LA and Wicklow: Alison Healy on facelifts for Hollywood signs

If the movies are to be believed, it’s nigh impossible to take a photo in Los Angeles without the Hollywood sign in the background. Of course, the reality is very different, unless you go to the trouble of seeking out the sign. When we travelled there last summer, all we got was a grainy photograph from the window of a tour bus.

But today, the sign is much clearer because, like many of its residents, it has had a bit of work done. And like a lot of Tinseltown’s nipping and tucking, the facelift is obvious.

Eagle-eyed Hibernophiles may have noticed the name of the painting firm commissioned to prepare the sign for its 100th anniversary. Duggan & Associates sounds suspiciously like an Irish company but just to confirm its links with the old country, the logo includes a shamrock. The firm’s founder, Chris Duggan, is the grandson of Irish emigrants, his son John told me.

“We’re from Co Cork. When he started the company back in 1989, he sat down at the kitchen table and decided to strike out on his own and I think he was looking for a little bit of luck [with the shamrock] and it seems like he got it.”

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It certainly did, because the firm also won the commission to paint the 45ft-high letters for the sign’s 90th anniversary. He said this was the first time the sign was stripped back to bare metal in 60 years. “We were removing graffiti from the 1970s,” he recalled. “Some of the Led Zeppelin iconography was on there, five or six layers of paint deep.”

The 10-strong crew used about 1,500 litres of paint for the job and finished ahead of schedule, like every good Irish painter should.

But of course, we in Ireland know that this is not the only Hollywood sign around. Nestling high on a hill above the picturesque village of Hollywood in Wicklow is another white Hollywood sign but this one is set in a more pastoral scene, with cattle and sheep, grazing peacefully around it.

The Irish Hollywood sign is also getting a facelift, but it won’t need 1,500 litres of paint. It probably takes longer to walk up to the sign than it does to paint it, according to Tommy Tutty. And he should know because he was the architect of the sign.

It was thanks to the movie industry that the sign first appeared. Dancing at Lughnasa, which starred Meryl Streep, was partly filmed in the village. When the crew was packing up, he asked if he could keep some of the plywood left behind after the filming. The Tour de France was coming through Hollywood and, with his young daughter Suzann, they used the plywood to make the sign, hoping to put the village on the map.

That was 25 years ago, and it now needs a complete makeover. The Hollywood Community Forum has received planning permission to move the sign forward, and to create a more permanent structure. It will be fenced off to stop any curious cattle from scratching themselves off it – not a problem with which the LA sign has to contend. It will also allow people to walk up to the sign without annoying the animals.

If everything goes according to plan with funding, the sign will be ready for its close-up before the end of the year.

The people of Hollywood, Co Wicklow are very proud of their link to their LA namesake and are adamant it was named after their village. Matthew Guirke emigrated from Wicklow to California in 1850 and they believe his decision to name his property and racetrack after his home village inspired the adoption of the name.

Of course, there are as many explanations of the origins of Hollywood as there are wannabe actors in Tinseltown. One theory suggests it was inspired by a Californian holly shrub. The Los Angeles Natural History Museum favours the theory that Daeida Wilcox, wife of developer Harvey Henderson Wilcox, heard the name while travelling on a train and suggested he name their property after it. The developer filed a map with the name in 1887.

The good denizens of Hollywood, Co Wicklow wave away these explanations and point to a detailed history of Hollywood by local historian Brendan Corrigan. It found nothing to prove conclusively that Matthew Guirke did name Hollywood but, more importantly, it also found nothing to disprove the Guirke connection.

One thing is certain – the LA town that likes to lead the way on the big screen will have to accept the fact that an Irish village had its name long before it was ever heard of.