Peg Entwistle and the HOLLYWOODLAND Sign

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.

Poor P.E. If she had hung on a little longer, she might have been remembered for her life and not her death, and she might have spared herself the fate of becoming the ghost who haunts the grounds around the Hollywood sign - assuming, of course, that the rumors are true.

Peg Entwistle, photo source/licensing: Wikipedia Commons

P.E. was Peg Entwistle, the 24-year-old starlet who jumped to her death from the H of the HOLLYWOODLAND sign, the one with the freestanding letters high up on Mount Lee, the one that now reads simply, HOLLYWOOD and is an icon of the movie industry.

It was 1932. Entwistle had grown despondent over her career; after all, she was a washed-up almost was, having accomplished nothing more than a Broadway debut in her teens and a performance in Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" that inspired a teenaged Bette Davis to rave ". . . I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle!"

Such is the lie of depression, that it has convinced some of the world's greatest overachievers that they are worthless and have nothing to live for. No doubt, Entwistle could be hard on herself, and reports indicate that she could be "moody." She is said to have shared the following about her struggles to nail a performance:

"To play any kind of an emotional scene, I must work up to a certain pitch. If I reach this in my first work, the rest of the words and lines take care of themselves. But if I fail, I have to build up the balance of the speeches, and in doing this the whole characterization falls flat. I feel that I am cheating myself. I don't know whether other actresses get this same reaction or not, but it does worry me."

According to IMDb, under the direction of Blanc Yurka, Entwistle played Hedvig, the girl in "The Wild Duck" whose life would end by suicide. Bette Davis, who was roughly the same age, saw a performance with her mother, Ruthie and was transformed. Two years later, as Entwistle headed to Hollywood, Yurka hired Davis to play Hedvig.

Entwistle, whose family moved with her to the U.S. from England when she was about five years-old, took some hard hits early on. Her doting stepmother died as the result of an illness, and her father was killed in a hit and run accident. Peg and her younger brothers were entrusted to the care of their uncle, an actor and theatre manager said to have gotten Peg at least one of her early breaks. 

Eventually, Entwistle and her uncle made their way to Los Angeles where Peg hoped to break into films. It was at the height of the Great Depression, and she landed a role in the play, "The Mad Hopes," which also featured Humphrey Bogart and Billie Burke. The play ran its course at the Belasco Theatre in downtown L.A. and earned Entwistle some helpful industry buzz. Billie Burke, by the way, went on to play Glinda, the Good Witch in MGM's 1939 production of "The Wizard of Oz." But according to online sources, while Entwistle was no doubt grateful to be earning a living, she longed to venture outside her "type," which was shaping up to be the amiable ingenue.

Entwistle got her chance to leave girlish roles behind in her one and only film, Thirteen Women, starring Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne. She played Hazel Cousins, a role with scenes running roughly 16 minutes in the first cut but slashed to just four minutes after the film failed to win over test audiences. Some say that the encroaching presence of the Hays Code, a massing force for Hollywood censorship, was to blame for some of the challenges the film experienced. All the same, having her most promising work to date snipped onto the cutting room floor, was a tough blow for Entwistle. "Thirteen Women" premiered in New York on September 16, 1932, the month following her death, and in L.A. the following November.

Entwistle's death is said to have happened like this:

On the evening of September 16, 1932, she left the house she shared with her uncle, saying she was going to the drug store for a book and then to visit friends. Whether that was a ruse, or she impulsively changed plans, no one knows. What we do know is that she made her way to the Southern slope of Mount Lee, site of the Hollywoodland sign, 13 letters, 50 feet tall, advertising a real estate development. She climbed the maintenance ladder at the back of the H and dove off.

According to reports, two days later, a woman desiring to remain anonymous, phoned the Los Angeles police saying she'd discovered a woman's shoe, purse and jacket while hiking near the sign. She added that she'd found what appeared to be a suicide note, and that when she gazed down the hilly terrain, she'd spotted a body. After the body was recovered and a postmortem conducted, the cause of death was determined as "multiple fractures of the pelvis."

Entwistle's uncle identified his niece after reading a newspaper account of an unknown female corpse and a suicide note signed P.E. found near the sign. He told police that she had been "suffering an intense mental anguish."

One macabre side note: When Entwistle was 19, she married actor, Robert Keith. Two years later she was awarded a divorce after alleging cruelty and claiming that Keith neglected to mention his previous marriage and six-year-old son. That boy grew up to be the actor, Brian Keith. Sadly, that Keith's daughter, Daisy died by suicide. Her death came at a time when Keith's health was declining. Two months later, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His death was ruled a suicide, but Keith's friend, actress, Maureen O'Hara, insisted it was an accident and that Keith had been in good spirits. She added that being a Catholic, he would never have taken his life.

Entwistle's suicide caused one of those sensations vintage Hollywood is famous for. Her funeral was held at the W.M. Strathers Mortuary on September 20, and she was cremated and her ashes buried next to her father in a cemetery in Glendale, Ohio.

But that isn't the end of Peg Entwistle. Since her death, people have reported encountering a young blonde woman near the Hollywood sign, dressed in 1930s era clothing. She has been described as "sad," "brooding," and in one case, "disoriented." The smell of gardenias, Entwistle's favorite scent, has been detected during these sightings. She is said to vanish as suddenly as she appears.

If you should ever stumble across a time machine, set the dial for September 16, 1932, go to the Hollywoodland sign and wait for Peg. Maybe you can change her mind.  




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Starstruck Marta and the Torch Song

Their names were Marta and Joe. They were born in Poland before 1920 and met in the U.S. while still very young. According to Marta, they’d been married forever.

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

I met them in 1980, I believe. It was when they showed up at the Hollywood Hills office of Forrest J Ackerman, whose many idiosyncrasies included shunning the period after his middle initial. He was a literary agent and editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland," a magazine children had been clamoring for since 1958. I worked for him during my summer vacations from college. 

Marta was slim, almost frail, and elegant with her soft voice, her white, free-flowing hair and her loose and gauzy garments. Joe fit her perfectly. Slim, neatly dressed, and with a pencil mustache, he could have been a movie director in the silent age of Hollywood - and she a leading lady. 

Unaware of Forry's sci-fi and horror niche, they had come hoping to find a literary agent for a book of poems by Marta. They were about her heart, her husband, her sons, her gratitude, and the buckets of wonder she could wring from a single ray of sunlight.

That sunlight was important because Marta was supposed to be deep down in the dark by now. She had been ill for most of her adult life with a heart condition doctors said would kill her before she could grow old. They also said she should never have children, but she defied the doctors and the odds, acing pregnancy with the birth of a healthy son. One of her poems was about the bright and perfect joy of hearing that baby cry for the first time.

Soon after, Marta aced another pregnancy and gave birth to another healthy son. Joe stood by her through it all, doting and protective. Joe, who had survived a pogrom and seen someone killed right in front of him, found himself partnered for life with a woman whose experience with death was just as threatening and, astonishing as it sounds, far more personal because the threat came from her own heart.

The couple was in their late sixties the day I met them, and they proceeded to “adopt” me, this apple-cheeked college kid from the Midwest. One Friday, they ventured from their home, a sleek, one-level mid-century modern in the California desert, to L.A. to pick me up for the weekend. Settled in for the evening, Marta, who adored Joe's voice, begged him to sing for us. Eventually he gave in with an acapella performance of an old torch song about the agonies of love, "I’ve Got to Pass Your House to Get to My House."

A little recent Googling revealed some history on that strange song I’d never heard before and hadn’t heard since. Released in 1934 on the Columbia label, it was recorded by a young Bing Crosby. The genre was "pop," which is a little hard to believe when you hear the song. 

That weekend was filled with white wine, delicious food and talk of everything from sex (which I had yet to experience), to desert weather, to writing, and there was lots of talk of writing. It was one of the first times anyone had treated me as a fully formed adult equal.

They both had so much to say, and every other word wore a fresh coat of grace. As to that old song, it may have been recorded by Bing Crosby, but you haven't heard it until you've heard it sung by Joe to a thrilled and starstruck Marta.