Since Tuesday morning, multiple fires have ravaged Los Angeles—resulting in at least five deaths, displacing more than 100,000 LA residents, and destroying more than 1,000 homes as well as entire neighborhoods in the Pacific Palisades. On Wednesday night around 6 p.m., a new fire, the Sunset fire, broke out near popular hiking destination Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, prompting an evacuation order for Hollywood neighborhoods. The Sunset fire also threatened one of America's most beloved and iconic landmarks: the Hollywood sign.
Standing approximately 1,400 feet above the city, with letters 45 feet tall and more than 30 feet wide, the Hollywood sign is emblematic of both the City of Angels and the American dream. The sign was originally built in the silent film era, a little over 100 years ago, in 1923. Initially, it read "Hollywoodland" in an effort to promote a new housing development in the Hollywood Hills, and was only intended to remain up for 18 months. But as the entertainment industry began to explode, the sign remained standing on the southern side of Mount Lee in Griffith Park, a testament to the golden age of Hollywood.
While it's often viewed as a beacon of hope and opportunity, the Hollywood sign has also been marked by tragedy. In 1932, 24-year-old silent-film actress Peg Entwistle leaped to her death after climbing a workman's ladder to the top of the H, leaving a suicide note in her purse. "I'm afraid I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago it would have saved a lot of pain," the note read. After her death, Entwistle became colloquially known as "the Hollywood Sign Girl," a tragic example of the dark underbelly of fame. In 1944, the deteriorating sign was donated to the city of Los Angeles, and in A pril 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce refurbished it and removed the "-land." Over the next 30 years, the shortened sign fell into disrepair and was going to be torn down. That is, until Playboy scion Hugh Hefner spearheaded a public campaign to raise $250,000 needed for its restoration in 1978.
Hefner even auctioned off letters of the sign for about $27,000 per letter. Alice Cooper, the godfather of rock and roll, helped sponsor the O; singer Andy Williams bought the W; and Hefner himself backed the Y. Originally made of wood and sheet metal, during its 1978 restoration, the landmark was rebuilt using corrugated steel mounted on a steel frame—making it far less flammable in the process.
This would not be the only time Hefner saved the Hollywood sign. In 2010, Hefner donated $900,000 to the Trust for Public Land, a conservationist group that was $1 million short of the $12.5 million it needed to raise to save the Hollywood sign and the surrounding area from developers who intended to build luxury properties on Mount Lee. "It would have been a real shame after having restored it if it wound up sold," Hefner told People a few days after his donation. "It's become something iconic and represents not only the town but represents Hollywood dreams, and I think that's something worth preserving."
His efforts have not been in vain. This past summer, the Hollywood sign was featured prominently during the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics. The dual O's were transformed to create the bottom level of the five-ring Olympic symbol, a nod to the fact that Los Angeles is set to host the Olympic Games in 2028. The sign has been featured in countless projects over the last century, and has even been destroyed in films like Superman: The Movie (1978), Independence Day (1996), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and San Andreas (2015).
But it has never been destroyed in real life. During the most recent blaze, rumors swirled on the internet that the Hollywood sign had caught fire, with images circulating on social media of the sign ablaze. But those reports are false, and the images circulating of the sign on fire are fake and AI-generated. According to The Independent, the Hollywood sign remained mostly unscathed by the fire, which would have needed to cross over a freeway to reach the sign. Per The Independent, the lights that illuminated the sign were impacted by the Sunset fire, affecting its visibility—but the actual sign remains intact.
As of Thursday morning, the Sunset fire was fully contained, with reports of a precise helicopter water drop Wednesday evening that extinguished a portion of the blaze. On Thursday morning the evacuation order for most Hollywood neighborhoods was lifted, with the exception of "the area north of Franklin Ave from Camino Palmero Street (east border) to North Sierra Bonita Avenue (west border)," according to Cal Fire. So for now, at least, the Hollywood sign remains standing—peering over the destruction wreaking havoc over the city it represents.
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