TODAY IS PEG ENTWISTLE'S BIRTHDAY

PEG ENTWISTLE would be 105 years old today, if she hadn't jumped off the hollywoodland sign back in 1932.

 "Peg" Entwistle (5 February 1908 – 16 September 1932) was a Welsh-born English stage and screen actress. Entwistle began her stage career in 1925, appearing in several Broadway productions. She appeared in only one film, Thirteen Women, which was released after her death.

Entwistle gained notoriety after she jumped to her death from the "H" on the Hollywoodland sign in September 1932 at the age of 24.

Born Millicent Lilian Entwistle in Port Talbot, Wales, to English parents, Robert Symes and Emily Entwistle. It is often reported that her mother Emily 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 which Robert Entwistle specifically stated that "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 December 1922, Robert Entwistle died after being the victim of a hit-and-run accident on Park Avenue and Seventy-second Street in New York City. Peg and her two younger half-brothers were taken in by their uncle, who had come with them to New York and was the manager of Broadway actor Walter Hampden.

By 1925, Entwistle was living in Boston as a student of Henry Jewett's Repertory (now called the Huntington Theatre) and was one of the Henry Jewett Players, who were gaining national attention. 

Entwistle played the role of "Hedvig" in Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck. After seeing the play Bette Davis told her mother "...I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle." 

 Through the years Davis said Entwistle was her inspiration to take up acting.

Entwistle performed in ten Broadway plays as a member of the Theatre Guild between 1926 and 1932, working with noted actors such asGeorge M. Cohan, William Gillette, Bob Cummings, Dorothy Gish, Hugh Sinclair, Henry Travers and Laurette Taylor. 

In April 1927 Entwistle married actor Robert Keith at the chapel of the New York City Clerk's office.  She was granted a divorce in May 1929. Along with charges of cruelty, she claimed her husband did not tell her he had been married before and was the father of a six-year-old boy, Brian Keith (who later became an actor). Keith went on to star as "Uncle Bill"  on the tv series~ Family Affair. He also committed suicide in 1997.

She went on tour with the Theatre Guild between Broadway productions. Changing characters every week, Entwistle garnered some publicity, such as an article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times in 1927 and another in the Oakland Tribune two years later.

 In 1929 she told a reporter:

"I would rather play roles that carry conviction. Maybe it is because they are the easiest and yet the hardest things for me to do. To play any kind of an emotional scene I must work up to a certain pitch. If I reach this in my first word, the rest of the words and lines take care of themselves. But if I fail, I have to build up the balance of the speeches, and in doing this the whole characterization falls flat. I feel that I am cheating myself. I don't know whether other actresses get this same reaction or not, but it does worry me."

 

In early 1932 Entwistle made her last Broadway appearance, in J.M. Barrie's Alice Sit-by-the-Fire,  which also starred Laurette Taylor, whose alcoholism led 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 height 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. Theatre critic Flo Lawrence commented:

"...Belasco and Curran have staged the new play most effectively and have endowed this Romney Brent opus with every distinction of cast and direction. (producer) Bela Blau ... has developed the comedy to its highest points. Costumes and settings are of delightful quality, and every detail makes the production one entirely fit for its translation to the New York stage. In the cast Peg Entwistle and Humphrey Bogart hold first place in supporting the star (Billie Burke) and both give fine, serious performances. Miss Entwistle as the earnest, young daughter (Geneva Hope) of a vague mother and presents a charming picture of youth..."

 

After The Mad Hopes closed, Entwistle found her first and only credited film role for 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's cousin.  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. Ironically Peg commits suicide in this film. Her performance is amazing.

check out my blog about 13 women~



On September 16, 1932, after a night of drinking and overwhelming depression, Peg told her Uncle Harold that she was going to walk up Beachwood to meet some friends at the local drug store. 

On Sunday, 18 September 1932, an anonymous woman telephoned the police and said that while hiking she had found a body below the Hollywoodland sign (now known as the Hollywood sign) and then, according to a police transcript of the call~

Transcript of a call to the Los Angeles Police Department by an anonymous caller:

“I was hiking near the Hollywoodland sign today and near the bottom I found a woman’s shoe and jacket. A little further on I noticed a purse. In it was a suicide note. I looked down the mountain and saw a body. I don’t want any publicity in this matter, so I wrapped up the jacket, shoes and purse in a bundle and laid them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station.”

A detective and two radio car officers found the body of a moderately well-dressed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in the 100-foot ravine below the sign. Entwistle remained unidentified until her uncle connected her two-day absence with the description and initials P.E. on a suicide note which had been found in the purse and published by the newspapers.

The LA Times published the letter in hopes that she would be identified. She was dubbed “The Hollywood Sign Girl.” Her Uncle Harold recognized the initials and identified Peg’s body in the morgue.

 He said that on Friday, 16 September she had told him she was going for a walk to a drugstore and see some friends. The police surmised that instead, she made her way from his Beachwood Drive home up 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."

it has been written that poor peg did not immediately die from her jump, instead broke her pelvis and lay writhing in pain atop a bed of cacti, succumbing to the "elements" days later. It was also rumored that wolfs had eaten parts of her body.

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."

Adding to the bizarre irony of Peg's tragic life, two days after her death Peg's uncle Harold opened a letter from the Pasadena Playhouse offering  Peg Entwistle  the lead role in their next play. the part was of a woman who's driven to suicide.
 

Entwistle's death brought wide and often sensationalized publicity. 

Peg’s funeral was held at the now demolished W.M. Strothers Mortuary at 6240 Hollywood Boulevard. She was cremated at Hollywood Memorial Park (now called Hollywood Forever.) Her remains were shipped to Ohio for burial at Oak Hill Cemetery, Glendale, Ohio. She was buried with her father on January 5, 1933.

Peg’s burial site has remained unmarked until 2010 when, following a donation drive carried out on Facebook , an engraved granite marker was installed sometime around September 16, 2010,believed to be the 78th anniversary of her death.

In the years following Peg’s suicide, hikers and park rangers in Griffith Park have reported some pretty strange happening in the vicinity of the Hollywood sign. Many have reported sightings of a woman dressed in 1930’s era clothing who abruptly vanishes when approached. She has been described as a very attractive, blond woman, who seems very sad. 

In 1990, a North Hollywood man and his girlfriend were walking on a Beachwood Canyon trail near the Hollywood sign with their dog when the animal suddenly began to act very strange. Instead of running around on the trail and through the brush as he normally did, he began to whine and hang back near the couple. They had never seen him act that way before and could find no cause until they spotted a lady walking nearby. One thing they noticed about her was that she was wearing clothing from the 1930’s. However, thinking that you could see anything in Hollywood, they didn’t pay much attention.

The lady however, seemed to be walking in a daze. Thinking that perhaps she was drunk or on drugs, they started to steer clear of her when she suddenly just faded away before their eyes. 

Another eyewitness to this haunting was a Griffith park ranger named John Arbogast. In an interview, he stated that she normally made her presence known very late at night, especially when it was foggy, and always in the vicinity of the Hollywood sign. He also claimed to have encountered the scent of gardenias in the area as well.

“I have smelled it several times,” he said, “and always when any flowers around have been closed because of cold weather. I don’t think I have ever smelled it in the summer time.”

Arbogast’s duties as a ranger often involved the Hollywood sign itself. 

Arbogast recalled a number of times when the alarm system stated that someone was close to the sign, even though a check by the ranger revealed no one was there. “There have been times when I have been at the sign,” he said, “and the motion detectors say that someone is standing five feet away from me… only there’s nobody there.”