50 Fun Facts About Hollywood Sign

What did the sign originally spell out when it was erected in 1923?

HOLLYWOODLAND blinked through the night in three beats, HOLLY, then WOOD, then LAND, before the whole word lit up at once, picked out in thousands of bulbs.

The Hollywood Sign was put up in 1923 as an advertisement for what?

A real estate development was the product: hillside lots sold on spacious homes and cleaner air than the city below. The Depression sank the developers' plans, but their billboard outlived the business it was built to sell.

On which mountain does the Hollywood Sign stand?

Mount Lee got its name in 1939, when the new owner of the summit renamed the mountain after his late father, Don Lee, who had made his fortune as California's Cadillac dealer.

In which 2004 disaster film do tornadoes tear the Hollywood Sign apart?

The Day After Tomorrow sends a swarm of twisters through Los Angeles while a TV reporter watches the letters fly from a helicopter; nine years later Sharknado wrecked the sign the same way, with added sharks.

Which wild animal, tagged P-22, was photographed prowling beneath the Hollywood Sign for National Geographic in 2013?

A mountain lion: P-22 had crossed two of the busiest freeways in Los Angeles to reach the hills around the sign, and photographer Steve Winter spent 15 months setting camera traps before one caught him under the letters.

Alongside a tractor, how were the Hollywood Sign's poles and metal panels hauled up the hillside in 1923?

By mules: pack animals and a tractor dragged the poles and panels up a freshly cut dirt track, with workmen carrying the rest. When the sign was rebuilt in 1978, its steel frames flew in by helicopter instead.

How much did the original Hollywood Sign cost to build in 1923?

$21,000 bought a billboard of sheet metal rigged to telephone poles; when it finally had to be rebuilt in steel in 1978, the work cost about a quarter of a million, more than ten times as much.

How long was the Hollywood Sign meant to stand when it went up in 1923?

About a year and a half was all its builders planned for, but as the film business boomed in the streets below, the billboard became the emblem of a whole industry and nobody would take it down.

In which animated series does the title character steal the Hollywood Sign's D, so that the town becomes 'Hollywoo'?

BoJack Horseman swipes the letter in the first season and nobody ever puts it back: the town stays 'Hollywoo' until the finale, when the long-promised replacement is unveiled and turns out to be a B.

Which Los Angeles Times publisher was among the investors who put up the Hollywood Sign in 1923?

Harry Chandler ran the paper's business side, married the publisher's daughter and took over when his father-in-law died in 1917; Otis Chandler, the last of the family to run the Times, was his grandson.

Which silent-comedy pioneer had the summit above the Hollywood Sign levelled for a mansion he never built?

Mack Sennett, the producer behind the Keystone Kops, had the mountain top shaved flat in the 1920s for a palace of a house; then the 1929 crash gutted his fortune, and by 1933 he was bankrupt with nothing built.

From 1939, the flattened summit behind the Hollywood Sign was home to the first what in Los Angeles?

Television station W6XAO broadcast from a studio with its own hilltop swimming pool, beneath what was billed as the highest TV mast in the world; after the war the transmitters moved to a taller mountain that could reach the whole region.

Which actress died in September 1932 after jumping from the top of the Hollywood Sign's letter H?

Peg Entwistle, 24, had been a success on Broadway, and a teenage Bette Davis who saw her on stage resolved to act; Hollywood gave Entwistle a single film role, in a picture that opened only after her death.

In the Grand Theft Auto games, the hillside sign that stands in for Hollywood's spells what?

VINEWOOD looks down on Los Santos, the series' version of Los Angeles, in both San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto V; its makers plainly felt that even a made-up L.A. would look wrong without the letters on the hill.

Which star draped the Hollywood Sign in bras in January 2026 to promote her new lingerie line, without permission?

Sydney Sweeney climbed up at night with a film crew and bags of bras for her brand Syrn; the body that licenses the sign's image said nobody had asked it, and there was talk of trespassing and vandalism charges.

Why was the Hollywood Sign's lighting switched off around 1933?

The new owners found it too expensive: thousands of bulbs needed a full-time caretaker, so the company that took over the hillside in the Depression cut the lights first and all upkeep soon after, and the letters began to rot.

Who funded the Hollywood Sign's 1949 repair?

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce objected when neighbours called the wreck an eyesore and officials proposed scrapping it; it paid for the repairs instead, in a deal that made the sign an advertisement for Hollywood itself.

Why was the Hollywood Sign rebuilt in 1978?

A windstorm wrecked it: the 1978 gale left one O toppled and showed that the wooden frame beneath was too far gone to patch, so the whole sign was rebuilt in steel.

In September 1987, pranksters hid one L so the Hollywood Sign read HOLYWOOD, to mark whose visit to Los Angeles?

Pope John Paul II never saw it: the black plastic wrapped round the letter before dawn was gone by 9 a.m., before he had even reached the city. An art student had made the same one-letter joke for Easter eleven years earlier.

Which rock star paid for the Hollywood Sign's third O in 1978, in memory of Groucho Marx?

Alice Cooper had been a close friend of the comedian, and his pledge was among the first of the campaign: once the shock-rocker had bought a letter, a record label followed, and the rest found sponsors that summer.

A Hollywood-style sign spelling HATTA stands on a summit in the Hajar Mountains in which emirate?

Dubai's mountain enclave of Hatta spelt out its name in letters modelled on Hollywood's. Unlike the fenced-off original, this one welcomes walkers, who can hike right up to the letters.

What did a film studio perch on the Hollywood Sign's D in 1992, to the neighbours' fury?

A giant cartoon woman: Holli Would, a character from the half-animated film Cool World, sat on the letter as a 75-foot metal cut-out for about a week, while residents hung banners calling it the prostitution of a monument.

How tall are the letters of the Hollywood Sign, as rebuilt in steel in 1978?

About 45 feet, the height of a four-storey building: the 1978 letters are enamelled steel on steel frames sunk in concrete, made to outlast the wood-and-sheet-metal originals, and the whole word runs 450 feet.

Who owns the Hollywood Sign itself?

The City of Los Angeles took it over in the 1940s, when the company that held the hillside gave it away with the wreck of the sign still on it; a nonprofit trust looks after the letters.

What official status was the Hollywood Sign given in 1973, fifty years after it went up?

A historic-cultural monument: the listing came with a facelift of new sheet metal, paid for by a fundraising drive, but the honour protected nothing, and within five years the listed landmark was in ruins again.

What did the Hollywood Sign say for five days in 1987 to promote the launch of a new TV network?

FOX: Rupert Murdoch's young network made a donation for permission to hang an F and an X over two of the sign's first three letters, just as its prime-time schedule went on air that April.

What did art student Daniel Finegood make the sign read in January 1976, a prank repeated on New Year's Day 2017?

HOLLYWEED went up on the day California relaxed its marijuana law: Finegood draped sheets over the two Os as a college project on working with scale, and it earned him an A. The 2017 copy followed the state's vote to legalise the drug.

In 1987 the Hollywood Sign briefly read OLLYWOOD as a protest about whom?

Oliver North, the Marine officer at the centre of that summer's Iran-Contra hearings, was being hailed as a hero; a group calling themselves environmental artists hid the H in mockery, and it was uncovered almost at once.

In May 1987, students of which university covered the Hollywood Sign so that it spelled their school's name?

Caltech students called it a 100th-birthday present for Hollywood: they had crept up twice beforehand to measure the letters, plotted every sheet by computer, and did the job overnight with ropes and painters' dropcloths.

In October 1992, the Hollywood Sign was altered overnight to carry which presidential candidate's name?

Ross Perot got PEROTWOOD: the professionally printed sheeting appeared overnight and brought morning traffic on the Hollywood Freeway to a standstill. His state campaign said it had no idea who did it but would love to pat them on the back.

What did banners over the Hollywood Sign's letters spell in February 2010, to protest luxury homes planned beside it?

SAVE THE PEAK went up one banner at a time, so for a while the hillside announced SALLYWOOD and then, the Los Angeles Times's favourite, SAVE THE POOD.

Who donated the final $900,000 in 2010 so that 138 acres beside the Hollywood Sign could become parkland?

Hugh Hefner closed the gap days before an extended deadline ran out, and it was his second rescue: in 1978 the Playboy founder had rallied the donors who paid for the crumbling sign to be rebuilt.

Howard Hughes is said to have bought the land beside the Hollywood Sign in 1940 to build a home for which actress?

Ginger Rogers, the story goes, ended the romance before a brick was laid. The hilltop then sat untouched in his estate until 2002, when investors picked it up for $1.7 million and later put it on sale for $22 million.

What was the Hollywood Sign changed to read in February 2022 after Los Angeles's NFL team won the Super Bowl?

RAMS HOUSE was meant to be up for three days, but bad weather slowed the crews hanging the banners, and for most of one of them the hillside read RALLYOUSE instead.

Which letter of Hollywood's hillside sign was lit blue in October 2024 after Los Angeles won baseball's World Series?

The D turned Dodger blue while the players were still on the road: they had just clinched the club's eighth title away from home, and the letter was glowing before the team flew back for its parade.

Which actor climbs the Hollywood Sign in the 2024 Olympic handover film?

Tom Cruise began the handover live, lowering himself on a wire from the roof of the Paris stadium and riding off with the flag on a motorbike; the film then had him parachute into Los Angeles and climb to the sign.

Which studio offered in 2018 to fund a $100 million aerial tramway from its Burbank lot to the Hollywood Sign?

Warner Bros. offered to pay for the whole 'Hollywood Skyway' itself: a six-minute cable-car ride up the back of the hill, pitched as a cure for the tourist traffic and parking chaos in the streets below the sign.

In 2012, Los Angeles officials asked Garmin and Google Maps to send drivers seeking the Hollywood Sign to which landmark instead?

Griffith Observatory has a postcard view of the letters from a hilltop well to the east. Residents below the sign asked for the change because sat-navs kept sending lost tour buses up their dead-end streets, a fire risk in dry hills.

The original 1923 Hollywood Sign was thought to have been scrapped until 2005, when its metal turned up for sale where?

On eBay, with a starting price of $300,000. The buyer, the sculptor Bill Mack, spent four years piecing the old panels back into a full-size letter H, which he unveiled in 2012.

Which entertainer has said the sign inspired her own theme park, wishing she could change the H to a D?

Dollywood opened in Tennessee in 1986, the same year she told Spin the story.

Which cartoon town's hillside sign, a copy of Hollywood's, first appeared in a 1991 episode called 'Flaming Moe's'?

Springfield got its hillside letters in the Simpsons episode where the barman Moe steals Homer's recipe for a flaming cocktail and Aerosmith turn up to play his bar; the sign has loomed over the town ever since.

Wellington rejected a 'Wellywood' copy of the Hollywood Sign; its own 2012 hillside sign shows its last letters doing what?

Blowing away: the design that won a public poll has the tail of WELLINGTON lifting off the hillside, a joke about the capital's gales. The Hollywood copy had met protests at home and lawyers' attention from Los Angeles.

The Hollywood Sign normally stands dark at night; which of these occasions saw it lit up?

The arrival of the year 2000 was the last time for 22 years. The 1978 rebuild left out any wiring for lights, so every lighting needs its own temporary rig, and neighbours dread the traffic it draws up their narrow streets.

How was the rebuilt Hollywood Sign unveiled in November 1978?

Live on a national TV special, built around the 75th birthday of Hollywood itself. The cameras had something to reveal: the old letters had been scrapped that August, and for three months the famous hillside had stood bare.

Which singing cowboy sponsored one of the Hollywood Sign's two Ls when it was rebuilt in 1978?

Gene Autry made the pledge jointly with KTLA, the Los Angeles broadcaster he owned: by 1978 the old screen cowboy was a media owner, and the man who had founded baseball's California Angels.

Which 2012 film musical used a stand-in Hollywood Sign built on a Florida mound nicknamed Mount Trashmore?

Rock of Ages is set in Los Angeles in 1987 but was shot in Florida, so the crew put up a 20-foot copy of the sign on a hill there. The film also shows the letters glowing at night, which the real ones do not.

In 1983, service-academy students got permission to make the Hollywood Sign read what, before a football game in Pasadena?

GO NAVY was the plan when the Army-Navy game came to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. By one account the sheets hid only some letters, so the hillside spelt GOLLNAVYD; Navy won 42-13 all the same.

In 1993, unknown pranksters used banners to make the Hollywood Sign read what?

JOLLYGOOD took just two banners, a J over the H and a G over the W. Stunts like it wore out official patience: the city fenced and alarmed the sign, and later put it under camera watch.

In 1990 the Hollywood Sign was altered to read what, in protest at the Gulf War?

OIL WAR was the last stunt of the prankster who had begun the craze in 1976, and almost nobody saw it: he and his friends climbed up before dawn, and rangers and police had the plastic down again before sunrise.

In September 2026, projections lit the Hollywood Sign to launch a Universal Studios roller coaster based on which film series?

Fast & Furious: the theme park bathed the letters in footage from the films for the opening of its new coaster. The sign had started out as an advertisement, and for one night it was a billboard again.