Peg Entwistle - Hollywood Sign Girl

Millicent Lilian 'Peg' Entwistle (5 February 1908 – 16 September 1932) was a British stage and screen actress. She began her stage career in 1925, appearing in several Broadway productions. She appeared in only one film, Thirteen Women, which was released posthumously. Entwistle gained notoriety after she jumped to her death from atop the 'H' on the Hollywoodland sign in September 1932, at the age of 24.

It is often reported that her mother died when she was very young, but there is no documented evidence supporting this. There is, however, a Last Will and Testament dated 15 December 1922, in the Entwistle family archives, in which Robert Entwistle specifically stated the following:

Millicent Lilian Entwistle is the daughter of my first wife whom I divorced and the custody of my said daughter was awarded to me. I do not desire my said daughter to be at any time in the custody or control of her said mother

In early 1932, Entwistle made her last Broadway appearance, in J. M. Barrie's Alice Sit-by-the-Fire,[14] which also starred Laurette Taylor, whose alcoholism led her to two missed evening performances and refunds to ticket-holders. The show was cancelled, and in the aftermath, Entwistle and the other players were given only a week's salary, rather than a percentage of the box office gross, which had been agreed upon before the show opened.

By May 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression, Entwistle was in Los Angeles with a role in the Romney Brent play The Mad Hopes, starring Billie Burke, which ran from 23 May to 4 June at the Belasco Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

After The Mad Hopes closed, Entwistle won her first and only credited film role with Radio Pictures (later RKO). Thirteen Women stars Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne in a pre-Hays code, high-budget thriller produced by David O. Selznick and drawn from the novel by Tiffany Thayer. Entwistle played a small supporting role as Hazel Cousins. It premiered on 14 October 1932, a month after her death, at the Roxy Theatre in New York City, and was released in Los Angeles on 11 November to neither critical nor commercial success. By the time it was re-released in 1935, 14 minutes had been cut from the film's original 73-minute running length. In 2008, Variety magazine cited Thirteen Women as one of the earliest "female ensemble" films.

On 18 September 1932, a woman was hiking below the Hollywoodland sign, when she found a woman's shoe, purse, and jacket. She opened the purse and found a suicide note, after which she looked down the mountain and saw the body below. The woman reported her findings to the Los Angeles police and laid the items on the steps of the Hollywood police station.

Later, a detective and two radio car officers found the body in a ravine below the sign. Entwistle remained unidentified until her uncle, with whom she had been living in the Beachwood Canyon area, identified her remains. He connected her two-day absence with the description and the initials "P.E.," written on the suicide note, which had been published in the newspapers. He said that on Friday, 16 September, she had told him she was going for a walk to a drugstore and to see some friends. The police surmised that instead she made her way to the nearby southern slope of Mount Lee to the foot of the Hollywoodland sign, climbed a workman's ladder to the top of the "H" and jumped.

The cause of death was listed by the coroner as "multiple fractures of the pelvis."

The suicide note, as published, read:

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.

Entwistle's death brought wide and often sensationalized publicity. Her funeral was held at the W.M. Strathers Mortuary, in Hollywood, on 20 September. Her body was cremated and the ashes were later sent to Glendale, Ohio, for burial next to her father in Oak Hill Cemetery, where they were interred on 5 January 1933.

In 2014, roughly 100 people marked the anniversary of Entwistle's death by gathering in the parking lot of Beachwood Market in Hollywood, to watch Thirteen Women on an outdoor screen. Proceeds from a raffle and from food and beverages sold at the screening were donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in Entwistle's name.

Many have reported seeing the spirit of Peg Entwistle walking on the trails of Griffith Park below the Hollywood Sign. Some have said they see her standing there staring at them, and then she just disappears before their eyes.