H is for Suicide
This is something of a rerun; we know. But our viewership has expanded, and well, we liked this posting quite a bit.Everyone has heard the whisperings that someone once killed themselves jumping from one of the letters from the Hollywood sign. The letters and the stories change. The swirl of ghoulishness and cocktails involved in these conversations give way to boundless speculation. Only one person has thrown herself off the Hollywood sign, and into notariaty she never would have had otherwise.
Lillian Millicent "Peg" Entwistle was born in 1908 in Wales. Her mother died when she was young and she and her father emigrated to New York City. She had some small parts in Broadway plays, but they dried up when the Depression hit. She heard about a new industry for actors out on the West Coast, in Los Angeles.
From there, her story plays out like so many others. Though she had a small part in David O. Selznick's Thirteen Women, she fell on tough times after that. Within five months, she was resorting to posing topless for a small fee.
She was staying with her uncle, in his house in Beechwood Canyon, beneath the sign (which then read "Hollywoodland"). On the night of September 18, 1932, she said she was going for a walk and wandered up through the winding streets and paths to the sign, where she folded her coat, placed it on the ground, scaled the "H" and jumped to her death. She left a note which read: "I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E." She was 24.
In a cruel twist, the next week her uncle received a letter explaining that she had gotten a part in a play at the Beverly Hills playhouse. She would have played the part of a woman driven to suicide.
If you're thinking of exiting stage left like Peg, you'll find it much tougher going, as the letters are surrounded with motion detectors, rendering it nearly impossible to get close to the sign.
They say Peg's ghost still walks the streets of Beechwood Canyon. If you believe in that sort of thing, she wears her favorite gardenia scented perfume, so you'll know if you ever cross her path.
posted by kuaptic. @ 1:25 PM
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