Bunny Money Saves The Sign
A post-script to last week’s article about the battle to save the famous Hollywood sign that was to make space for a luxury hotel in Los Angeles.
It’s just been reported that the final, decisive $900,000 (£580,000) has been donated by the Playboy mogul, Hugh Hefner, and so the iconic landmark survives.
The sign is owned by the city, but the property around it belongs to a group of Chicago-based investors. Their original intention was to sell it to developers looking to build exclusive homes and, possibly, a luxury hotel.
But with Hefner’s help, a conservation trust has now raised the $12.5 million (£8.1 million), which the investors were willing to accept for the site.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger described the news as ‘the Hollywood ending we hoped for’.
Hefner, who calls the sign ‘Hollywood’s Eiffel Tower’, said: “My childhood dreams and fantasies came from the movies, and the images created in Hollywood had a major influence on my life and Playboy.”
Inevitably, some newspapers have doctored the sign to show one of the Os with Playboy Bunny ears.
by Andy Moreton
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