Peg Entwistle and The Hollywood Sign

By Hope Anderson

Essays by Hope Anderson, a documentary filmmaker whose research on Peg Entwistle--the Hollywood Sign's only suicide--led her to debunk popular misconceptions about the actress's life and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483507590

Book preview

Walk"

Introduction

My interest in the actress Peg Entwistle, who in 1932 committed suicide from the Hollywood Sign (which then read Hollywoodland), began in 2006, when I began researching the neighborhood’s history for my documentary, Under the Hollywood Sign. Though seventy-four years had passed since her death, she was a local legend, her memory refreshed by occasional claims of sighting her ghost at the Hollywood Sign. Yet no one seemed to know anything about her life, aside from the fact that she had acted in a single movie called Thirteen Women, whose failure spurred her suicide.

Online I found only three or four photos of Peg, one of which—the half-nude in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon—didn’t even resemble her, apart from the platinum bob that was so popular in the early 1930s. Through this and other fictions, Anger shaped an indelible impression of Peg Entwistle as a talentless, inexperienced wannabe starlet. As I would learn, she was none of those things, having been an acting prodigy who made her Broadway debut at seventeen. From then until the very end of her life, she worked steadily on stage, in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, as well as on national tours.

In telling her story, the near absence of photos presented a problem, since archival photographs and film are the lifeblood of historical documentaries. Lacking the crucial visual backdrop, I set about making a reenactment of Peg’s climb to the Hollywood Sign, which at the time was the only thing about her life I knew was accurate. I put it on YouTube as a short film called Peg Entwistle’s Last Walk, and soon heard from James Zeruk, Jr., who was researching her life for a book. He led me to Peg’s remaining family, including her half-brother, Milt, who was still vibrant in his early 90s, and his daughter Lauretta Slike, who had organized the family’s pictures and documents. To my amazement, the Entwistles seemed never to have thrown away a photograph or clipping, and generously shared with me a treasure trove of Peg’s life. Some of the photos are included in this book, along with production stills from Peg Entwistle’s Last Walk.

This book is a companion to my new documentary, Peg Entwistle: The Life and Death of an Actress. The DVD is comprised of my two films on Peg, the aforementioned short film and a biography. Along with my other films, it is available from my website, hopeandersonproductions.com

Hope Anderson

Los Angeles, California

September 1, 2013

Peg Entwistle, the Hollywood Sign and Suicide by Jumping

Beachwood Canyon circa 1925/Collection of Bruce Torrence

More than 80 years have passed since the actress Peg Entwistle jumped from the Hollywood Sign, yet the event still resonates in Hollywoodland, where she lived during her final months. The hillside tract development for which the Sign was built as a billboard in 1923 has changed little over the decades. Though the storybook houses that Peg passed on her way up to Cahuenga Peak have been supplemented