thomas and Bridget Daly in memory of their parents as well as their brother Joseph. The names of “the children” who built that marker are not shown.Here is a picture of the other stone, which appears in The Godfather:
A strange coincidence, no question, but I do not know what to make of it, if anything. It appears that 2 men named Thomas Daly married 2 women named Bridget, and both unions produced a child named Joseph. One Joseph died in infancy while the other Joseph died at 45. Both Daly families are buried in the same cemetery under tombstones of identical style with very similar details. Were it not for the very similarly designed markers I would likely have never noticed this.
The most fantastic possibility I arrived at was that maybe the Daly marker seen in The Godfather was actually just a prop left at the scene by the producers of that film. That is a far-fetched scenario and I do not actually believe it to be the case, but the strange series of coincidences inspired me on to further imagineering. For the producers of the film to have gone so far as to make a fake stone that passes as authentic might make sense if the stone only had to look real in the film. In fact the grave marker (if it is fake) would pass any test for authenticity — probably because it is authentic!
Seriously, though, I do not imagine that the Daly marker seen in the film is a fake based on the “authentic” Daly marker I spotted in a different section of the cemetery. It was just an idea that flashed through my mind in an attempt to explain how 2 men named John Daly married 2 different women named Bridget and lived contemporaneously in New York during the 1870s and 1880s.
There is, incidentally, a fake tombstone present in the funeral scene of The Godfather. The marker for Vito Corleone as seen in the film is a prop that does not exist at Calvary. The Daly marker is the only genuine tombstone readable in the film, except for the Laughlin mausoleum.
The Daly stone I spotted last week also had another interesting name on it.
JOHN F. DALY N.Y. CITY ASSEMBLY MAN DIED NOV.21,1920, AGED 50 YEARS
The relation between John F. Daly and Thomas Daly is not stated but I assume they were brothers. John F. Daly being a public figure gave me a chance to test the accuracy of his epitaph against public records. I do not have the time or resources to challenge the accuracy of the names and dates on the front of the tombstone but I was able to find reference to New York City Assemblyman John F. Daly in a couple of sources.
For John F. Daly to have died in 1920 at 50 years of age (as the tombstone says) he would have to have been born in 1870. The New York Red Book from 1897 (page 201-202), however, in its profile of Mr. Daly, says that he was born in 1868. This is a relatively small discrepancy, and probably insignificant — tombstones are commonly riddled with errors like this, as are the so-called “primary resources” like the “New York Red Book” — but as I ventured off into conspiratorial fascinations I imagined that this date being in error suggested that all the dates on the front of the stone are in error as well. From there it is a small step to assuming a dual-identity family life going on in 19th century New York, but at the expense of whose ignorance I could not say.
Who knows. Not I. I just thought it was a strange and even eerie coincidence of names.
I am looking for the gravesite of Dan Bryant- a famous blackface comedian and a member of Bryant’s Minstrels who lived at 20 W. 60th St in New York, died in 1875 and the obit says he was buried in Calvary Cemetery. The interesting thing about him was that he exchanged gifts with John Wilkes Booth- In 1863 or 1864 he gave Booth a stickpin set in jet black and gold- this pin was removed from Booth’s body the night he died and has never been found. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
I never heard of Dan Bryant until now, but I’ll keep that in mind when next I go out to Calvary. With an exact date of death (April 10, 1875) it should be easy enough to call the cemetery office and get the exact location of his tomb stone — if there is one.
You know there is another John Wilkes Booth connection at Calvary, which I spotted one day. Check this out:
James Rowan O’Beirne, whose marker says “employed his Detective force in the successful pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.”