Actress Peg Entwhistle

Peg Entwistle came to New York chasing light. “I would rather play roles that carry conviction,” she said, “because they’re the easiest—and the hardest—for me to do.” She was seventeen when she first hit the stage in The Wild Duck. A young Bette Davis saw her that night and told a friend, “I want to be exactly like Peg Entwistle.”

Broadway came quick. Critics called her “a striking young actress with the timing of a veteran.” One paper said, “Peg Entwistle gave a performance considerably better than the play warranted.” 

 

She joined the Theatre Guild and worked the boards with the best. “To play any emotional scene,” she said, “I must work up to a certain pitch. If I reach that in my first word, the rest takes care of itself.”

 

Hollywood came calling next. 1932. The sign still said HOLLYWOODLAND. Peg moved west, signed a contract with RKO, and landed her first film—Thirteen Women. “I’m going to live in that sign,” she told a friend. “I’m going to make them see me.”

But the studio cut most of her scenes. The reviews were flat. The calls stopped. Her marriage was ended; her career stalled. A neighbor remembered seeing her walking the hills at night, “like she was looking for a way back to herself.”

 

On September 16, 1932, she left her uncle’s house in Beachwood Canyon, saying she was going to meet friends. She never did. Later, police found a single high-heeled shoe, a jacket, and a note. It 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.”

 

She climbed a maintenance ladder behind the giant white “H” on the Hollywoodland sign and jumped. She was 24.

 

A woman hiking below found her body two days later. The papers went wild. “Actress ends life at Hollywoodland sign,” the Los Angeles Times wrote. One columnist said, “She reached for the stars and caught a letter.”

 

That was the cruel poetry of it. Peg Entwistle wanted to make the world look up. The girl who once stopped Bette Davis cold became the ghost of Hollywood’s first heartbreak.