This is the story of an icon by accident.
Because unlike the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore or other American monuments, the hollywood signunparalleled emblem of Los Angeles, the most sought after image by tourists, ubiquitous image of caps, mugs and t-shirts, He was not born to become a symbol of anything.
Furthermore, when the December 8, 1923 The 40,000 light bulbs that adorned it began to illuminate it in segments, alternately, what the Angelenos could actually read on the slope of Mount Lee was:
HOLLY… WOOD… LAND… HOLLYWOODLAND
Erected just a stone’s throw from the area that five years ago housed the titanic production of “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 shares its name today.the one that gives shape to dreams.
It was a simple poster—albeit enormous—with a much more earthly vocation: that of Sell houses.
Marketing question
The idea was for it to be big, very big. So much so that anyone approaching along Wilshire Boulevard, which leads in a straight line to the sea, even if they were miles away, could read it clearly.
That’s what real estate developers Tracy Shoults and Sydney Woodruff tasked Crescent sign company owner Thomas Fisk Goff with.
And they had a new real estate development to promote: a eclectic semi-luxury development in the hills of the district known as Hollywood, financed by some of the most powerful businessmen of the time; read, railroad magnates Eli Clark and Moses Sherman and the owner of the powerful newspaper Los Angeles TimesHarry Chandler.
Hollywoodland called that group 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 they presented it as “the kingdom of joy and health”.
An enclave “away 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, fog and impure atmospheric conditions.”
This was highlighted week after week by the advertisements published in the LA Timesas stated in his book The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon (“The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon”, 2012) university professor and cultural historian Leo Braudy.
And 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), by the end of the decade would exceed 800,000.
The film industry, a well-oiled machine of 40 million weekly viewerswith a system of large studios that extended throughout the city and that generated (along with those located in other parts of the country) 80% of the world’s film production, had its epicenter in Hollywood.
Whoever wanted to escape from all that would find an oasis in Hollywoodland. “That was the axis of the strategy to promote the urbanization, and the illuminated sign at the top of the Beachwood canyon was the last of its pieces,” Professor Braudy tells BBC Mundo.
With tractor and mules
The original design of the poster was the work of the young publicist John D. Roche. Or it arose, rather, from a “misinterpretation” of a sketch of his included in an early promotional brochure.
This is what he himself said 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 there are those who doubt that version.
Be that as it may, it was decided to modernize it with a typography sans serifvery far from the sinuous forms of the style art nouveau.
And although there are no press reports that narrate how those were placed 13 letters 15 meters high by 9 meters wide at the foot of Beachwood Canyon, from the photos you can guess that it was quite a feat.
First they had to remove the weeds and open a dirt path along which a tractor could carry the material, including the 18-meter poles that would serve as support.
Since the last section, about 70 meters, was too steep, the transfer had to be completed with pack animals.
“Mexican workers They anchored each letter to telephone poles brought to the site by mules, completing in 60 days tasks that cost $21,000 dollars (the equivalent of $250,000 today),” Braudy, the University of Southern California (USC) professor, writes in his book.
Although it was inaugurated illuminated in December, the sign had been contemplating the city from above for months and, perhaps thanks in part to this, by September houses had already been sold in Hollywoodland for a total value of $1.5 million dollars (the equivalent of $16 million today).
Sales would continue to increase, until each and every parcel was shipped.
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 episodes helped this, such as the 1932 suicide of young Peg Entwistlewhich the media reported as that of an actress tormented by her career.
He took his life by jumping off the H. She was only 24 years old.
“No matter what your motivations were, she may have been the first to understand the sign as a symbol and in making it a dramatically explicit part of his biography,” Braudy points out in his work.
Although surely what contributed most to making it an emblem was its appearance in films like Earthquake (1974), “The day of the locust” (The Day of the Locust, 1975) or Superman: The Movie (1978).
Without forgetting how pop art helped refresh his image; in particular Ed Ruscha, who since 1967 included it 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 apart.
Decline and resurgence
In the 1940s the sign had passed into the hands of the city, which was responsible for repairing the battered H and removed the last four letters, LAND.
But when the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board declared it the official monument #111 In 1973, an O had rolled down the hill, 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 reconstructionsomething he estimated could cost a quarter of a million dollars.
Luckily, some of the city’s biggest names came to the rescue.
In 1978 Hugh Hefnerfounder of the magazine Playboyhosted a gala at his mansion to benefit the Hollywood sign.
It was a resounding success: he himself paid for the Y, among other costs, and the rock musician Alice Cooper contributed $27,777 dollars for a new O.
All the letters found a sponsor and were replaced by others made of steel beams and white enamelled corrugated iron sheets, which were fixed to the ground with reinforced cement.
The work was completed in less than three months and cost about $250,000, the contemporary equivalent of the original expense.
But the sign also suffered other types of alterations throughout its history, more of the DIY type (Do It Yourself or “do it yourself”).
Like when in January 1976 he woke up transformed into HOLLYWeeDas a play on words to celebrate the decriminalization of marijuana (weed in English it means grass), or when someone covered the second L, ephemerally turning it into HOLYWOODbecause of the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1987.
To avoid these and other types of sabotage, today it is surrounded by barbed wire, surveillance cameras and motion sensors.
Signs, all of the above, of his icon status…
…but unlikely
“Unlike other American icons, the Hollywood sign focuses on our dreams and our inner lives. AND While the other monuments are anchored to a specific era and the national events they celebrate, this poster floats above its surroundings and circumstances.open to each person’s interpretation,” says Professor Braudy.
In that sense, he likes to compare it with the Eiffel Tower, also designed to be ephemeral but it became the most iconic sight of Paris.
“In any case, the sign is a strange icon by any definition,” Braudy continues.
“It is not an image that resembles or refers to something called Hollywood, but it is the name itself. And even so, People everywhere recognize him as the symbol of whatever ‘Hollywood’ means.…with all the ambiguity that that implies.”
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