Hollywoodland

The news broke a few days ago that Hugh Hefner is among those who are going to pony up a bunch of money to buy land in the vicinity of the famous Hollywood sign that was slated for development. If the land had been developed, it would have ruined the view of the iconic sign. Not that I want to want to see such an iconic view destroyed, but I find a good deal of irony in all this. After all, the sign was originally erected back in the 1920s to promote... a housing development, called Hollywoodland. The sign originally had four letters more than it does today, and was never meant to be permanent. (By the same token, the Eiffel Tower wasn't intended to be permanent, either.)

I had known about the housing development and the fact that the sign originally had those four extra letters, but in doing a bit of research, I found out a few more things that surprised me, most notably that the sign was originally lighted by thousands of incandescent lights. There are two good pages detailing the history of the sign and the neighborhood here and here.

Or, I suppose, you could get the facts straight from the horse's mouth. Only in Hollywood. (Does the sign have its own agent, too?)