“Hooray for Hollywood, that screwy ballyhooey Hollywood,” the old song goes. And nothing screams “Hollywood!” louder than that famous white sign on Mount Lee towering over Beachwood Canyon. After all, it literally spells it out for you.
Believe it or not, it’s been there exactly 100 years now. Though, when it went up in 1923, it originally said: “Hollywoodland” (and utilized 4,000 bulbs to light up “Holly,” “Wood,” and “Land” one at a time). But it wasn’t celebrating the new motion picture industry; it actually plugged the even newer Hollywoodland housing development with the same name located below it. And it wasn’t cheap, either: The whole shebang cost a cool $21,000 (about $380,000 today) and was intended to last only 18 months.
The development came and went, but the sign still endures. The lights were lost in 1933 (too expensive), and the name was trimmed in 1949 (too long). The original wood deteriorated to the point that it came within a whisker of being demolished. It was replaced with metal, and when that wore out, an updated version with larger letters was unveiled in 1978. (With financial support coming from an eclectic group of celebrities that included rocker Alice Cooper, crooner Andy Williams, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, cowboy singer Gene Autry, and Les Kelley, creator of the auto trade’s legendary “Kelley Blue Book.”)
It’s been quite a story. But one part of the famous sign’s past is often left out of the tale. Because a movie starlet once chose the landmark for her final exit.
Poor Peg Entwistle. Born in Britain in 1908, her childhood was unhappy with her parents divorcing and her actor dad taking her to America. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, she followed in her father’s footsteps and made it to the Broadway stage by age 17, where she met with modest success. (Bette Davis later said Entwistle inspired her to become an actress.)
But there were tears along the way. Her father was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 1922. In 1927, she married the decade-older Robert Keith, only to divorce him two years later for, among other things, not telling her he’d been married before and had a 6-year-old son. (Who grew up to become movie and TV star Brian Keith.) Then, in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, she was swindled out of her promised payout when the plug was pulled on a big Broadway show.
Fed up, she headed west to give Hollywood a try. But Tinsel Town greeted her with a less than warm welcome. She appeared for two weeks in a play that summer opposite a young Humphrey Bogart. Despite the good reviews, film work was slow in coming. She finally landed a small part in a big-budget RKO release called “Thirteen Women.” But she didn’t live to see it on the silver screen.
On September 18, the now 24-year-old Entwistle told the uncle she had been staying with she was going to a drugstore and then to visit some friends. She never came home.
Two days later, a woman hiking below the Hollywood sign came upon a woman’s shoe. Then a jacket. And then a purse. A short note inside explained everything. “I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.” Her body was found in a nearby ravine. She had climbed up a workman’s ladder and had jumped from the top of the letter H.
Entwistle’s death was national news. But 1932 was a presidential election year, and that, coupled with the severe economic crisis, pushed it off the front page in short order. It didn’t take long for Peg Entwistle, her brief career, and her heartbreaking short life, to be forgotten.
Why select such a prominent place for her finale? We’ll never know; she took the answer with her to the grave.
It is strange to think now, 91 years later, that a venue associated with so much glittering fame was briefly connected to a tragedy. But it was. Peg Entwistle is as much a part of the legendary sign’s legacy as its lost phrase “land” and the lights that once flashed to draw the attention of so many aspiring actors and actresses down below.
Holy Cow! History is written by novelist, former TV journalist and diehard history buff J. Mark Powell. Have a historic mystery that needs solving? A forgotten moment worth remembering? Please send it to [email protected].
