Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck in Hollywood. Dave c is not here, but he's here in spirit. I was going to make a tasteless joke, but we'll just send it there.
Yeah, we are talking today about the Hollywood Sign, which this year, the year twenty twenty three at which time we're recording, is celebrating its centennial. Right there at the top of Mount Lee and Griffith Park in Central Los Angeles, Central Hollywood. That iconic sign is turning one hundred.
That's amazing. Did not realize it was that old, because you don't think of Hollywood that old.
Doe, No, do you. I used to think Hollywood was not a place but a mere euphemism for the film industry.
It's both.
It's both, for sure.
But the whole idea of Hollywood, at least with the sign, was that it was initially constructed and built all the way back in nineteen twenty three as essentially a big billboard for a real estate development called Hollywood Land, and the original Hollywood sign originally said Hollywood Land.
Yeah, and by the way, thanks to Kate Morgan and houstuffworks dot Com for this one. This is something I talked about in a Movie Crush episode. Occasionally, on the many episodes, Nola and I would go over like it just a little bit of like Hollywood history, and this was one of them. And it's funny. I mean, I know people, some people may have seen the original Hollywood Land sign that said Hollywood Land and kind of thought, like, what is that even all about? But that's what it was.
It was a real estate company. It was just an advertisement to go buy houses in that development. And it was lit up with light bulbs at the time, about four thousand of them that blinked all night long. Because the Hollywood Sign is not lit up at night, you might falsely picture it in your head as something that's like up in the hills all night. That's not the case.
No, And by the way, before we move any further forward, I did an entire episode on the Hollywood Sign in the End of the World with Josh Clark.
Did you really know? Jeez, man, you were getting me I know so much lately Left and right?
Is my delivery even drier than usual?
No, it's just it's so earnest and I'm just falling for it. Man.
That's how I get you because I thought it might.
Have been in a part of another I just I'm so dumb.
No you're not. I'm just that earnest.
You're a good actor these days. Thanks. I wish you would have been when we were on our TV show.
Hey hey, zing I did great. But anyway, no, you did great. So Hollywood Land. It was originally the sign this billboard, and the Hollywood Land developer spent I think it's twenty one grand to build it, which I believe is in nineteen twenty three dollars, which would make it about almost four hundred thousand dollars. And despite that price,
they just expected it to last about eighteen months. But the crazy thing about it is, even though it was built of essentially plywood, it outlasted the Hollywood Land development itself well into the forties.
Yeah, I did. It had gone through a couple of stages of disrepair over the years. In the late nineteen forties, it was looking pretty rough. That company, that Hollywood Land Company, was long gone and it was sort of a thing in the city. They were like, should we tear this thing down now? Is it kind of dumb to have this old billboard up? And then the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in and said, you know what, let's rebuild this thing. Sure, let's drop the land and let's just
have a sign that says Hollywood. And it was going strong again for about three decades until the nineteen seventies when it was in very bad shape once again.
Yes, and who of all people stepped in? Well, we'll tell you right after this commercial.
Break, Josh and.
Things, Jock and job all right, Chuck, Who have all people stepped in to save the Hollywood sign from being bulldozed? Uh?
Josh Clark, creator of End of the World with Josh Clark wrong? Hm hmmm uh. Oh, I don't know. Bob Guccioni, who ran Penthouse Magazine.
Very nice, or maybe Larry Flint who ran Larry Flint. No, or maybe Jim Bob Jones who ran Club.
Now see is that a real guy? I no anymore? Okay, God, we should do a you know what I want to do an episode of Gullibility. Okay, No, I don't see.
Oh man, you got me.
I actually do. Hugh Hefner stepped in, obviously Playboy magazine founder in chief, and he raised money by throwing a big party in nineteen seventy eight at his very famous, so may say, infamous playboy mansion. And what he did was he said, is, hey, are you a company, are you a rich person? And you want to sponsor a letter and had that thing restored? You can do that for twenty seven grand.
Yeah, he held an auction and invited all of his famous rich friends and apparently the guy who sponsored or purchased the o was none other than Alice Cooper. Yeah, and he got the o in honor of Graucho Marx, which I thought was really cool.
That's right. And hey, shout out to Nita strap Else. Oh yeah, Hurricane Hurricane Nita. I don't know if she's still playing with Alice Cooper, but she was kind enough to invite us to that concert when she came through Atlanta.
And it was great.
It was really awesome. But Alice Cooper bought one Warner Brothers Records, or rather sponsored one. Gene Autry did, of course. Andy Williams sponsored one and it was restored and it was They actually didn't restore it, they tore it down and rebuilt it. Yeah, which was a smart thing because, like you said, that plywood and sheet metal was just not very hearty. So this time it was steel, steel on steel.
Yeah. They built it bigger, stronger and faster.
Yeah. And steel and Steel was also a record by Mega Death I think, right, I don't know. No, Okay, it's possible.
It sounds like it would be a Mega Death record.
Elsie, Now you're afraid to agree with something.
No, I'm just yeah, I'm just gonna be wishy washy for the rest of our career.
So so here's another little a few more little interesting tidbits. There was another threat that came along later because and this wasn't that long ago. It was in twenty ten when it was found out that all that land, I think because it's in Griffith Park on top of Mount Lee,
everyone just figured it's like the city owns it. And that is not true because Howard Hughes actually owned land just to the left of the H And I'm sure some people knew this, but not many did until years later when someone was like, Hey, we're going to sell this land and develop it, and the city went, you can't develop next to the H.
They said, yeah, we can. Have you ever heard of capitalism? Suckers? And the Los Angeles City Council went to the dictionary and they're like, oh my god. And apparently the developer bought that parcel for one point sixty seven million dollars in two thousand and two and put it up eight years later for twenty two million dollars, which is quite an inflated price, but they knew that the city was going to scramble to do to put it together.
Uh huh.
And you said that it was owned by Howard Hughes. He bought it so he could build a mansion for his fiance at the time, Ginger Rogers, but she refused to move up there because she said that basically, this guy's off his nut and he will hold me prisoner up there, so I'm not even gonna go up there. And it just kind of like fell into disuse and
was forgotten and became part of the Hughes estate. I'm not sure how it was rediscovered and put up for sale, But when the city of Los Angeles was basically presented with either losing the land just to the left of the Big h in Hollywood or coughing up twenty two million dollars, they really went and tried to raise that money, and they couldn't quite do it, but luckily someone stepped in. Who was it, Chuck.
Pob GUCCIONI Nope, that would have been great if it was Gooch on that second go round. Sure, but it was Hugh Hefner again.
Yeah.
I think he felt like, you know, I did this once. I'd probably look like a heel if I didn't do it second time.
Or he could have been like, I'm tapped out you. I helped you once.
Yeah, he's like, the Internet has killed my nudy magazine business. But I don't even think he auctioned off letters this time. I think he just stepped in and kind of made them whole, right.
Yeah, I think he made of the difference, like you're saying. Yeah, so the sign is safe again, including the land around it. And there's a book that was written by an author named Casey Shriner called Discovering Griffith Park Colon a locals Guide and how stuff Works. Talk to Casey Shiner and he said that you can get all sorts of really good views of the Hollywood Sign. In fact, there's fourteen of them that he describes in detail where to go to get a good view. But one of them is
not up at the Hollywood Sign. Which if you stop and think about it makes total sense. But a lot of people don't realize that the trail ends behind the Hollywood Sign, So it's not a very good place to see the sign.
No it's not. Nora is standing right under it. If you can even manage that, Yeah, because it's really big, right, Yeah, it's a how taller do we even know that?
I'm say, I'm sure some people know that feet.
Yeah, they're about fifty feet I think. But yeah, you want to get a little distance, you know, if you're going north on Gower, you get a nice you sort of bisect it. Great view if you're just driving through Hollywood, and I could see it outside of my apartment window. Had a great view of the Hollywood Hills and the Griffith Park Observatory in that sign.
From your room in the Playboy Mansion.
From my yea hose, I lived under the grotto, which is weird. It was. It was awesome. Four hundred and fifty bucks a month, which was quite a steel and had a great view and it was just a great little place that I missed so much. I love that apartment. But we should finish, probably by talking about peg Entwinstle
who was I featured on movie Crush. A lot of people know this, but there was a young starlett who I guess not a starlett, a Starlette to be that leapt off the h and the Hollywood Sign to plunge to her death. I named peg Entwhistle. And this was in Oh Jeesus, I couldn't even what year was.
This, nineteen thirty two. I talked a lot about it in the End of the World with.
Oh not this time. She was twenty four years old, and you know, as the story goes, she was went to Hollywood to make it big and had trouble doing that and so took her own life.
Yeah, and this wasn't like she went out to Hollywood like a month or six months or you know whatever. Later she failed at it, like she was, she really tried it. She had a bit part in a movie. She was in a lot of plays. Apparently Betty Davis, a very young Betty Davis, saw a play that peg Entwistle was in and told her mother she wanted to grow up to be like pag and Twistle. So she really kept that and finally it was just like, I
can't do this anymore, and she did. It was at least back then that the letters were fifty feet tall, and they believe that she got to the top of the h by using a ladder that a workman had left behind.
Very sad it is if you want to end with a funnier note, though, because there's this great story about
Betty Davis. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but she reportedly was asked one time what the best way and aspiring starlet could get into Hollywood, and she said, take Fountain, which is a great east west running street through Hollywood, and it was always a great sort of cut through because most people stick to those main streets like Sunset and Santa Monica and Hollywood Boulevard, but if you took Fountain, you could get there quicker.
Well, since we're talking so much about La, I just want to shout out minding you May's friends out there, Doc and Truth. Hello.
Are those real people or am you're gonna fool me again?
They are real people. I'll introduce you to them someday. They're great.
Okay, Duck, I look forward to meeting you and Truth.
Don't forget truth, Quest and Truth. Yeah, if you want. And by the way, Chuck Hippie Rob was real too.
No, but I doubt if he's in La.
No, there's no telling where he is. I almost ended this one like a regular episode, but instead Chuck, all I have to do is say short stuff is out.
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