Peg Entwistle's Last Walk

A new version of my 2007 short film about the actress Peg Entwistle, whose 1932 suicide off the Hollywoodland Sign began its transformation from billboard to to monument. The 2009 version features original music by Patrick Kirst and revised titles.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Peg Entwistle
• Beachwood Canyon
• 1932
• Hollywoodland
• Hollywoodland Sign
• Hollywood Sign
• re-enactment
• black & white film
• silent film with titles
• 16mm film
• Hollywood history
• Silent Era
• Hope Anderson
• Under the Hollywood Sign

[underthesign1]

@jsmog I've seen people do it--lots of them--so obviously it's possible. I've also talked to Peg's younger brother, who told me the route they used to take. As for the "caretaker's shack," it was used for storing lightbulbs and other equipment. Albert Kothe, the Sign's caretaker, never lived there, despite what you've read. He lived in a cabin at the dead end of Beachwood Drive.

[jsmog]

@underthesign1 Respectfully disagree...you need to try it someday. It's not a matter of being athletic, there is no way to access the sign off the fire road unless you go down and then back up a very steep hill. The ladder was at the "H" (as it is today) because this was the first place you came to the sign from the path; also closest to the old caretaker's shack

[BRAZIL2014Y2016]

@jsmog peg.... young, beautiful, talented. because????

[BRAZIL2014Y2016]

@underthesign1 young, beautiful, talented, committed suicide because?

[underthesign1]

@jsmog The reason she jumped from the "H" was because it had a ladder propped behind it--not because of its location or anything else. It's true that she might have come from the road, but according to her brother Milt, they had climbed up from the bottom (during the day), which is how most Beachwooders did it before the warning signs went up. Peg was very athletic, so she might have gone that way. The lights on the Sign would have guided her.

[jsmog]

@jsmog PS Some of the film historians I met working in the library at AFI told me they celebrated 16 September as a kind of macabre tribute to Peg, and when I lived in Los Feliz I had a party for her every year...at midnight we toasted all the people ruined by "the business"

[jsmog]

@underthesign1 I always thought it was because the "H" is the first letter you come to below the road. I've been up there a few times in the '70s (before the City buried the emergency transmitter and made the area high security) and find it very hard to believe that she came up from the bottom...from Beachwood the old road wraps around the Burbank side of Mt. Lee and then comes forward above the "H"; to get to the "H" from below is difficult even in hiking boots, and that trail goes to the "D"

[hellomikie92]

@calebandmaddyawesome Whats upsetting is two days later, she gotten a letter, from her uncle wanting her to star in a broadway play, about a suicidal woman, she would had success if she starred in the play.

[hellomikie92]

@calebandmaddyawesome Before she did it, she left all of her stuff on top of the hill. Her purse, shoes, and jacket. Her purse had the note inside. It was all wrapped in a bundle though. A woman, phoned the police, but she was anonymous. Thats when the police arrived and found the body of P.E. Well dressed, and well groomed, she took pretty care of herself. It was a tragedy in Hollywood, in 1932.

[hellomikie92]

@calebandmaddyawesome From what I read, she did it, because she wasn't much of a success as a star. It really didn't go into detail on why she did it, but her suicide note read this: " I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had of done this a long time ago, it would of saved a lot of pain. P.E."