It’s the place New York City’s elite are dying to get into: Frank E.
Campbell, the illustrious funeral home that has waked everyone from Rudolph Valentino to Biggie Smalls, John Lennon to Joan Rivers, Walter Cronkite to Heath Ledger.
At Campbell, confidentiality is key, and even in death — that great equalizer — celebrities are supposed to go out with more elegance and style than the rest of us.
Jackie O, for example, was embalmed in her apartment so that the press wouldn’t get a photo of her in a body bag.
Instead, she was removed from her Fifth Avenue apartment building in a casket.
“High-five figure services were regular,” says Elizabeth Meyer, a 30-year-old socialite who spent five years working at Campbell.
“But we had some six-figure funerals as well. There’s no right or wrong — it’s what you want to spend.”
In her new memoir, “Good Mourning” (Gallery Books), Meyer writes about the strangest services and corpses she pulled together — and things at Campbell, or “Crawford,” as it’s called in the book, aren’t as chic as you might think.
There was the room she converted into a replica of Bungalow 8, replete with palm trees and a DJ, so mourners could properly send off an infamous party boy.
His family buried him in his favorite things: a Snoopy T-shirt and bright green sneakers, a bottle of absinthe in his hand.
On the guest list: royalty and rockers, socialites and designers. “It all felt a little empty,” Meyer writes.
“My fears were confirmed when I saw guests coming out of the bathroom with red noses.
Suddenly it made sense why the family had asked if the upstairs bathroom had marble countertops.”
 
