For more than 100 years, the sign has been a Los Angeles landmark both in real life and on the silver screen. In 1978, Alice Cooper told the BBC why he was helping to restore the dilapidated icon.

Perched high on Mount Lee overlooking Los Angeles, the Hollywood sign is one of America's most instantly recognisable cultural icons. "[It] is like our London Bridge, our Big Ben," US shock rocker Alice Cooper said on a BBC music show, The Old Grey Whistle Test, in 1978. "In Hollywood, we don't have a landmark except for the Hollywood sign."

The exact date the monument went up is contested, but its official centenary was celebrated on 13 July 2023, making it 102 years old this week. It has now become synonymous with the film industry, but it wasn't originally intended to be. In fact, it wasn't even meant to last longer than 18 months. The sign was designed as a short-lived billboard, advertising a new housing development in the Hollywood Hills. It consisted of 13 enormous capital letters, each 30ft (9m) wide and 45ft (14m) tall, that spelt out HOLLYWOODLAND – the name of the real estate group selling the properties. Made of wood and sheet metal and held up by a framework of telephone poles, the structure cost more than $23,000 (about $430,000 or £300,000 today) to build.

To ensure it was especially eye-catching, it was illuminated with almost 4,000 lights that would flash the different sections of the sign, HOLLY, WOOD and LAND, consecutively. A handyman, Albert Koeth, was hired to keep the sign in good order and replace the bulbs as they burnt out. The idea was to promote an aspirational lifestyle choice to LA citizens rather than to act as some sort of endorsement of the entertainment industry.

Over the following decade, as LA and the film business grew, the sign stayed in place. But as the depression of the 1930s began to bite, its upkeep was cut back, and it quickly fell into disrepair. The songwriter Eden Ahbez, an early proponent of living the hippie lifestyle, camped for a time underneath the first L of the sign. Ahbez would later find fame for writing the 1948 Nat King Cole hit single Nature Boy.

The sign also began to achieve some unwelcome notoriety: its association with the death of aspiring Hollywood star Peg Entwistle linked it to the darker side of Tinseltown's allure. The 24-year-old Welsh-born actress had left a successful Broadway career to move to LA with dreams of becoming a film star. But after struggling to find success, on the night of 16 September 1932 Entwistle climbed a maintenance ladder to the top of the letter H and jumped to her death.

As the sign continued to rust and deteriorate, in 1944 the real estate company decided to donate it to the city, along with the remaining 425 acres of undeveloped land, for a token price of $1. By this time, a severe storm had already knocked down the letter H and many residents had come to regard the dilapidated sign as something of an eyesore. In 1949, a decision was reached to tear the whole thing down, but the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce managed to get the decision reversed on the proviso that they footed the bill to refurbish the crumbling sign and replace the missing........

© BBC