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Peg Entwistle: New York
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Peg Entwistle was a failure. In New York, she had been a player (though not a successful one) with Lawrence Langner's Theater Guild. When the Depression came, she had trouble getting stage work, so she headed out to California; a play with Billie Burke closed quickly, and her first film role came in a disastrous Irene Dunne comedy that RKO held back to re-edit. Her contract, RKO informed her, would not be renewed. One drunken September evening, she went up to the Hollywood Hills and killed herself. Today she is one of Los Angeles' most famous ghosts, not because of who she was but because of where she died; Peg Entwistle is the woman who threw herself off the Hollywood sign.
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Born Lillian Millicent Entwistle in Port Talbot, on Swansea Bay in Wales, she emigrated with her widowed father to New York City in 1922. After her father was struck and killed in a traffic accident, Peg was left destitute and began to suffer from bouts of depression. Despite this, dreams of becoming a famous entertainer kept her determined and striving for success at a very young age. Entwistle had begun to pursue a career in theatre, making her stage debut in Hamlet with the Boston repertory company at age 17. She later obtained co-starring roles in prestigious Broadway productions, such as Getting Married (with Dorothy Gish) and Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire (with Laurette Taylor). However, by the early 1930s, with the onslaught of The Great Depression, a majority of the public could no longer afford the expensive tickets to Broadway shows.
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Peg Entwistle came to America as a very young girl. Records of The Ellis Island Foundation have her listed on a return voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City aboard the SS Philadelphia in March of 1916. She is listed on the ship's manifest as traveling with her father (Robert), her uncle (Charles Harold), and their two wives, Lauretta and Jane.[4] Peg Entwistle likely first came to America some time after her mother Emily died in West Kensington, London, and prior to 1916 since her father was acting on Broadway as early as 1913.[5] Robert Entwistle had originally been brought from England by famed Broadway producer Charles Frohman and worked as Frohman's stage manager.
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Few people outside the film industry have heard the strange story of Peg Entwistle, the shy young girl who travelled from London to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actress. Despite her quiet beauty and her promising future as an actress, Peg met only rejection. Finding herself alone, hungry, and out of work, Peg made her way to the towering sign which spelled out the words "Hollywood." She removed her shoes, then carefully placed one foot after the other on the wooden beams, until she had climbed slowly to the top. Through the night, she shivered in the cold, her head pressed to her knees, looking up at the dark sky, then down at the city lights below. Towards morning, the sky brightened, reminding her of the cares and troubles of a new day.
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Soon after, Entwistle was recruited by the prestigious New York Theatre Guild. Her first credited Broadway performance was as Martha in The Man from Toronto, which opened at The Selywn Theatre on June 17, 1926 and ran 28 performances. New York Times theatre critic Brooks Atkinson didn't mention Entwistle but commented that the cast was "...suitably crisp."[8]
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Now quite depressed, Peg tried to return to New York, but could not raise the train fare. After having dinner on September 18, 1932, wearing a borrowed dress, Peg told her uncle that she was walking over to the local drugstore. Instead, she climbed up the "H" of the sign and jumped head first to her death, leaving this note:
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