The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago in 1923, the year of L.A.’s ‘Big Bang’

Los Angeles — you’re gonna need a bigger cake. In its real estate days, the sign must have looked as tacky as a roadside honky-tonk, each letter framed in light bulbs that, as I’ve read, sequentially flashed “Holly” then “Wood” then “Land.” Today its singular letters, with the snipped-off corners of its D and Os, are so distinctive that you can render any word in Hollywood Sign Font and people everywhere understand the meme at once. L.A. loved its movies, of course, but it also voted for the bond issues to build the Memorial Coliseum to honor the dead of the World War and create a “people’s playground.” In its first year, the Coliseum staged an immense historical-religious pageant called “The Wayfarer.” Seven thousand Angelenos appeared as extras — for once, a literal cast of thousands. Oil soon joined oranges and movies as a principal Southern California export, putting the “filth” in “filthy rich.” California Hidden Hollywood sign uncovers history The red neon letters spelling ‘Outpost’ mark the original birthplace of Hollywood as a performers’ town. When his name was removed from the Caltech library in 2021, Caltech’s president noted that Millikan had “lent his name and prestige to a morally reprehensible eugenics movement that already had been discredited scientifically during his time.” As Caltech president, Millikan never put a woman on the faculty, and once wrote that giving Black people the vote was “an unthinkable disaster.” The Automobile Club of Southern California opened its magnificent headquarters in 1923, an exceptionally handsome building in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, with a fine courtyard — for cars, of course — and church-worthy ceilings.