Hollywood Sign Suicide

For every legendary Hollywood star, there are thousands of struggling actors and actresses who never make it. 

Hollywood has a history of Glamorous Beauties and their tragic lives. 
To the general public they have everything to live for, but the deep, dark, privacy of the mind leads to destruction.

The world-famous "Hollywood" sign means glamor and excitement to millions- but to aspiring actress peg Entwistle it became a mocking symbol of failure, and eventually....death.

Peg, was a blonde hopeful with finely chiseled cheekbones and a Mona Lisa smile, who arrived in Hollywood around 1932. She lived in the shadow of the famed sign, gazing up at it for hours on end from the front yard of her Uncle Harold's rustic Beachwood Canyon home.

For five years peg had been the toast of Broadway in New York- but after starring in eight consecutive stage flops, she decided to start all over again in Tinsel Town.

Peg got off to a bad start. She landed a role in a play, and it quickly closed. Her first movie-RKO's "Thirteen Women"-was panned by critics. That confirmed Peg's deepest fear-the jinx that had struck her on Broadway had dogged her footsteps all the way across the country. She'd blown her chance to turn the tide of failure, to make it big. 

On September 18, Peg took action. After dinner, she told Uncle Harold that she felt like taking a walk to the drugstore to buy a book. She set out on her walk, up the long, winding road that led to the sign- wihch in those days read "Hollywood Land," to advertise a real estate development of that name.

Peg stopped at the "H," removed her jacket and carefully laid it on the ground next to her purse. Inside her purse she had placed a note: "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 gripped the rung of an electrician's ladder and slowly pulled herself toward the top of the five-story-high letter, her flowered silk dress rippling in the mountain breeze. 

Halfway up. one of her well-worn shoes slipped off and fell to the ground. 

Peg stood at the top of the letter and stared out at the city stretched beneath her-Hollywood, land of a thousand shattered dreams. Hollywood had summoned her only to beat her down. now its millions of glittering lights seemed to beckon her with arms open. 

With on quick movement, she leaped toward those lights, plunging to her death on the rocks and thorny bushes below.

The falling starlet had written for herself the grandest of finales.