The signs of those times were contentious too

Folks who complain about how fast the world is changing might take comfort from a report that appeared in The Times 110 years ago.

“Monstrous billboards . . . vaunt the rival virtues of patent medicines, tobacco, shaving soap and girls’ legs,” the newspaper declared, “despite the attempts of the City Council to eradicate the nuisance.”

Yes, outdoor signage was controversial back then too.

Some residents of Lordsburg (now La Verne) tore down two billboards they considered unsightly.

A Pasadena letter writer said the display of a “partially nude figure” on a billboard was a “disgrace to every womanly woman.”

A Long Beach city councilman proposed regulating “the exact amount of leg, stockinged or elsewhere . . . in pictures of fair damsels on the city billboards.”

(His motion was rejected, as was another of his suggestions that day: to require low roofs for roosters so that they would bump their heads at daybreak and forget to crow.)

In 1900, as in 2010, an arrest for a billboard violation was in the news.

The recent case involves businessman Kayvan Setareh, who wrapped an unpermitted eight-story supergraphic ad around a Hollywood office building.

More than a century ago, the suspected violator was land developer H.G. Wilshire, whose offense was on a smaller scale: ignoring the billboard height limit of 6 feet above the ground.

In the Wilshire case, the charges were dropped and the limit was raised to 10 feet by the pliant City Council, which said it feared a lawsuit.

Standard billboard sheets, it explained, were 10 feet high.

The incident didn’t besmirch the developer’s name. In fact, it was later attached to a long strip of land he donated to the city: Wilshire Boulevard.

Aside from the content of the first outdoor signs, critics bemoaned their ground-level placement.

When two trolleys collided at 9th and Main streets in Los Angeles in 1901, The Times reported that “a large billboard obstructs the view.”

And the signs were convenient hiding spots.

“Attack Masked by Billboard,” ran the headline of a Times story about a thug who had crouched behind a sign before committing a street assault.

The newspaper listed several dangerous billboard locations, including “a board on Figueroa Street [that] has been the scene of the arrest of numerous degenerates.”

Even the City Council couldn’t ignore the crime factor. Though the council, in The Times’ words, was adept at “scenting campaign support” from the industry, it gathered the courage to outlaw billboards in residential sections in 1917.

But, like mushrooms, the boards popped up elsewhere.

Their defenders claimed they disseminated product information, carried public service announcements and provided jobs.

And some non-nature-lovers found the structures aesthetically pleasing.

“The billboards revivify the landscape and take the minds of our tourist hosts from the dull brown hills that the boards hide,” a member of the Echo Park Civic Assn. told the City Council in 1917.

Today, of course, the controversy continues, though some things have changed since The Times’ complaint about “monstrous billboards.”

The signs now frequently exhibit more than “girls’ legs.”

For example, Angelyne, the mysterious buxom character who refers to herself as the “Billboard Queen,” has made a career of displaying images of herself in low-cut outfits and sexy poses.

Oddly enough, the billboard industry did not shower her with campaign contributions when she was a candidate in the 2003 gubernatorial recall election. She finished 28th.

Another change was the tobacco industry’s agreement in 1999 to cease all advertising on outdoor signs.

As a result, the iconic Marlboro Man on Sunset Boulevard was forced to ride off into, well, the sunset. Actually, he was carted off.

The cigarette company’s 70-foot-tall billboard had stood across the street from the Chateau Marmont for 17 years, “coolly indifferent to passing traffic and the passing celebrity,” as one English newspaper put it.

It was replaced by a public service ad showing a cowboy puffing on a limp cigarette with the warning, “Smoking Causes Impotence.”

The billboard industry’s energy, however, doesn’t seem to be flagging. It has spawned a new innovation: digital signs, which provide the equivalent of outdoor television commercials (just as the 1982 sci-fi movie “Blade Runner” forecast).

The City Council may have banned all new billboards, including supergraphics, but it is facing a number of legal challenges. In the past, it has granted exceptions to companies that have donated to council members’ campaign coffers.

And, nationwide, the Outdoor Advertising Assn. of America estimates there are 450,000 billboard images. That’s enough to hide plenty of dull brown hills.

::

From our mailbox:

A recent “Then and Now” column on L.A.’s early talk-show hosts prompted Peter Navarro to write:

“During the topless swimsuit craze in the 1960s, commentator Joe Pyne began his show by telling the audience he was going to be the first to have a female model the swimsuit on TV. I was maybe 14 years old and anxiously waited up to the end of his show when, sure enough, this female model turned out to be a chimpanzee. I felt pretty stupid and profoundly disappointed.”

steveharvey9@gmail.com