This 102-year-old icon has its roots linked to real estate.
Because unlike the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore or other American monuments, the Hollywood sign , the unparalleled emblem of Los Angeles, the most sought-after image by tourists, a ubiquitous print on caps, mugs and t-shirts, was not born to become a symbol of anything .
Moreover, when on December 8, 1923, the 40,000 light bulbs that adorned it began to illuminate it in segments, alternately, what Angelenos could actually read on the slope of Mount Lee was:
HOLLY… WOOD… LAND… HOLLYWOODLAND
This is what the sign looked like on its opening day, illuminated by 40,000 light bulbs. (Getty Images).
Built a stone's throw from the area that five years ago housed the titanic production "Julius Caesar" - with Tyrone Power as Brutus, 500 dancers, 5,000 extras, elephants and camels - it also had nothing to do with the industry with which it now shares its name , the one that shapes dreams.
It was a simple sign—albeit a huge one—with a much more earthly purpose: to sell houses .
A matter of marketing
The idea was for it to be big, very big . So big, that anyone approaching along Wilshire Boulevard, which leads straight to the sea, even from miles away, could read it clearly.
The idea was that it would be easily readable from a distance. (Getty Images).
That was what property developers Tracy Shoults and Sydney Woodruff commissioned Thomas Fisk Goff, owner of the sign company Crescent, to do.
They had a new real estate development to promote: an eclectic, semi-luxury housing development in the hills of the district known as Hollywood, financed by some of the most powerful businessmen of the time; namely, railroad magnates Eli Clark and Moses Sherman and the owner of the powerful Los Angeles Times , Harry Chandler.
Hollywoodland was the name given to that collection of houses in four specific styles —Tudor or medieval English, French-Norman, Mediterranean and colonial-Spanish—, worthy of a story set in the “old world”, and presented it as “the kingdom of joy and health” .
Hollywoodland was promoted as a paradise in contrast to the chaos of Hollywood and the pollution of Los Angeles. (Getty Images).
An enclave “far removed from the maelstrom of human existence”, “the supreme achievement in community building”, the ideal environment to “protect your family and ensure their happiness” with a house built “above the smoke, the fog and the impure atmospheric conditions”.
This was emphasized week after week in the advertisements published in the LA Times , as noted in his book The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon (“The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon”, 2012) by university professor and cultural historian Leo Braudy.
By then, Los Angeles was a metropolis with more than half a million inhabitants and 106,000 registered vehicles, a figure that, according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), would exceed 800,000 by the end of the decade.
Between 1910 and 1920, Los Angeles practically doubled its population. (Getty Images).
The film industry, a well-oiled machine with 40 million weekly viewers , with a system of large studios that extended throughout the city and generated (together with those located in other parts of the country) 80% of the world's film production, had its epicenter in Hollywood.
Anyone wanting to escape all that would find an oasis in Hollywoodland . “That was the core of the strategy to promote the development, and the neon sign atop the Beachwood canyon was the final piece of the puzzle,” Professor Braudy told BBC Mundo.
With tractor and mules
The original poster design was the work of the young advertising executive John D. Roche. Or rather, it arose from a “misinterpretation” of one of his sketches included in an early promotional brochure.
He recounted this himself on the occasion of his 80th birthday, 54 years later. And the obituary that The New York Times dedicated to him on November 22, 1978, describes him as the “creator of the monument,” although some doubt that version.
Be that as it may, it was decided to modernize it with a sans serif , far removed from the sinuous forms of the art nouveau .
And although there are no press reports that narrate how those 13 letters, 15 meters high by 9 meters wide, on the side of the Beachwood canyon, from the photos one can guess that it was quite a feat.
First they had to remove the undergrowth and open a dirt road so that a tractor could drive up with the material, including the 18-meter posts that would serve as support.
Mules had to be used to carry the materials needed to erect the sign. (Getty Images).
Since the last stretch, about 70 meters long, was too steep, the transfer had to be completed using pack animals.
“ Mexican workers anchored each letter to telephone poles brought to the site by mules, completing in 60 days a task that cost US$21,000 (the equivalent of US$250,000 today),” writes Braudy, the professor at the University of Southern California (USC), in his book.
Although it was inaugurated with the lighting in December, the sign had been contemplating the city from above for months and, perhaps thanks in part to that, by September homes in Hollywoodland had already been sold for a total value of US$1.5 million (the equivalent of US$16 million in 2023).
Sales would continue to increase, until every single parcel was sold.
From poster to emblem
Although the Hollywood sign was initially nothing more than a huge billboard, it soon began to permeate the popular imagination .
Tragic events contributed to this, such as the 1932 suicide of young Peg Entwistle , which the media reported as that of an actress tormented by her career.
He took his own life by jumping from the H. He was only 24 years old.
“Whatever her motivations were, she may have been the first to understand the sign as a symbol and to make it a dramatically explicit part of her biography,” Braudy points out in his work.
Karen Black in front of the Hollywood sign during a scene from the film "The Day of the Lobster," in 1974. (Getty Images).
Although what surely contributed most to making him an emblem was his appearance in films such as Earthquake (1974), " The Day of the Locust" ( 1975) or Superman: The Movie (1978).
Not forgetting how pop art helped to refresh his image; in particular Ed Ruscha, who from 1967 onwards included him in his paintings, drawings and prints.
Although the reality of the sign was that, after years of little or almost no maintenance, it was falling to pieces.
Decline and resurgence
In the 1940s the sign had passed into the hands of the city, which took charge of fixing the battered H and removing the last four letters, LAND .
But when the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board declared it the official landmark #111 in 1973, one O had rolled down the hillside, part of the D was missing, and someone had set fire to the base of the second L.
And at the end of that decade, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce determined that the sign required a complete reconstruction , something it estimated could cost a quarter of a million dollars.
Luckily, some of the city's big names came to the rescue.
In 1978, Hugh Hefner hosted a gala at the Playboy Mansion to raise funds for the renovation of the Hollywood sign. Perhaps that's why his wax figure has that image in the background. (Getty Images).
In 1978 Hugh Hefner Playboy magazine , organized a gala at his mansion to benefit the Hollywood sign.
It was a resounding success: he paid for the Y himself, among other costs, and rock musician Alice Cooper contributed US$27,777 for a new O.
All the letters found sponsors and were replaced by others made of steel beams and corrugated iron enamelled in white, which were fixed to the ground with reinforced cement.
John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Bob Welch and Christine McVie (from left to right) of the rock group "Fleetwood Mac" pose for a portrait under the Hollywood sign in August 1974. (Getty Images).
The work was completed in less than three months and cost about US$250,000, the contemporary equivalent of the original expenditure.
But the sign also underwent other types of alterations throughout its history, more of the DIY ( Do It Yourself ) type.
"Blessed weed," reads the altered sign. (Getty Images).
Like when in January 1976 it dawned transformed into HOLLYWeeD , as a play on words to celebrate the decriminalization of marijuana ( weed in English means herb), or when someone covered the second L, turning it ephemerally into HOLYWOOD , on the occasion of the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1987.
To prevent these and other types of sabotage, it is now surrounded by barbed wire, surveillance cameras, and motion sensors.
All of the above are signs of his iconic status …
“Unlike other American icons, the Hollywood sign focuses on our dreams and our inner lives. And while other monuments are anchored to a specific era and the national events they celebrate, this sign floats above its surroundings and circumstances , open to everyone’s interpretation,” Professor Braudy told BBC Mundo in 2023.
The Hollywood sign is now a place of pilgrimage for tourists. (Getty Images).
In that sense, he likes to compare it to the Eiffel Tower, also designed to be ephemeral but which became the most iconic image of Paris.
“In any case, the sign is a strange icon by any definition,” Braudy continues.
“It’s not an image that resembles or refers to something called Hollywood, it’s the name itself. And yet, people everywhere recognize it as the symbol of whatever 'Hollywood' means … with all the ambiguity that implies.”
Source: BBC Mundo.
Cover photo: Pixabay.
