A letter of support from USC Professor Leo Braudy

By Leo Braudy | 02.25.10 | share | leave a comment

The Hollywood Sign has undergone numerous metamorphoses in the years since 1923, when it was erected as "Hollywoodland" to advertise a new housing development in Beachwood Canyon. In part a relic of the real estate boom of the 1920s that helped define modern Los Angeles, over the years it has transcended those pragmatic roots to become a prime symbol to the world of Los Angeles itself. I can't count the number of times, walking in Griffith Park, that I have been asked in many accents and even languages: "Is this the way to the Hollywood Sign?"

That kind of attention wasn't always part of the Sign's heritage. There were years of neglect, not to mention fire and flood and general abuse, but the Sign survived--frayed, shabby, but for the most part unbowed. Finally, by the 1970s, it was beginning to be seen for the icon that in later years it would become. A critical mass of citizens in Los Angeles--and Hollywood--was finally waking up to their own rich history, of which the Sign was an essential part. But patchwork repairs weren't enough, and in 1978 the Sign was rebuilt entirely with materials meant to survive as much natural catastrophe as possible. And so it stood for more than thirty years as a vital nucleus of the diversity not just of Hollywood but of Los Angeles as well.

In 2010, however, fourscore and seven years after its origin, the Sign is being threatened not by nature but by man, in the shape of luxury housing that will reduce its significance and overshadow, even obliterate, its power as a visual icon. An essential part of the Sign is its isolation, its solitary eminence. No individual should be able to poach on that solitude for the trivial satisfaction of having a nice "view." Let us preserve the purity of this crucial symbol by which we are known to the world by giving generously to the Trust for Public Land's Save Cahuenga Peak campaign.

Leo Braudy teaches English and film history at USC. His book on the history of the Hollywood Sign will be published by Yale University Press in its American Icons series.

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