The Hollywood Sign

HOW A TEMPORARY BILLBOARD FOR A HOUSING TRACT MORPHED INTO A SYMBOL FOR THE GLITZIEST CITY IN AMERICA.

- Robert Klara

Peg Entwistle had come 3,000 miles just to have her heart broken.

It was 1932, and the promising stage actress from New York had come to Hollywood to break into the movies. But after weeks of auditions, the phone hadn’t rung. That was when a highly distraught Entwistle found herself up behind the Hollywood sign, climbing a maintenance ladder behind the 50- foot letter “H.” And when she reached the top, Peg Entwistle threw herself off.

The tragic story of “The Hollywood Sign Girl” remains a cautionary tale for the thousands who still flock to Tinseltown in hopes of a career in front of the camera. But the subtext—Entwistle’s choice of the sign for, if you will, her final performance—is equally enduring: be it 1932 or 2017, the sign has always been about more than it seems. And as symbol of both place and idea, those big white letters on the hill are among the most successful pieces of branding in the world.