December 8, 1923: The HOLLYWOOD Sign

December 8, 1923: The HOLLYWOOD Sign begins operating. Or, as originally constructed, the HOLLYWOODLAND Sign.

It's become the most famous sign in the world. And it was only supposed to be temporary. As the saying today goes, it had one job.

That one job was to advertise "Hollywoodland." No, not "Hollywood," the section of Los Angeles where the film industry had already set up, due to the kind of climate that allowed studios to make movies all year long. (And which, like Bel Air, is part of the City of Los Angeles, not a separate city, as Beverly Hills is.) Rather, it was a new housing development, named Hollywoodland, set up at the bottom of Mount Lee, in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, not far from the famous Observatory.

Thomas Fisk Goff (1890-1984) set up 13 white letters, 30 feet wide and 50 feet high, facing south. The letters had 4,000 light bulbs, that would flash: First "HOLLY," then "WOOD," then "LAND," and back to "HOLLY," in sequence. The sign outlasted its need, because people liked it. The lighting was switched off in 1933, to save money during the Great Depression.

On September 16, 1932, Peg Entwistle, a Welsh actress who had come to America and starred on Broadway, but had seen her 1st film role, in Thirteen Women, severely cut, climbed to the top of the H in the sign, and jumped to her death. She was 24, and remains the sign's only suicide.

In 1944, high winds blew the H over, wrecking it, leaving the sign as "OLLYWOODLAND." In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce made a deal with the City of Los Angeles, and rebuilt the sign, dropping the last 4 letters, so that it read "HOLLYWOOD." It has, ever since.

With some exceptions. Pranksters have occasionally altered it. Marijuana activists have placed black tape over the capital O's, turning them into lower-case e's. And, on at least one occasion, with the USC-UCLA football game coming up, USC students have altered the sign to read "BEAT UCLA." Other football fans, usually with their teams playing in the Rose Bowl, have altered the sign.

By the time the New York Yankees played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1977 World Series, the sign was in bad shape, as shown by stock footage of Los Angeles at the time that was included in ESPN's 2006 miniseries The Bronx Is Burning.

This led Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner to raise money for the sign's restoration. This included replacing the original wooden letters with metal ones, 44 feet high. It was restored again in 2005, and will be restored again in time for its 100th Anniversary in 2023.

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December 8, 1923 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were no college football games. The NFL played the next day, concluding its season, with the Ohio-based Canton Bulldogs repeating as NFL Champions. And the NHL didn't open its season for another 7 days. So there were no scores on this historic day.