The new film noir "Hollywoodland" has a title that may leave people scratching their heads: Isn't the home of the movie studios called "Hollywood?" Well, yes and no. The original, iconic sign on the hillside read "Hollywoodland," placed there in 1923 by some real-estate developers. It lasted only until 1932, when an actress who had just lost a big role jumped off the sign to her death. Thereafter, they dropped four letters from it, because it was felt the original 13-letter configuration was bad luck.
Bad luck. That's an easy way to make peace with the fact that Hollywood always has been and always will be a ruthless place, not just the place where dreams are made, but also where they're crushed. For every person who makes it, scores more don't, and nobody wants to think about them too much. (See "Mulholland Drive" for an exception.) Not everybody has a strong enough ego to survive the cattle-call auditions, the constant judging of status and backbiting, the need to project an illusion of confidence and power at all times. And some of these weaker types wind up dead overdosed, murdered, or suicided off the Hollywood sign.
The most iconic of such deaths was certainly that of George Reeves, television's original Superman, who embodied the "Man of Steel" perfectly until he shocked his fans by proving that he wasn't faster than a speeding bullet, ending his career with a gunshot to the head one bleak night in 1959 at the age of 45. What drove a seemingly successful actor to do such a thing? Or, perhaps a better question, did he really kill himself, or did someone else pull the trigger?