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Unburied Treasures
bodies, bits and bobs of the famous and infamous
However famous or infamous you are – or were - there’s no getting around the fact that when you’re dead, you’re dead.
When most celebrities die, what happens to them is the same as what happens to anyone else: they get buried, or cremated or their remains are disposed of in some other way. Permanently. End of.
But not in the extraordinary cases that Mark Bunyan catalogues in his musical Unburied Treasures. It disinters some of the famous and not so famous to blackly comic effect.
Sometimes the lure of fame post-mortem proved just too strong and the celeb’s body - or some bits of it - ended up somewhere else for some other purpose. Sometimes for a very long time indeed. Sometimes forever.
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Skulls.
Hip bones.
Thigh bones.
Hearts.
And other assorted body parts.
This isn’t prurience, it isn’t superstitious mystery
It’s interesting stuff, it’s fascinating history.
Coffins.
Caskets.
Boxes.
Urns.
Some they buries and some they burns.
If you want to know whose bodies and other bits and bobs are featured in Unburied Treasures, then read on.
The eponymous crania celebrated in “Jo and Mo” belonged to the 18 century musical legends Josef Haydn (1732-1809), 
His short-lived brilliant young friend Mozart suffered a similar undignified fate, probably some years after his burial in 1791 when his skull, too, was stolen. Despite various claims and efforts to authenticate possible crania, or bits of them, as his, the genuine Mozart skull has never been found.
John Barrymore (1882-1942, 
Grand-daughter and actor Drew Barrymore claims his body was purloined from the morgue by some of his drinking pals, including WC Fields and Raoul Walsh, in a boozy jape as part of a final mischief-making party at Errol Flynn’s (1909-1959, 
We’re happy in Hollywood.
Christopher Columbus wouldn’t recognise anyone by that name, certainly not himself. The Genoese (Ligurian) adventurer and navigator named Cristoffa or Cristofero Colombo (1451-1506) was known to his Spanish employers Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon as Cristóbal Colón.
There are so many famous bodies to choose from in Pere Lachaise cemetery (Cimetière du Père-Lachaise) at 44 hectares the largest boneyard in Paris. Established in 1804 by Napoleon, it was slow to take off with the fashionable (and affluent) dead, so the owners made efforts to make it more appealing by importing some long-deceased “new” residents.
With great spectacle in 1817 - a red carpet event attended the Empress Josephine no less - the (purported) mortal remains of star crossed 12th century lovers Abélard and Héloïse found a new resting place in Pere Lachaise.
Like Jim Morrison lead singer of “The Doors” (1943-1971) who died in Paris and is interred at Pere Lachaise. Fittingly for a notorious bad boy and larger than life icon of rock and roll, the bronze plaque on his grave is inscribed in Greek: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ, meaning "true to his own spirit" - or if you want something a bit racier, "according to his own daemon". You can get away with that when you die unexpectedly in your bath at age 27. 
What is true is that at its unveiling in August 1914, a bronze plaque was strategically placed to cover the testicles whose size was considered unusual, if not immodest. This infuriated Epstein who refused to attend the ceremony. Oscar would have been very amused, no doubt. 
Either way, he certainly wasn’t a ruffian in a coonskin cap as portrayed by Fess Parker in the popular 1960s US eponymous television series. Boone was no identikit “Davy Crockett”.
Which is where his bones are still at rest.
But how much of Shelley actually turned to ashes on that Italian beach? Legend says the cremation was botched, and that someone snatched Shelley's 'heart' from the fire and later gave it to Mary. But was it his heart, or a charred, calcified (Shelly had tuberculosis that would have soon killed him) piece of some other organ?
Given the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by the Argentine Congress, Eva was given a state funeral.
Eventually Person returned as President in 1973, promptly died the next year and his third wife (and Vice President) Isabel Peron was left to arrange the return of Evita to Argentina in 1974. The body finally made it to the Duarte family’s tomb in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires in 1976, secured beneath five metres of double and triple layers of coffins, trap doors and bombproof layers of concrete.
After enduring months of fever, dysentery, bleeding haemorrhoids, all plaguing his futile search for the Nile's source, the physician, earnest but unsuccessful missionary, antislavery campaigner, imperialist and explorer David Livingstone died age 60 on the night of 30 April 1873, in what is today Zambia.
Close to the station platform in Livingstone’s home town of Blantyre on the Clyde in South Lanarkshire, is a metal sculpture erected in 2017. Two masked Africans tramp through the undergrowth with a pole slung between them. This is how his African friends carried Livingstone’s embalmed cadaver through the jungle to the coast in 1873.