How Tall Is the Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles?

The Hollywood sign in Los Angeles is arguably the most famous sign on Earth. It welcomes everyone who gazes upon it to fantasize about the glitz and glamor of film stardom. The sign has invited countless dreamers to pack up and move to Southern California, fueled by the hope that they could make it big on the silver screen. As John Huston said, “Hollywood has always been a cage… a cage to catch our dreams.” Let’s talk about the iconic sign that symbolizes this “cage.” How tall is the Hollywood sign? Where is it exactly? How old is it? Can you touch it? And much more.

How Tall Is the Hollywood sign?

Each letter of the Hollywood sign is 45 feet tall. That is half the distance between the bases on a baseball diamond. Just two of the Hollywood sign letters would stretch from home plate to first base. Eight letters would stretch all the way around the bases, leaving one letter to spare.

The 45-foot height of each letter isn’t the whole story, though. The letters do not sit directly on the ground. Instead, they are affixed to poles. The letters stand anywhere from 10-15 feet off the ground. The tops of some of the letters tower as high as 60 feet off the ground.

The nine letters together stretch out to 400 feet wide, which is as long as nine semi-trailers.

Where Is the Sign Located?

The Hollywood sign stands on the southern slope of Mount Lee, in the Beachwood Canyon area of the Santa Monica Mountains. It is part of Griffith Park. The sign sits at an elevation of 1,578 feet.

Can You Touch the Hollywood Sign?

The Los Angeles police and fire departments along with the Griffith Park rangers vigilantly monitor the Hollywood sign 24 hours a day. This vigilance helps to enforce the rule that visitors cannot approach or touch the Hollywood sign. The prohibition is in place due to the hazardous mountainous terrain and the ever-present threat of vandalism to the sign.

How Long Does It Take to Climb to the Hollywood Sign?

If you want to get close to the Hollywood sign, you’ll have to hike to it. There is no other access besides hiking trails.

There are three different trails visitors can access to hike to the Hollywood sign. The trails are open from sunrise to sunset 365 days a year. These three paths range from three to six miles and vary from moderately difficult to strenuous.

Mount Hollywood Trail

The Mount Hollywood Trail is a moderately challenging loop trail that is five miles long. The average time to navigate the trail is 2 hours 45 minutes.

Brush Canyon Trail

The Brush Canyon Trail is a moderately challenging loop trail that is a mile longer than the Mount Hollywood Trail. The average trail time to hike this loop is around three hours.

Cahuenga Peak Trail

The Cahuenga Peak Trail is a strenuous out-and-back trail that is three miles long. The estimated trail time is 1 hour 45 minutes.

Griffith Observatory

If you’re not interested in a hike, you can visit the Griffith Observatory for a great view of the sign. But again, if you want to get close to the sign, hiking is the only way to do it.

Over ten million people visit Griffith Park to view the iconic sign every year. However, if you can’t visit Tinseltown but you still want to inject a little Hollywood vibe into your day, you can always check the Hollywood sign’s 24/7 webcams. From the top camera, you can look down over the sign onto the city below. From the bottom camera, you can look up toward the sign and see visitors at the top of the mountain.

The History of the Hollywood Sign

The Hollywood sign dates back to 1923. It was built as a billboard to advertise a posh real estate development. The original sign had four additional letters, spelling out HOLLYWOODLAND. The massive electric billboard cost $21,000 (close to $370,000 today). 

Each of the original 13 letters was 30 feet wide and approximately 43 feet tall. The wooden letters featured around 4,000 light bulbs. When the sign was completed in late 1923, the lights alternated between flashing as a whole and flashing in three successive segments: “HOLLY,” “WOOD,” and “LAND.” And, as if that weren’t enough, there was also a searchlight below the sign to garner even more attention.

The wooden sign was designed to last a year and a half. No one realized it would be the birth of a permanent Los Angeles landmark.

The 1940s

By the early 1940s, the plans for the real estate development folded, thanks in large part to the damning effects of the Great Depression. The Hollywoodland sign had also fallen into disrepair. The light bulbs had burned out years earlier and the sign was in tatters thanks to wind and weather exposure.

The sign became the property of the city of Los Angeles in 1944. The letter “H” was destroyed in that same year, probably by a windstorm though some claim it was perpetrated by vandals. 

By the late 1940s, residents called for the removal of the dilapidated sign. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce offered to repair it rather than see it demolished. The Chamber signed a contract with the city’s Parks Department to renovate the sign. The contract also stipulated that “LAND” was to be removed so the sign better reflected the Hollywood district and not the defunct real estate development. Renovations began in September 1949.

The 1960s and 1970s

Hollywood experienced some of its lowest days in the 1960s. Crime rates rose and urban blight spread. The Hollywood sign was not excluded from the downturn. It was literally falling apart. 

The sign received landmark status in 1973, but that didn’t stop the deterioration. The top of the “D” and the entire third “O” came crashing down the mountain. Arsonists also set fire to the bottom of the second “L.”

By the late 1970s, the sign was so far gone that only a complete rebuild would keep the iconic letters on the southern slope of Mount Lee. It was a project that would cost around $250,000, equivalent to nearly $1.2 million today. However, some of the biggest stars of the day came to the rescue.

Donating Letters

Fleetwood Mac planned a charity concert in 1977, but residents thwarted the effort. The following year, Hugh Hefner held a fundraising gala at the Playboy Mansion. Sponsorship donations for the sign’s individual letters were available for $27,778 apiece. 

The donors for the sign included some famous and diverse celebrities. What other cause would bring Alice Cooper and Gene Autry together?

Here is the full list of donors for the 1978 rebuild of the Hollywood sign:

• H: Terrence Donnelly (publisher of the Hollywood Independent Newspaper)
• O: Alice Cooper (singer), who donated in memory of comedian Groucho Marx
• L: Les Kelley (founder of Kelley Blue Book)
• L: Gene Autry (actor and singer)
• Y: Hugh Hefner (founder of Playboy)
• W: Andy Williams (singer)
• O: Giovanni Mazza (Italian movie producer, co-founder of Panaria Film)
• O: Warner Bros. Records
• D: Dennis Lidtke (businessman, graphics company Gribbitt), donated in the name of Matthew Williams.

The old sign was torn down in August 1978. Then, for the next three months, Hollywood was without its iconic sign for the first time since 1923.

From 1978 to Today

The new sign debuted on November 11, 1978, as part of a CBS television special commemorating the 75th anniversary of Hollywood’s incorporation. While the original sign was made of wood, this new sign was made of corrugated steel and was mounted on a metal frame. Those nine letters that were placed on Mount Lee in 1978 are still the ones that make up the iconic Hollywood sign today.

The sign is repainted every ten years. The latest repaint was in 2022, preparing the sign for its 100th anniversary in 2023. Sherwin-Williams, an Ohio-based painting company, gave the sign its most recent coat of paint. The company used 250 gallons of primer and weather-resistant bright white paint to spruce up the iconic landmark.

Mount Lee

Visitors to Mount Lee, where the Hollywood sign is found, will notice an anomaly at its peak. The top of Mount Lee is flat. This did not occur naturally, though. 

The peak of Mount Lee was excavated by Mack Sennett, a Hollywood legend in the days of silent movies. He was one of the developers in the Hollywoodland real estate venture that erected the original Hollywood sign. However, Sennett planned to build the grandest home of all for himself.

Sennett was a pioneering filmmaker of the silent era, producing mostly slapstick comedies such as Keystone Kops. The movie mogul plotted out 18 acres atop Mount Lee for his dream home (though it was not yet known as Mount Lee). 

In 1925, steam shovels tore into the mountain peak. In the end, the mountain was shortened by 69 feet, with a flat four-acre parcel at the peak. But the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out much of Sennett’s wealth, valued at $15 million (equivalent to more than $260 million today). By 1933, Sennett was bankrupt and the plans for his glamorous home overlooking the city were abandoned.

Broadcaster Tommy Lee purchased the site in 1939 and installed L.A.’s first television studio there. He named the mountain after his father, Don Lee. Its current name is Mount Lee today.

Who Owns the Hollywood Sign?

The city of Los Angeles possesses the Hollywood sign today. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce holds the image of the sign’s licensing rights. Meanwhile, to ensure the maintenance, repair, and provision of capital improvements for the sign, a group has formed the Hollywood Sign Trust, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

Hollywood Sign Girl

The darkest day in the history of the Hollywood sign came on September 16, 1932, the day a young woman climbed to the top of the “H” and jumped to her death.

Peg Entwistle was just 24 years old when she leaped from the top of the Hollywood sign. She and her father immigrated to the United States from Wales when she was four years old. Following her father’s death when she was 14, Entwistle moved in with her uncle.

A Budding Acting Career

At 17, she began a promising career on the stage, appearing in several Broadway productions. She was accepted into the distinguished New York Theatre Guild in 1926.

Entwistle married fellow actor, Robert Lee Keith, in 1927. The marriage only lasted for two years. The couple divorced in 1929. Keith had a previous wife and a child that were unbeknownst to Entwistle when they married.

As she was coping with her divorce, Entwistle also found herself in the throes of the Great Depression. New York’s theaters were hit hard since patrons could no longer afford to spend money on luxuries such as theater tickets.

The Move to L.A.

Entwistle abandoned the theater and moved from New York to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film. She moved in with another uncle as she sought to make it big in Tinseltown. However, Entwistle was far from alone in her pursuits. Hollywood was flooded with other young actors seeking to make a name for themselves. Entwistle was never able to stand out from that crowd.

She landed a part in one movie, the 1932 film Thirteen Women. Much of her role was left out of the final cut, though. The movie debuted a month after Entwistle’s death and was a flop.

Entwistle’s Death

Entwistle’s contract with RKO Pictures was voided and she was left penniless. That is when Entwistle left her uncle’s house on that fateful September evening. She told him she was meeting some friends at the drug store but instead, she trekked up Mount Lee to the Hollywood sign. Using a workman’s ladder, she climbed to the top of the “H” and then plunged to her death.

The following day, a hiker found a jacket, shoe, and purse on the mountain. The hiker turned and saw Entwistle’s body lying about 100 feet down the mountain slope. The tabloids labeled Entwistle as, “The Hollywood Sign Girl.”

Entwistle left a suicide note in her purse. The note 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”

According to a popular Hollywood legend, a letter arrived at her uncle’s house the day after her death. It was from the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Entwistle was offered the lead role in a play about a woman driven to suicide.

A Cruel Irony

The Hollywood sign played a tragically ironic role in Entwistle’s life and death. That sign, no doubt, welcomed her to Hollywood. She dreamed of parlaying her stage success into an acclaimed career on the big screen. The sign assured her that anything was possible in Hollywood. Instead, the iconic sign ended up being the place where it all would end. It was a tragic story befitting a movie, only this time it was all too real.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de / CC BY-SA 3.0 – License / Original