H O L L Y W O O D

In the early 1920's this town filled with film makers after discovering the warm year around weather conductive for film making and by 1923, Hollywood, Ca. was not just a city but an industry, a lifestyle and increasingly, an aspiration, that inspired the first Hollywoodland sign to be erected.

Hollywood...the city of dreams and extravagant lifestyle.

Everyone has seen the movies and read the books about the hoards of young people that poured into this city with dreams of becoming a star and of course some did make it big but there were many who did not. One such lady

Peg Entwistle, a New York stage actress set her sights on the silver screen. She packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. After a long hot summer in 1932 of waiting by the phone hoping for her big chance, she hiked up the canyon hill to the Hollywood sign, her one-time beacon of hope but now a symbol of failure and rejection. She climbed 50 feet up a workman's ladder to the top the "H" and plunged to her death.....she was dubbed by the tabloids as "The Hollywood Sign Girl".

During the 1960"s, Hollywood suffered through a mass exodus of residents to the suburban San Fernando Valley and just as distressing was the flight of film power centers. By 1970, Paramount was the only studio left in town. After time, the Hollywood sign became an eyesore ready to collapse when in the late 1970's the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce made the decision to rebuild it with a price tag of a quarter million dollars. Many of the showbiz's biggest names donated to this cause like, Fleetwood Mack, Hugh Hefner, Gene Autry and Andy Williams to name a few.

194 tons of concrete, enamel and steel later, the Sign was re-born, posed and polished for a new millennium and enjoyed by millions even today................

For more information about the history of the sign go here