The Hollywood sign: L.A.’s Eiffel Tower

The Hollywood sign has endured almost as many deaths, near-deaths and revivals as Kenny in “South Park.” Just a few weeks ago, its solitary iconic presence was rescued yet again — this time by a last-minute donation of $900,000 from Hugh Hefner, which matched grants from the Tiffany & Co. Foundation and Aileen Getty and supplemented donations from thousands of individuals, famous and not.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Braudy: An Op-Ed on May 6 identified Leo Braudy as a history professor at USC. He is a professor of English and American literature. —

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Since 1923, when it began life as an advertisement for a real estate development, the sign has loomed over the city. Make it big enough to be seen from Wilshire, ordered Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times and one of the great real estate developers of the early 20th century. Wilshire at the time was a partially paved dirt road through the oil fields, still waiting for its own creation a few years later. But Chandler saw the future, and the future was grandiose signs that enticed oglers in the new car culture.

The development, Hollywoodland, sold out most of its properties in Beachwood Canyon, and then the Depression hit. By 1939, maintenance on the sign was abandoned, and wind and rain took their toll. Before long, the H had blown down, an L was half-gone and the O’s were beginning to look like Cs or worse. In 1949, the Parks Department wanted to tear the whole thing down as a menace to public health.

Enter the first of many saviors, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which said it would take over the upkeep of the sign. Off came the “LAND” and, for the first time, the sign read “HOLLYWOOD.” But this was hardly a new era just yet. For almost 30 years there were more rips and tears followed by more fundraising and patchwork.

In 1978, a full-scale reconstruction of the sign was undertaken. And the prime movers weren’t the studios or any other group or company that we might think of as Hollywood. It was instead two relative newcomers, Hugh Hefner and Alice Cooper, who spearheaded the campaign that brought a “new” Hollywood sign, 5 feet shorter than the original but still grandiose — and a lot more stable — to the top of Mt. Lee.

It provides nice closure that it was Hefner who once again came forward to purchase the peak adjacent to the sign, thus ensuring that Chicago’s Fox River investment company cannot build houses that would infringe on its isolated splendor. This time too, Hollywood figures such as Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks contributed.

The Hollywood sign is unique among American icons. Unlike the Statue of Liberty or Mt. Rushmore, the sign doesn’t depict a human image. Nor, like the Liberty Bell or the Washington Monument, is it a familiar object. It may signify a place, but it’s not the place itself, unlike the battlefield of Gettysburg or Valley Forge. Nor does it commemorate a moment in time, like the submerged battleship Arizona in Pearl Harbor or the memorial to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Instead it is a group of letters, a word on the side of a high hill that, unlike so many other cherished sites, can only rarely and with difficulty be visited. It is primarily seen from afar. Its essence is almost entirely abstract, at once the quintessence and the mockery of the science of signs itself.

The sign is often compared to the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of the city. The comparison is apt in at least one respect, because both took a while before their status as icons was generally accepted. When it was being built, French writers and artists signed a petition against the industrial ugliness of the Eiffel Tower and wanted it torn down. The Hollywood sign was virtually ignored for at least the first 50 years of its existence; its only life in the consciousness of Angelenos was as the site of beer parties and dope-smoking — of course with a great view.

But both the tower and the sign gathered significance as they aged and as more and more people overlaid the actual objects with their own human feelings. The sign, especially because it is just a word, was open to any significance you wanted it to have, especially the sense of aspiration and self-enhancement we call fame. No wonder that the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Park are alive with tourists asking, “Is this the way to the Hollywood sign?” The difficulty of getting close to it is part of the story.

Leo Braudy is university professor at USC. His book on the history of the Hollywood sign will be published in 2011 by Yale University Press.