From the Archives: Before Twitter, this 1943 billboard offered daily headlines
As a wartime promotion, the Los Angeles Times designed an unusual method to disseminate the news: A billboard featured a generic front page of the Los Angeles Times, but the headline changed daily.
A story in the Oct. 23, 1943, Los Angeles Times explained:
These are days of big headlines.
Big, not only in importance, but now, in actual size as well. Starting today, Los Angeles is going to see the largest one in the world. The giant headline appears on a new Times billboard at Wilshire Blvd. and Shatto Place.
The spectacular board, the first of its kind in the country, shows a reproduction of The Times’ front page 30 times its actual size.
Letters used in the headline are three feet tall, and are an exact enlargement of the type used by The Times in front page headlines. The news line will be changed each morning at 6, enabling motorists, pedestrians and bus riders to keep up with “The Times.”
The “Allies Driving on Rome” is from an Oct. 21, 1943, Los Angeles Times front-page story about the Allies being close to capturing Rome. But German resistance stiffened, and Rome was not captured until June 4, 1944.
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