Hollywood Sign Trivia
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50 free Hollywood Sign trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Hollywood Sign trivia is the story of an advertisement that refused to die. Erected in 1923 to sell lots in the Hollywoodland development, lit by 4,000 bulbs and meant to last eighteen months, it outlived its housing scheme, lost an actress from the top of its H, lost its H altogether in 1944, lost LAND in 1949, and finally collapsed into 'HuLLYWO D' before nine celebrities paid $27,700 a letter to rebuild it in steel in 1978. This quiz covers the origins with Harry Chandler and Mack Sennett, the sign's dimensions then and now, Peg Entwistle's 1932 death, the Chamber of Commerce rescue, the donor behind every letter (Alice Cooper bought an O for Groucho), Mount Lee and the first Los Angeles TV station, the Save the Peak campaign that Hugh Hefner closed out, the pranks from HOLLYWEED to RAMS HOUSE, why the city owns the sign but the Chamber owns the word, GPS wars with Beachwood Canyon residents, and the imitations from Springfield to Wellywood. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen an establishing shot; the expert tier is for LA history buffs. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the sign, Mount Lee and Peg Entwistle, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the sign originally spell out when it was erected in 1923?
HOLLYWOODLAND
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.
Q 02The Hollywood Sign was put up in 1923 as an advertisement for what?
A real estate development
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.
Q 03On which mountain does the Hollywood Sign stand?
Mount Lee
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.
Q 04In which 2004 disaster film do tornadoes tear the Hollywood Sign apart?
The Day After Tomorrow
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.
Q 05Which wild animal, tagged P-22, was photographed prowling beneath the Hollywood Sign for National Geographic in 2013?
A mountain lion
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.
Q 06Alongside a tractor, how were the Hollywood Sign's poles and metal panels hauled up the hillside in 1923?
By mules
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.
Q 07How much did the original Hollywood Sign cost to build in 1923?
$21,000
$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.
Q 08How long was the Hollywood Sign meant to stand when it went up in 1923?
About a year and a half
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.
Q 09In which animated series does the title character steal the Hollywood Sign's D, so that the town becomes 'Hollywoo'?
BoJack Horseman
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.
Q 10Which Los Angeles Times publisher was among the investors who put up the Hollywood Sign in 1923?
Harry Chandler
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.
Q 11Which silent-comedy pioneer had the summit above the Hollywood Sign levelled for a mansion he never built?
Mack Sennett
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.
Q 12From 1939, the flattened summit behind the Hollywood Sign was home to the first what in Los Angeles?
Television station
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.
Q 13Which actress died in September 1932 after jumping from the top of the Hollywood Sign's letter H?
Q 21A Hollywood-style sign spelling HATTA stands on a summit in the Hajar Mountains in which emirate?
Dubai
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.
Q 22What did a film studio perch on the Hollywood Sign's D in 1992, to the neighbours' fury?
A giant cartoon woman
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.
Q 23How tall are the letters of the Hollywood Sign, as rebuilt in steel in 1978?
About 45 feet
Peg Entwistle
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.
Q 14In the Grand Theft Auto games, the hillside sign that stands in for Hollywood's spells what?
VINEWOOD
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.
Q 15Which star draped the Hollywood Sign in bras in January 2026 to promote her new lingerie line, without permission?
Sydney Sweeney
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.
Q 16Why was the Hollywood Sign's lighting switched off around 1933?
The new owners found it too expensive
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.
Q 17Who funded the Hollywood Sign's 1949 repair?
Chamber of Commerce
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.
Q 18Why was the Hollywood Sign rebuilt in 1978?
A windstorm wrecked it
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.
Q 19In September 1987, pranksters hid one L so the Hollywood Sign read HOLYWOOD, to mark whose visit to Los Angeles?
Pope John Paul II
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.
Q 20Which rock star paid for the Hollywood Sign's third O in 1978, in memory of Groucho Marx?
Alice Cooper
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.
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.
Q 24Who owns the Hollywood Sign itself?
The City of Los Angeles
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.
Q 25What official status was the Hollywood Sign given in 1973, fifty years after it went up?
A historic-cultural monument
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.
Q 26What did the Hollywood Sign say for five days in 1987 to promote the launch of a new TV network?
FOX
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.
Q 27What did art student Daniel Finegood make the sign read in January 1976, a prank repeated on New Year's Day 2017?
HOLLYWEED
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.
Q 28In 1987 the Hollywood Sign briefly read OLLYWOOD as a protest about whom?
Oliver North
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.
Q 29In May 1987, students of which university covered the Hollywood Sign so that it spelled their school's name?
Caltech
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.
Q 30In October 1992, the Hollywood Sign was altered overnight to carry which presidential candidate's name?
Ross Perot
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.