Sold as seen - a rare chance to brighten up your personal hillside
Hollywood has long been accused of selling out, but never quite so shamelessly as this. According to today's papers, it has actually put itself up for sale - or at least a small but historic corner.
The first Hollywood sign, which enlivened the scrubby hilltops surrounding LA from 1923 until a replacement was winched into place in 1978, has become the latest novelty item to appear on eBay. Entrepeneur Dan Bliss, who acquired the sign a couple of years ago, has reluctantly decided to sell up and - of course - realised an internet auction was the best way to go about it.
Registered users (with unblemished ratings, mind) have eight days to bump up their credit ratings and bid: at the time of writing the price tag is about to touch $22,000, and the reserve isn't even met yet. Should you still be wavering, the description points out that the sign features "white paint, rust, wind holes, nail holes and graffiti". The real deal, as cigar-chomping producers are rumoured once to have said.
"You might consider rebuilding one or more of the letters as a TOURIST ATTRACTION," the blurb continues. The thing is 45ft high and 450ft across, admittedly, so planning permission might be an idea before you arrange for home delivery. (If you can't manage the space, someone else is listing 22-inch nuggets of the original, each with a display case and guarantee of authenticity.)
Two gobbets of trivia, surprisingly absent from said blurb. First, you're bidding on a killing machine - people have committed suicide by leaping off, never more famously than in 1932, when a poor failed actor called Peg Entwhistle stepped into eternity from atop the "H".
Second, even if you collect all the bits and reassemble them like some outsize, Tinseltown jigsaw, you won't be able to recreate the original look. The first sign, raised by Mack Sennett and newspaperman Harry Chandler, read "HOLLYWOODLAND" - the last bit was unceremoniously carted off in 1949.
