Hollywood Sign

Nine white letters stand on a dry hillside, each one taller than a four-story building. From miles away they spell a single word, and the word means movies. The Hollywood Sign may be the most recognized set of letters on the planet, and it began as an advertisement for houses.

In 1923 a group of real estate developers wanted to sell lots in a new hillside neighborhood. They called the development Hollywoodland. To promote it, they raised thirteen enormous letters on the slope of Mount Lee, spelling the full name. The sign was studded with about four thousand light bulbs that flashed in segments at night. The developers included Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

The sign was meant to last about a year and a half. Advertising rarely plans for immortality. But the film industry was exploding in the valley below, and the word on the hill slowly changed its meaning. It stopped selling houses. It started standing for an idea, a place where ordinary people might become famous. Tour buses began pointing to it. Postcards printed it. The accident of advertising became a landmark.

The sign also carries a tragedy. In 1932 a young actress named Peg Entwistle climbed to the top of the letter H and jumped to her death. She had come from the Broadway stage and struggled to find film work. Her story became a dark Hollywood legend, a warning about the gap between the dream and the odds.

Time was not kind to the letters. The developers stopped maintaining the sign, and wind and rain worked on the sheet metal. By the 1940s the sign was falling apart. In 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in. Workers removed the last four letters, and Hollywoodland became simply Hollywood. The city declared the shortened sign an official cultural landmark in 1973.

By the 1970s the sign was a ruin again. An O had crumbled. Arsonists had burned the bottom of an L. In 1978 celebrities funded a complete rebuild. Rock star Alice Cooper gave money for an O, honoring Groucho Marx. Hugh Hefner hosted a fundraiser. Singing cowboy Gene Autry sponsored a letter too. Nine donors paid for nine new letters of steel.

The letters you see today are those 1978 replacements, repainted many times since. Each letter stands about forty-five feet tall, which is roughly the height of a four-story building. The whole sign stretches about three hundred fifty feet across the hillside. The steel sits in concrete footings, built to outlast the original by design. Painters refreshed the white coat for the centennial, using hundreds of gallons of paint.

Pranksters have edited the sign more than once. In 1976 students changed it to read Hollyweed after a marijuana law changed. Guards, fences, and cameras now protect the letters. A motion detector calls security if anyone climbs toward the letters. You cannot walk up and touch them. The closest legal approach ends behind the sign, on a trail above it.

That distance is part of the experience. The sign is best seen the way it was designed to be seen, from far away. Griffith Observatory offers a classic view with the city spread below. Lake Hollywood Park sits almost directly beneath the letters. Hiking trails through Griffith Park climb to a viewpoint above the sign itself. The Wonder View Trail and the Brush Canyon Trail both lead toward Mount Lee.

If you hike, treat it as a real hike. The trails are dusty, open, and hot in summer, with little shade. Carry water. Wear proper shoes. The climb to the summit of Mount Lee takes a few hours round trip, and the reward is the strange sight of the letters from behind, with all of Los Angeles beyond. Cell service is patchy in the canyons, so download your map first.

The sign turned one hundred in 2023. It has outlived the real estate scheme, the studio system that made it famous, and most of the people who rebuilt it. It requires nothing from you. It just stands there, white against the brown hill, meaning whatever the movies mean to you. Locals check it from freeways and kitchen windows, a compass point for the whole basin.

Find your view. Watch the light change on the letters as the sun moves. Morning haze softens them. Afternoon sun makes them glare. At dusk they fade into the hillside, since the sign is no longer lit. A century of dreams, and it still goes dark every night. There is something honest in that.