US: A calendar created by funeral parlour poster-boys seeks to portray glamorous gravity, not graveside grins, writes Bob Pool in Los Angeles
Undertaker Ken McKenzie wants to put the fun in the funeral business.
The Long Beach, California mortuary owner has created "Men of Mortuaries", a 2007 colour photo calendar designed to help bury the notion that US funeral parlours are staffed by pallid, humourless directors.
Its cover features shirtless undertakers holding shovels, while other muscle-flexing workers lower a casket into the ground.
Inside, the months of the year are illustrated by photographs featuring a mix of dark humour and dazzling smiles. Glamorous grins - not graveside gravity - was the goal, according to McKenzie.
And that turned out to be a challenge too. McKenzie drew 276 responses when he placed an advertisement in an industry trade journal seeking undertakers to pose for the first-of-its kind calendar. But most of those sending in photos of themselves looked a little, well, grave. "Some of them wouldn't smile," McKenzie says. "Our industry is so scared of what people will think. They say this is a serious business and people expect funeral directors to be serious."
When McKenzie assembled the winning participants earlier this year for the calendar shoot at Long Beach's Sunnyside Cemetery, two of the models froze, refusing to crack a smile.
The calendar's art designer was forced to digitally remove the grim-faced pair from the graveyard cover photograph. In their place were added a shirtless McKenzie and another last-minute fill-in, photographed separately and carefully manipulated into position.
All was not lost, though. The photo retoucher was also able to buff up the calendar boys.
"We added a few abs to some stomachs," admits McKenzie (40). "We got rid of some flab."
The shipment of 50,000 calendars is expected today from a print shop in China. Advance copies have prompted reactions ranging from "those guys are hot" to "the whole thing is creepy".
McKenzie intends to donate $2 (€1.58) from each sale to a newly organised group that will provide grants to breast cancer patients who need assistance paying for such things as child care.
It was his sister, McKenzie says, who first suggested the calendar after seeing similar ones featuring firefighters and Chippendales dancers.
"She was joking and asked, 'Where are the undertakers?' "
McKenzie and his calendar models say the time is right for the undertakers' move. The popular cable TV programme Six Feet Under showed that funeral directors can have a sense of humour, they say. "Ten years ago we couldn't have done this," McKenzie says.
Still, Mr August isn't certain how people will react in his hometown of Remsen, Iowa, which has a population of 1,700.
"We'll be selling the calendars at our family's funeral home. But I don't know how well they'll go over," says David Fisch, a third-generation undertaker who is depicted in the calendar sweating as he changes a hearse's flat tire and a minister waits impatiently in the background.
The muscular Fisch (28) works out to work off the stress that comes with funeral duties. His equipment is kept in a corner of the funeral home's hearse garage, which he has nicknamed the "Dead Weight Gym".
Mr April, 24-year-old Kurt Zabor of Parma, Ohio, is pictured surrounded by a spray of funeral flowers. He says he too will have the calendar for sale in his family's mortuary.
But, "it's not like we're going to have stacks of them on display on tables during wakes. We'll have them if people ask. You have to be respectful, first and foremost," says Zabor. And he was dead serious.