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HOLLYWOODLAND

1923: Just a $21,000 billboard

The Hollywood sign begins life as a temporary advertisement for a new housing development in the Hollywood Hills. Its precise date of construction is unknown: by the end of 1923, a few news reports in Los Angeles mention, in passing, a giant sign reading “Hollywoodland”, illuminated with electric lights.

The sign cost $21,000, according to the Hollywood Sign Trust, and the devel­opers behind it included Harry Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

“Each of the original 13 letters was 30ft wide and approximately 43ft tall, con­structed of 3ft by 9ft metal squares rigged together by an intricate frame of scaf­fold­ing, pipes, wires and telephone poles,” according to the sign trust’s website. “At night the Sign blinked into the Hollywood night: first ‘Holly’, then ‘wood’, and finally ‘land’, punctuated by a giant period. The effect was truly spec­tacular, par­tic­u­larly for pre-Vegas sensibilities.” (The Las Vegas strip started to be built in the 1940s.)

The big letters on the hill have been a prank target for decades: the first time the sign was altered to read “Hollly­weed” was in 1976, according to the Holly­wood Sign Trust. (Both “Holly­weed” alterations, in 1976 and 2017, were “mark­ing the enactment of looser state marijuana laws”, the trust notes.)

The sign has also been altered to read “Holywood”, in honor of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Los Angeles; “Ollywood”, in reference to Oliver North’s testimony in the Iran-Contra scandal; “Go Navy”, “Caltech”, and “UCLA”, according to the sign trust.

In 2021, six people were arrested after altering the sign to read “Hollyboob”.

Michelle Yeoh

Copy and images (except the first one) came from The Guardian. It's a very interesting article.