How Alice Cooper Saved the Hollywood Sign

Alice Cooper played a leading role in saving Los Angeles’ famous Hollywood sign after it was severely damaged by a windstorm in February 1978.

First built in 1923, the sign’s wood and sheet metal design had begun to deteriorate even before the storm, which destroyed one “O” completely and left another looking more like a “U.” Looking for a way to pay tribute to a recently deceased friend, Cooper led a celebrity parade of donors who each paid big bucks to rebuild the landmark.

“It was the 75th anniversary of Hollywood, the Hollywood sign was up there falling off the hill,” Cooper told Loudwire. “We went to the Chamber of Commerce, and said ‘How much is each letter?’ Each letter was $27,000 to fix it. Groucho Marx had just died, he was one of my best friends. I said, ‘We wanna buy the ‘O’ for Groucho, the first one. That ‘O’ belongs to Groucho, and we’ll pay you $27,000 to do the ‘O”. So the ‘O’ is gonna be perfect, even if the other letters are falling off.”

Two weeks after Cooper made his pledge, Playboy owner Hugh Hefner hosted a benefit party at the Playboy mansion, at which point singer Andy Williams offered to pay for another letter.

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“Hugh Hefner bought the H,” Cooper recalled. “Gene Autry bought a letter. [Steven] Spielberg bought a letter. Because they’re part of Hollywood, that’s where they made their money and they looked at the sign going, ‘that’s a disgrace.'” (According to TheHollywoodSign.org, the list of donors and the letters they purchased is slightly different than Cooper’s recollection. But they don’t perform on stage with snakes and guillotines so we’re taking his side.)

The new sign was debuted in November 1978. “What we had to do was build nine four-story high buildings on the side of a mountain,” a spokesman for the project explained in the NBCLA news report posted below. “This thing is a football field and a half long, it’s undoubtedly the world’s largest sign. We built it to last literally forever, as long as Mount Lee is gonna be here, the sign is gonna be here.”

Alice Cooper Tells the Hollywood Sign Story (Starts at 9:05)

Watch NBCLA’s Report on the Hollywood Sign Restoration

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