The Hollywood Sign: The Billboard That Refused to Die
California
The most recognizable sign in the world was built to sell real estate and was supposed to come down after eighteen months. That it is still there, that it means what it now means, is an accident of such perfect proportions that it says something essential about the place it named.
The Hollywood Sign went up in nineteen twenty-three as a billboard for a residential subdivision called Hollywoodland, backed by Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler and developer S. H. Woodruff. The original version spelled HOLLYWOODLAND in letters fifty feet tall, illuminated by four thousand light bulbs. It was supposed to last a season and a half.
The sign stayed. By nineteen forty-nine, the LAND portion had deteriorated beyond repair and was removed. What remained was HOLLYWOOD, and by then the word needed no subdivision behind it.
In nineteen seventy-eight, a celebrity fundraising campaign replaced the decaying letters by selling individual ones to donors. Hugh Hefner bought the Y. Alice Cooper bought the second O. Andy Williams and others took the remaining letters.
The rebuilt sign has never advertised anything except a subdivision that was built out and sold off decades ago. Its cultural meaning arrived entirely without planning and has outlasted everything that was supposed to matter. That may be the most Hollywood thing about it.
