8. Suicide by jumping from the Hollywood sign in 1932
Probably there exists no more famous icon of Hollywood than the sign which spells that name in the Hollywood hills. In the 1930s the sign, already famous, read Hollywoodland, and it was from the H that a young actress, despondent over her career, committed suicide by jumping in 1932. Her death created a sensation in Hollywood, both from her manner of accomplishing it and the note which she left behind. Her name was Peg Entwistle, and she had recently completed work on a film by David O. Selznick entitled 13 Women. It was to have been her “big break”. Instead, she ended up, as they say in movieland, on the cutting room floor, her part eliminated, her work rejected (according to most stories of her suicide, in fact, she wasn’t cut out of the final print of the film until after her death, though her fourteen-minute appearance had been reduced to four).
The dramatic nature of her demise, including the manner in which her body had been found (by a hiker who also found her suicide note), led to the inevitable gossip around town, which was fed further by the elaborate funeral she was given by the film community, attended by several stars. Entwistle’s promise as an actress was stressed in the sensationalized reports of her death, including her performance on a New York stage with luminary Billie Burke (later Glinda in The Wizard of Oz) and a young actor by the name of Humphrey Bogart. Her death was less a scandal than a sensation, and in 2014 a group of roughly 100 film fans gathered to mark her demise by viewing 13 Women in a Hollywood parking lot, an event geared towards raising awareness (and money) for suicide prevention.