The Hollywood Sign: a problematic symbol of fantasy and exclusion

Landmarked monuments around the world signify cultural values and architectural prowess. England has Stonehenge. Paris has its Eiffel Tower. New York? The Statue of Liberty, also engineered by Eiffel. Rio has Christ the Redeemer. There is Chichén Itzá’s complex of Mayan ruins on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Rome’s Trevi Fountain collects around $1.5 million USD annually in coins while the Grand Canyon in Arizona collects nothing but awe. Some monuments are natural, others manmade. Yet, they all share a visible thread: scale.

Few landmarks embody this as dramatically as the Hollywood Sign. Towering over Los Angeles, it has served as a beacon of aspiration and reinvention for over a century. But unlike monuments rooted in ancient civilisations or national identity, the Hollywood Sign has undergone constant transformation – not just physically, but symbolically. It has served as a canvas for both artistic expression and political statements throughout its lifespan. 

It’s a typographic wonder that sits atop Mt. Lee, at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s lived many lives since Harry Chandler, publisher of the LA Times, erected it in 1923 as a promotional billboard for his upscale, whites-only real estate development “Hollywoodland”. Its gleaming letterforms, visible from many vantage points throughout the city, made it a gargantuan presence.

Beneath its immediate performative nature, there are stains of colonialism, exclusion, and capitalism that represent the establishment. Perhaps it’s this dark underbelly that has made the sign an obvious target for public interventions and art projects over the years.

Recently, in a 15-second segment during the 97th Oscars ceremony, actress Julianne Hough gave recognition to three Native American tribes, remarking, “We gather in celebration of the Oscars on the ancestral lands of the Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash peoples, the traditional caretakers of this water and land. We honour and pay our respects to Indigenous communities here and around the world.” The camera fades from the red carpet to drone footage panning across a view of the Hollywood Sign. To which Sen. Josh Hawley’s communications director, Abigail Jackson, wrote on X, “Performative nonsense. Give the land back if you’re so woke.”

Before Hollywood became Tinseltown, it belonged to Indigenous people. It resembled other frontiers in the west, populated by farmers, cowboys, prospectors, bandits, and mostly undeveloped land. Pioneers were besotted by the promise of sunny skies and mild, dry weather. These conditions also drew in a new industry: film. In 1907, a small Chicago crew relocated to escape bad weather and complete a shoot. This paved the way for Hollywood’s first true studio, Nestor Film Company, a New Jersey transplant. As the industry took root, real estate boomed.

By 1912, news of LA’s perfect climate and diverse landscapes for filmmaking had spread, attracting at least 15 independent studios to the area. Old barns were repurposed into sound stages, marking the end of quiet days on the frontier.

Hollywood is overstated, and so is its sign. Each of the original 13 letters was 30 feet wide and about 43 feet tall, constructed of 3×9-inch metal squares bungled together by an intricate frame of scaffolding, pipes, wires and telephone poles. The letters featured 4,000 20-watt bulbs, spaced 8 inches apart. A little known giant white dot (35 feet in diameter, with 20-watt lights on the perimeter) sat below the Sign, became redundant. It was eye-catching on its own. Before the Glitter Gulch of Vegas’s neon lights, the Hollywood Sign blinked above the city in three sections: first “HOLLY” then “WOOD” and “LAND.” Everything it took to achieve this spectacle had to be dragged up Mt. Lee by labourers and horses on precarious dirt paths.

For the next few decades, the giant marquee stood, but the Great Depression in the 1930s destroyed the housing market and with WWII, the city became fully invested in wartime efforts like building airplanes and ships. In the midst of this, the city of Los Angeles gained ownership of the sign in 1944, which went mostly unnoticed.

Declining days lay ahead for the sign and the city. The 1965 Watts Riots highlighted the social unrest and racial challenges faced by Los Angeles. The promise of the Sign had faded. Perhaps that’s why, in 1973, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board gave the Sign official landmark status, to ensure its future in uncertain times. While Hollywood continued to nosedive, the sign did too – literally. The top of the “D” and the entire third “O” toppled down Mt. Lee, and an arsonist set fire to the second “L”.

This period saw the dawn of several interventions and alterations of the sign – including protests, pranks, and campaigns to protect the surrounding land. In 1976, California passed the “Moscone Act” decriminalised small-scale possession of marijuana, changing it from a felony to a misdemeanour. To celebrate, Danny Finegold altered the Sign’s letters to read “Hollyweed” for a class assignment on scale. “For a long time, he had this idea that if you just changed the two O’s you could change the whole meaning of the sign,” his wife recalled in his obituary.

Finegold continued to use the sign as the foundation for his environmental sculptures, transforming it into “Holywood” when the Pope John Paul II visited LA for Easter later that year, and again in 1987, he altered it to read “Ollywood” as a criticism against Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings. His final statement was a political protest against the Persian Gulf War in 1990, draping plastic sheeting over the letters to spell “Oil War”.

Pranks and protests were only interrupted for three short months in 1978, when the Hollywood Sign Trust was formed to save it so its facade could last for years to come. Ironically, the campaign was led by Hugh Hefner, who found Playboy under strict guidelines of surface female beauty. With the help of nine celebrity donors, one for each letter, the original sign was flattened and built anew. Alice Cooper sponsored the second “O” in honor of Groucho Marx. The overhaul took 194 tons of concrete, enamel and steel, but the Sign stood restored and ready for a new millennium and modifications.

1983 saw an ambitious but slightly botched modification when a group of Navy Midshipmen attempted to spell “Go Navy” in honor of the Army-Navy football game at the Rose Bowl. Due to incomplete coverage of the letters, the result was the unintended “GOLLNAVYD”.

1987 was eventful for the sign. In April, the Fox network celebrated the launch of its primetime programming by covering the H and first L with an F and X, lighting up the hillside with “FOX” for five nights. Just a month later, CalTech senior pranksters successfully rearranged the letters to spell “CALTECH”.

Political messages continued into the 1990s. In addition to Finegood’s “Oil War,” supporters of independent candidate Ross Perot briefly transformed the sign into “Perotwood” during the 1992 presidential campaign. Eventually, the Hollywood Sign was cordoned off to the public by a tight security system in 1994, so the messages are fewer and farther between. Recent years saw a remix of “Hollyweed” and a sloppy “Hollyboob” prank.

Once an over-the-top advertisement for a whites-only development, the Sign has evolved into a cultural icon shaped by decades of interventions, artistic reinterpretations, and political statements. From Danny Finegood’s wordplay to contemporary art installations like Nicholas Galanin’s Never Forget, the Sign’s transformation reflects ongoing conversations about history, identity, and ownership.

Galanin’s monumental Indian Land installation directly confronts the settler-colonial legacy embedded in the original Hollywoodland sign, demanding more than performative acknowledgments – it calls for action, urging landowners to return land management to Indigenous communities. This intervention reclaims the visual language of Hollywood to expose the erasure of Native histories, positioning itself as a global statement amplified through social media.

The shifting narratives surrounding the Hollywood Sign parallel broader cultural reckonings. In 2025, the Academy’s recognition of Julian Brave NoiseCat’s Sugarcane marked a historic moment for Native storytelling at the Oscars, signalling a long-overdue platform for Indigenous voices in an industry that once mythologised the West through a colonial lens.

As institutions adopt land acknowledgments like the 2022 statement recognising the original inhabitants of Los Angeles, Galanin’s work reminds us that acknowledgment without action is empty. The Hollywood Sign, a symbol of both fantasy and exclusion, continues to be reimagined – not just as a site of spectacle, but as a battleground for memory, justice, and the ongoing struggle for Indigenous sovereignty.

Closer Look

Meg’s recommendations for further reading, watching, walking and general digging around this fascinating subject.

• Watch: Thom Andersen’s 2003 landmark documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, a critical analysis of the relationship between films and the native city of Los Angeles they depict.

• Read: Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader is the first anthology of McCoy’s writing. It features a selection of some 70 pieces – ranging from her 1945 article Schindler, Space Architect, to Arts & Architecture: Case Study Houses, a 1989 essay commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

• Read: Rebels in Paradise, by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2012.

• Follow: @forgottenmadness_la, @la.history

• Walk: In Los Angeles