Hollywood Sign

 Playboy has gone Hollywood – and as in many a steamy and scintillating script to come out of LA Land, the hunky hero saves the day. This time superman is Hugh Hefner …and the scary plot? The maintenance or demise of the historic Hollywood sign in its omnipresent position atop Mt. Lee.  Against all odds and nearly the papa of pornography saved the sign, and the day, just in the nick of time.

It may not sound like much of a nail biter but the sign has been an icon of LA, part and parcel of the landscape, since 1923. 

It was born out of a PR stunt, not surprisingly in a city that would eventually become the epicenter of buzz.
As dreamers and film makers chased the blue skies of the Western US from New York, New Jersey and the Midwest, LA was already forming into a bustling center of charm and money. Opulent hotels and apartments went up around the build up of film studios and Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler found the perfect spot to erect his $21,000 billboard advertising his upscale Hollywoodland real estate development. 

The massive billboard originally had 13 letters, each 30 feet wide and 50 feet tall, and at night it blinked with the luminescence of 4,000 20-watt bulbs.

Through the years the sign had its challenges. It became known as a famous suicide spot in the 1930s until Howard Hughes purchased the sign and the land around it as the site of a love nest he wanted to build for his lady of the moment, Ginger Rogers. The lair was never built and the land stood fallow for decades.  In the 1960s “wood” was changed to “weed” until the first round of sign restorations kicked in through funds raised by Hefner in 1978.  

A group of Chicago investors purchased the land for the development of luxury homes in 2002. But the Hollywood community said not so fast. The sign sits at the top of Mt. Lee on some 138 acres of prime scrub offering stunning 360-degree views of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.  And it’s a target of on a popular three-mile hiking loop connected to Griffith Park on a trail that extends to Bronson Caves (where the Bat Mobile was stored in the Batman series) and the Griffith Park Observatory. 

As of the end of April 2010, the sign has been saved again by Hefner and the land around it preserved as a nature and hiking spot. Nearly a $1 million short, Hefner threw in the remaining $900,000 this time to meet the $12.5 needed to purchase the land back from the investment group. 

The sums came in addition to other monies donated by such Hollywood A-listers like Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, A-lister companies such as Tiffany, state and local reserves and a lot of private citizens who wanted to keep some things in Hollywood just the way they were. 

Although the 20-watt bulbs stopped blinking on the sign many decades ago, Hollywood shines on. 

 

 

 

- by Lark Ellen Gould, Los Angeles Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Lark Ellen Gould

Lark Ellen Gould has penned seven books on Las Vegas and Los Angeles as a veteran news and travel writer. Her work appears in the L.A. Times, Elite Traveler, Travel Agent Magazine and other national forums. She lived in Boston for many years, earning her masters degree and then traveling the globe for stories. Today she lives in LA and still travels the world on assignment while filling the pages of her travel site: www.wheredaily.com, along the way.