September 18

I have always subscribed to the adage “If at first you don’t succeed, try, and try again.” That can be the only explanation for my doing this sort of thing day after day, month after month, and (when January rolls around) year after year, ad nauseam. Apparently, Peg Entwistle did not. She was a young actress looking to hitch a ride on the rocket to stardom that she hoped was in Hollywood. She had some success on the stage but found it difficult to break in to movies. On the 18th of September in 1932, when she was only 24 years old, Ms. Entwhistle climbed to the top of the letter H in the Hollywood sign and jumped. She did not survive the fall. When police arrived to investigate the suicide, they found that her clothes were very neatly folded at the base of the sign. It is sadly ironic that the Hollywood sign originally read Hollywoodland, and was a crass advertisement for a housing development that failed.