ollywoodland
Fame, decay, Hugh Hefner, and the making of an American symbol
Hollywood. Everyone knows it, everyone recognizes those big white letters perched on the hillside. It’s iconic, it oozes glamor and aspiration, and tourists go crazy for it. While I’m hoping to shed my tourist status with each trip to see my long-distance west-coast boyfriend as an east-coast girl, I still felt we had to make the pilgrimage at least once. So this past Saturday, we merged onto the Santa Monica Freeway and headed to Griffith Park to see face-to-sign what all the fuss was about.
Nacho and I have a tradition when visiting anywhere remotely historic or famous: we become our own tour guides first. As such, while sitting in LA’s notorious traffic, we rolled down the windows and I, as passenger princess, became our Hollywood Sign professor.
First up on today’s lesson plan: did you know the Hollywood sign started as an ad? In 1923, the sign originally read “HOLLYWOODLAND” – a massive real-estate billboard meant to sell a new housing development in the hills above Los Angeles. The letters were fifty feet tall, lit up with thousands of bulbs, and were only supposed to stay up for ~18 months.
Flash forward 100 years and they’re still there, so what happened you may ask?
“Hollywood” happened. As the film industry exploded in the roaring 1920s and ‘30s, “Hollywood” became shorthand for the whole movie business and the fame, ambition and excess that came with it. The sign, though at this point decaying and dilapidated, accidentally metamorphosed into the symbol of that dream.
By the 1940s, the sign was falling apart and in 1944 the “H” was destroyed - leaving “OLLYWOODLAND” temporarily… sounds Australian when I read that in my head? In 1949, the city took ownership and removed the “LAND,” leaving just HOLLYWOOD, and killed the lights. For decades after, the sign was battered by weather, vandalism, and neglect.
Avengers assemble. But by Avengers I actually mean a celebrity rescue mission. In the late 1970s, the sign was in such bad shape it teetered on the edge of being unsalvageable. Hugh Hefner (?!) organized a fundraiser where celebrities “sponsored” individual letters: he bought the Y, Andy Williams (singer of “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”) bought the W, the publisher of The Hollywood Independent, Terrence Donnelly, bought an H, Warner Bros. Records bought an O, and so on… In 1978, the sign was completely rebuilt with steel and concrete as it stands today.
Now, the Hollywood sign has transcended its real estate roots. It’s achieved what I’d argue is Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben status – a landmark that represents something larger than itself; it’s an emblem of fame, status, success. Admittedly, I held back from adding the word “Hollywood” to that list of adjectives to describe itself – you know you’ve reached “icon status” when you can use a noun as an adjective.
From Griffith Park Observatory, we had a gorgeous view, and while there were plenty of selfie sticks swinging around, seeing it in person was honestly very cool and worth the trip (made even better by knowing its history!) It’s been parodied, altered, protested, and photographed endlessly. It’s a bit ironic, a bit hopeful, and very LA: a marketing ploy that accidentally became a cultural legend.
Thank you for reading lovelies!!! Hope you enjoyed and learnt a little something. XOXO