![]() ![]() “I was 17 or 18 years old,’’ says the New Jersey native. “He creates new artwork with pieces of it.’’ “A graphic artist named Bill Mack bought the original sign - put in a warehouse when it was replaced,’’ Maltin says. Incredibly, you can even buy a piece of the original Hollywoodland sign from 1923, Maltin reveals. “There’s a spot where you can get a perfect shot of the Hollywood sign over your shoulder on a non-muggy day,’’ he says. He says the best place to see the Hollywood sign - and to take a selfie with it in the background - is on the elevated walkway of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center. Maltin says the closest he’s ever gotten to the sign was during one of his very early assignments as a correspondent for “Entertainment Tonight’’ in the 1980s, “standing on a very scary piece of curbing below the sign.’’ People are fed up with visitors, even well-intentioned ones.’’ Hugh Hefner (pictured in 1977) and nine other donors donated over $27,000 apiece to help renovate the sign in 1977. Maltin says that lately homeowners in neighboring Beachwood Canyon have been complaining about “an epidemic of small Hollywood tour vans that can snake in and out of the narrow streets. Even so, in 2012, a deranged man managed to leave his boyfriend’s decapitated head in a plastic bag on a hiking trail below the sign. Today, the City of Los Angeles Parks Department maintains strict security - including barbed-wire barriers - around the sign to keep out vandals, drunken revelers and would-be suicides. “He came to the rescue again a few years ago when they needed to raise money to save the land around the sign. “Hugh Hefner has spent his life in love with Hollywood,’’ says Maltin. Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, led a campaign in which nine donors - including singer Alice Cooper, cowboy actor Gene Autry and Hefner himself - donated $27,777.77 apiece for new steel letters (45 instead of 50 feet high) set on a concrete foundation that sprawls the length of two football fields. (The sign has long since been illuminated by spotlights at night.)īy 1977, it was clear the deteriorating sign needed to be completely replaced. There was talk about tearing down what was becoming an eyesore, but there was such a public outcry that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce agreed to pay for repairing the sign - provided the LAND part was removed and they didn’t have to replace all those light bulbs. Nine years later, actress Peg Entwistle jumped to her death from the “H.” Everett CollectionĮventually, the sign began succumbing to neglect - a truck knocked down the H in 1940. The original sign - 50-foot-tall letters constructed of wood and sheet metal high atop Mount Lee - contained thousands of light bulbs that flashed on and off: HOLLY WOOD LAND.īy 1932 it had become so identified with the movie industry that an unsuccessful and despondent starlet named Peg Entwistle climbed to the top of the H and leapt to her death. “It was only going to be up for a year and a half - as long as it took to sell all the plots of land and build homes.’’ The original “Hollywoodland” sign (pictured in 1924) was erected in 1923 as an advertisement for a real estate development. “They didn’t consider it a permanent structure,’’ says film historian Leonard Maltin, who appears on a Sunday episode of Discovery Family’s “Secrets of America’s Favorite Places’’ devoted to the Hollywood Boulevard area. Unlike some true crime podcasts, this series tracks the team’s investigation into the case in real-time, as they uncover new leads and try to paint a picture of the Con Queen at the heart of the scam.The Hollywood sign is one of America’s most iconic landmarks - but it started out in 1923 as a temporary billboard for a mountaintop real estate development called Hollywoodland. “But when they land, there is no producer. ![]() All these strivers have to do is get on a plane, for Jakarta, immediately. This offer comes from a powerful woman – one of the biggest producers or studio executives in the industry. Strivers – day players and physical trainers and make-up artists and security guards – receive a phone call or email offering the job of a lifetime. We’d try to explain it, but the official synopsis does it best: “For the past 6 years, someone – or some group – has been terrorizing a certain class of Hollywood workers. Described as the “incredible true story of one of the longest and strangest cons in history,” Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen is a 10-part podcast series hosted by two long-time journalists, Josh Dean and Vanessa Grigoariadis, who embark on an “obsessive quest” to figure out who or what is behind a scam which has been plaguing Hollywood for the past six years. ![]()
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