LA’s famous Hollywood sign once had a swimming pool

Los Angeles is a city full of famous people and places, but perhaps the most famous is the historic Hollywood sign that towers over the hill. The 50-foot white HOLLYWOOD block letters have been immortalized in popular culture around the world, and are inspired by the real-life location: Hollywood, the neighborhood just below the sign, and the backdrop to the film’s vast and captivating pop culture vision. standing as. And the television industry that entertains the world. Over its 100 years, this sign has attracted eccentrics, artists, copy T-shirt makers, and tourists. It even had its own pool at one time.

Little is known now, but a fully functioning in-ground pool actually existed on the flat land atop the Santa Monica Mountains where the Hollywood sign is located. This pool and its surrounding cement patio can still be seen in archival photos from the 1940s, and its azure waters played an incredibly important role in the birth of modern television.

First built in 1923, the Hollywood Sign actually began as the HOLLYWOODLAND sign, a large-scale advertisement erected by developers who were selling residential lots in the canyon below. Although this sign was supposed to be temporary, it became quite famous over the next few years as Los Angeles’ population continued to boom. After 20 years, the letter was in pretty dilapidated condition, but the land surrounding it had only increased in value. That’s partly because inventive filmmaker Mack Sennett wanted to build a luxurious mansion atop a mountain. Sennett leveled the top behind the sign to secure the site, but it was never built.

Enter Don Lee, a pioneering radioman and early television visionary. His company was at the forefront of the broadcast side of television and film (thanks to extensive previous work in radio) and began building production facilities throughout the Los Angeles Basin. The problem was he only had one problem. Early television broadcast signals could not cross the foothills, and the Santa Monica Mountains effectively cut Lee’s audience in half geographically.

So in 1938, the Don Lee Company purchased the flattened Mack Sennett property and by 1939 had completed a production facility on the property, including a 300-foot-tall broadcast antenna, then the world’s tallest. Not only did the building have state-of-the-art equipment (it was also the first West Coast station to remotely televise the Rose His Parade in Pasadena, California in 1940), but it also had some particularly quirky features. He included one extra piece. swimming pool.

For the next few years, the production facility broadcast all kinds of movies and television shows. That included a recurring segment known as “Bathing Beauties,” which featured women in modest two-piece swimsuits soaking in real pools. However, by the mid-1940s, the facility (as well as the Hollywoodland sign below), as the station turned to the much larger Mount Wilson in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains to expand its coverage. I was in a difficult situation.

In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce took control of the aging sign and cut out the word LAND at the end, leaving the sign as we know it today. Well, most of the time, the current billboard was actually restored in 1978 and famous Angelenos like Gene Autry and Alice Cooper paid him $28,000 for each one. purchased the text and kept the sign alive. Currently, the Hollywood sign is fenced off and closed to tourists, and is surrounded by security equipment such as motion sensors and patrol helicopters to keep vandals and thieves at bay (though that hasn’t stopped some of them. ). As for Don Lee’s old pool, it has long been paved over with asphalt, but an important part of the broadcasting giant’s legacy still lives on there. The summit with the Hollywood sign is now named Mount Lee.