New Year, New Forum

Twelve years have passed since I began writing Under the Hollywood Sign. Conceived to promote my documentary of the same name and to further explore Hollywood history, UTHS soon grew to include my previous documentaries, magazine work and interviews. It also spawned two collections of essays. As time went on, my focus shifted to other people’s films, books and TV shows. I also wrote visual art, architecture and Japan, where I grew up, and its rich popular culture. All of this has been a labor of love, and hundreds of posts and pages later it’s time for me to try something new.

Beginning today, I’ll be writing on Substack. In addition to regular posts, subscribers will have access to my other writing–longer non-fiction and fiction–as well new projects, literary and cinematic. Subscriptions are $5 per month, and the link is below. I look forward to seeing you there.

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Give the Gift of Documentaries: Under The Hollywood Sign’s December Two-For-One Sale

“Jim Thompson, Silk King”/Copyright 2015 Hope Anderson Productions

Curious about the documentaries that inspired this blog? Here’s a good chance to see them at a bargain price, and to give them as holiday gifts. From now until January 1, 2021, each purchase of a full-length documentary on DVD will include a free companion documentary. Each order of “Under the Hollywood Sign” will come with “Peg Entwistle: The Life and Death of an Actress”, while each order of “Jim Thompson, Silk King, 2015 Edition” will come with “The Jim Thompson House and Art Collection.”

This offer does not apply to digital downloads. To order, please go to: http://www.hopeandersonproductions.com/dvds/

Revisiting Peg Entwistle’s Life and Death: Myth vs. Reality in Netflix’s “Hollywood”

Peg Entwistle in 1932/Courtesy Bruce Torrence

Filming “Peg Entwistle’s Last Walk

Jeremy Pope, Darren Criss and Laura Harrier in “Hollywood”

Soon after Netflix released the new Ryan Murphy-Ian Brennan miniseries “Hollywood,” I heard from Chris Yogerst, a University of Wisconsin film professor who has corresponded with me off and on since 2010, that Peg Entwistle’s story was a major theme. Naturally, I got right on it.

Since releasing my short film “Peg Entwistle’s Last Walk,” my documentary “Under the Hollywood Sign” in 2009 and my book of essays (Peg Entwistle and The Hollywood Sign) in 2013, a number of Peg-related projects have been announced, such as this one ://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/the-newly-announced-peg-entwistle-biopic/ , but “Hollywood” is the first major one to be completed. It’s also the most imaginative, using Peg’s story not as a grim cautionary tale but the departure point for a wildly revisionist Hollywood history.

At the outset of “Hollywood,” a script about Peg is greenlit by the Paramount-like Ace Studios. The screenwriter, Archie Coleman (Jeremy Pope) is predictably male but also black, and his struggle to make it in Hollywood gives him empathy for Peg’s tragic story. Fortunately for Archie, his champions at Ace Studios are self-professed outsiders: the director Raymond Ainsley (Darren Criss), though passing for white, is half-Filipino, and the acting head of production Avis Amberg (Patti Lupone) is a former silent film star whose acting career was cut short by her apparent Jewishness.

Though the Peg Entwistle project begins as a straightforward biopic featuring a blonde, white starlet, Avis agrees to cast Claire Wood (Samira Weaving), a Dorothy Dandridge-like actress whose screen test blows away the competition, in the lead. Thus Peg becomes Meg, and the film changes from a tragedy to a triumph of interracial romance and career redemption. If that weren’t enough, a major subplot involves Archie’s romance with the young Rock Hudson, and the couple soon smash racial and sexual barriers by walking the red carpet hand-in-hand at the Oscars. When Anna May Wong (Michelle Krusiec) becomes the first Asian to win an Academy Award, every studio-era wrong is righted, and it’s only 1948.

In short,”Hollywood” is a fantasia of racial and sexual justice. Though it’s based in fact–Rock Hudson, his manager Henry Willson (Jim Parsons) and the gas station/prostitution ring all existed–the series becomes increasingly fantastical as it careens toward a universal happy ending. This revisionism actually works for Peg Entwistle’s story, which–stripped of her Depression Era suicide–becomes a tale of  movie stardom and true love.

Unfortunately, Ryan and Brennan can’t let go of the biggest myth about Peg: that the Hollywood Sign symbolized Hollywood The Industry. In fact, it didn’t even symbolize Hollywood The Place. As I’ve said many times, the Hollywoodland Sign (which is how it appeared even when “Hollywood,” is set) was a billboard for the neighborhood where it stood. What it symbolized was real estate, nothing more. If Peg Entwistle hadn’t been living in Beachwood Canyon in 1932, she would have chosen another spot from which to jump–or might not have jumped at all.

As for Peg’s drinking beforehand, it didn’t happen, not only because there were no legal alcohol or bars during the Depression but because no inebriate could have climbed Mt. Lee, let alone the ladder to the top of the H. In “Meg” this fiction does, however, give Rock Hudson something to do: in the role of bartender, he not only serves Meg a drink but tells her how to get to the Sign. The directions, it should be noted, are accurate.

For Peg Entwistle’s actual story, as well as photos and artifacts, here are links to my film, documentaries and book:

DVDs

eBooks

COVID19 Two-For-One Sale on DVDs

“Jim Thompson, Silk King”/Copyright 2015 Hope Anderson Productions

Curious about the documentaries that inspired this blog? Here’s a good chance to see them at a bargain price. Beginning today, each purchase of a full-length documentary on DVD will include a free companion documentary. Each order of “Under the Hollywood Sign” will come with “Peg Entwistle: The Life and Death of an Actress”, while each order of “Jim Thompson, Silk King, 2015 Edition” will come with “The Jim Thompson House and Art Collection.”

This offer does not apply to digital downloads and will end as soon as the lockdown ends in Los Angeles. To order, please go to: http://www.hopeandersonproductions.com/dvds/

Remembering Kate Johnson, Visual Artist, Teacher and Editor of All My Films

Kate Johnson and Me at the 2009 premiere of “Under the Hollywood Sign”/Hope Anderson Productions

I first met Kate Johnson in 1999, shortly after I returned from Thailand with the raw footage for my first two documentaries–a suitcase full of BetaSP tapes that logged in at more than seventy hours. Documentaries are made in the editing room, and the time spent editing far exceeds the time spent shooting, writing and researching. Thus over the next sixteen years we spent countless days working side by side, and the resulting films were a collaborative effort. Weaving together interviews, footage, archival film and stills, music, sound effects and graphics is like making a giant tapestry, and Kate always kept track of the thousands of strands.

Kate edited both “Jim Thompson, Silk King” and its companion piece, “The Jim Thompson House and Art Collection.” Then came “Under the Hollywood Sign,” and its short feature, “Peg Entwistle’s Last Walk,” which I later spun off into a separate film. Our last project was the reissue of of “Jim Thompson, Silk King,” which by 2014 had to be remastered because the original software was obsolete. For the new version, I filled the gaps in the score with new music that Kate composed and performed; it complemented the Thai classical music seamlessly. I also made two new shorts as DVD extras: one on Jim Thompson’s pre-Thailand architectural career and the other on developments on his disappearance since the release of the original documentary in 2002.  

Throughout our time together, Kate was an invaluable source of ideas and guidance, providing the critical eye I needed. The fact that she was the only editor I’ve worked with says a great deal about her immense talent and range. Since she did it all, I never needed a sound editor, graphic artist or visual effects person, and only once did I use an outside composer.

In addition to editing my work and that of others, Kate was a filmmaker in her own right, and in 2015 won an Emmy for “Mia: A Dancer’s Journey.” Somehow she also found time to be a professor of Digital Media at Otis College of Art and Design, passing on her skills to a new generation of visual artists.

Because most of what I do is solitary, I found in Kate Johnson the longest and most significant working relationship of my career. My struggle to accept her passing includes the stark realization that I will never have a comparable collaboration, either in importance or duration. Brilliant and unique, she was also, for me, irreplaceable.

A Recluse in the Time of Covid19

Lake Hollywood Park on March 21, the first weekend of Los Angeles’s “Safer At Home” order

The last time I thought about writing a post, it was going to be about Harvey Weinstein, who had just been sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. Seeing a rich, powerful man appropriately punished was novel and gratifying, but my story was personal: an account of my first, last and mercifully non-criminal encounter with Weinstein. But it can wait.

How quickly and dramatically the world has changed in the past couple of weeks, as the corona virus has gone from a terrifying overseas crisis to a terrifying domestic one. Although I may not have been among the earliest Californians to self-quarantine, I locked myself in a week before orders came from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Governor Newsom, after attending in short order a post-surgical physical therapy session in a packed facility, a lively restaurant dinner, and a crowded funeral reception. Unnerved by the amount of close physical contact I’d had between March 10th and 13th, I decided to stay home and see no one for two weeks.

Because I live alone and work at home, spending a hundred percent of my time alone didn’t strike me as dramatically different from my usual routine, but I soon realized it was. Though outside activities consumed perhaps twenty percent of my waking hours, running errands and seeing family and friends made a huge difference, and I missed it. By Day 4, I actually felt lonely—an emotion I’d previously felt only in the company of narcissists. When I complained on the phone to my son, who was days away from his own self-quarantine, he said, “You? But you’re a writer!” True, but I wasn’t a hermit until very recently.

Fortunately, by Day 6—the eve of the state-wide shelter-in-place order—I had turned a corner and no longer felt sad, or even particularly alone. Part of the reason was that housework, cooking, gardening, doing my own physical therapy and trying to write left me no time to think about loneliness, let alone wallow in it. The other reason, I suspect, is human adaptability: most people can get used to anything, however strange and unpleasant, and I am predisposed to adapt quickly.

This week, as I embraced my new life under Covid19, news surfaced that Harvey Weinstein, ensconced in a hospital on Riker’s Island, had tested positive for the corona virus. Although only three weeks had passed since his incarceration, Weinstein had become antique, a relic from the shiny world of restaurants, stores, concerts, movie theaters. Now that all the fun places were shuttered, he was irrelevant.

Next time: Movies that speak to our circumstances

Under the Hollywood Sign, Ten Years On

Interviewing Anita Gordon at the Bronson Caves, November 2006. l-r: Tjardus Greidanus, Hope Anderson, Anita Gordon, Ken Pries/Hope Anderson Productions

This week marks the tenth anniversary of this blog, which I started to promote my third documentary feature film, Under the Hollywood Sign. At that point, UTHS was in post-production, and my editor Kate Johnson and I were shaping scores of interviews, around eighty hours of footage and hundreds of archival images into a cultural history of Beachwood Canyon.

Wanting to explore the film’s many topics in greater depth, I wrote about the Theosophists, film stars and oddball characters who populated the Canyon in the early 20th century. I described Beachwood’s natural beauty and wildlife, and the California holly that blooms in the hills each December. I detailed the creation of Hollywoodland, California’s oldest hillside planned community, from its granite walls, gates and stairs to its most famous features: the Hollywood Sign and Lake Hollywood.

After exhausting Beachwood Canyon’s history, I moved on to present-day matters. By then neighborhood was becoming a mecca for GPS-guided tourism, and between 2010 and 2015 the number of visitors in search of the Hollywood Sign surged. Crowds overwhelmed the narrow streets, eroded the trails and drove the wildlife back into Griffith Park. Hollywoodland’s narrow streets, tricky to navigate in the best conditions, became chaotic and frequently gridlocked. Until permit parking was instituted a couple of years ago, residents were frequently trapped in or out of their houses by vehicular and pedestrian traffic that also blocked emergency vehicles. Writing about these issues brought me a slew of hostile comments, the gist of which was our right to use your neighborhood for recreation trumps your right to live here. Long after I stopped writing about local issues, angry and even threatening letters continued to roll in.

These days I write mostly about film–not mine but other people’s. I also write about Japan, where I grew up and whose history and culture I’ve studied for most of my life. As for documentary filmmaking, I’ve stopped. I’ll explain why in my next post.

Remembering the Bel Air Fire of 1961 as the Skirball Fire Rages

Roscomare Road, Bel Air, During the 1961 Fire, courtesy LA Times Archive

Waking to the news that the Sepulveda Pass was burning yesterday, I immediately thought of the last major wildfire to hit the area. On November 5th, 1961, the Bel Air Fire raced through the Hollywood Hills, burning 16,000 acres and destroying 484 houses. Though there were no fatalities, it was the largest fire to strike the City of Los Angeles, unrivaled until the current one began late Tuesday night.

The Bel Air and Skirball Fires began in similar conditions: fires from ignited brush were spread by Santa Ana winds at the end of an unusually long dry season. Without measurable precipitation or humidity, both catastrophes progressed quickly, flames racing from canyon to canyon along the ridge line of the Santa Monica mountains.

In Beachwood Canyon, the 1961 fire claimed 17 houses, including that of the writer Aldous Huxley and his wife Laura. When I interviewed Laura Archera Huxley in 2007, she vividly remembered being mesmerized by the flames near their house on Deronda Drive. Unable to grasp the urgency of the situation, she and Aldous waited too long to evacuate and lost nearly all their possessions as well as their home.

The Skirball Fire is being blown west instead of east, so Beachwood Canyon isn’t in danger from it. But bone dry conditions combined with tourists who smoke with impunity near the Hollywood Sign puts those of us who live here in constant jeopardy. When I learned that firefighters from our area were being deployed to fight the Skirball Fire, I started packing my bags.

Twenty-four hours later, the situation seems to be improving. But until this winter’s rains begin, fire danger remains, as does our fear. Visitors who ignore Beachwood Canyon’s No Smoking signs should know that all it takes is a single flick of a cigarette to destroy homes and lives. For those who don’t care, there’s a hefty fine for smoking. Let’s hope the City enforces it.

Related articles:

https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/why-we-freak-out-when-you-smoke-in-beachwood-canyon/

https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/setting-our-house-on-fire-hollywood-sign-tourists-and-their-cigarettes/

Remembering Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner and Me, Post-Interview/Hope Anderson Productions

My first and only meeting with Hugh Hefner, who died yesterday at 91, took place in 2008, when I interviewed him for my documentary “Under the Hollywood Sign.” Our meeting took place at the Playboy Mansion, in a room that was permanently lit and dressed for filming. It was an afternoon of rules and rituals: after announcing myself at the hidden intercom outside the gate (“talk to the rock,” in “Entourage” parlance) I was instructed to stand with my crew in the courtyard until the PR rep admitted us. Peacocks wandered by as we waited, and noises from unseen animals eminated from the zoo. Once we were inside and set up, Hugh Hefner appeared in his trademark silk smoking jacket. He sat down in a throne-like chair and the interview began.

It was a strange, yet not entirely unfamiliar, experience. At fifteen, I toured Buckingham Palace with my family, a visit made possible by a former employee of my father’s company who was then Keeper of the Privy Purse. After watching the Changing of the Guard from inside the gates, we trooped through the Palace’s public rooms, all of them vast and a hundred years behind the times in their decor. The Playboy Mansion, with its protocol and fusty oak paneled rooms, was the closest I’ve come to revisiting Buckingham Palace, though unlike the Queen, Hugh Hefner was present. He was also gracious. After the interview, I told him that reading my father’s Playboy magazines as a child had given me an excellent sex education, which didn’t surprise him in the least. We posed for a picture, he exited and I was soon outside the gates again, in the real world.

“Under the Hollywood Sign” is available on DVD and streaming at http://www.hopeandersonproductions.com

Related article:

https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/hef-saves-the-hollywood-sign-again/

Remembering Hargobind Singh

Hargobind Singh, Tour Guide/Hope Anderson Productions

Six years ago I wrote about Hargobind Singh, whom I met outside my house one day while he was leading a walking tour of the neighborhood. https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/hargobind-singhs-walking-tours-of-hollywoodland/

In the years since our interview, Hargobind married, closed his business and moved with his wife Dalveer to New York. Soon afterwards, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. The last time I saw him was in 2015, during a visit to Los Angeles while he was in remission. More surgeries followed, and today he came to the end of his life after a brave two-and-a-half year battle.

Though he became a New Yorker, I will always think of Hargobind in Hollywoodland, a place he loved. In addition to local history, he learned about the wildlife and was able to identify birds by their calls. He led so many people up the Hollywoodland stairs that he grew noticeably thinner and more muscular, yet he was always respectful of us residents. I was lucky to be among his and Dalveer’s friends, a group that spans the world and today remembers him fondly.