Silver Ladies of Hollywood - Hollywood, CA
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Metro2
N 34° 06.072 W 118° 20.697
11S E 375940 N 3774193
This neon sign is part of a sculpture formally called "Hollywood and La Brea Gateway" celebrating Hollywood's female stars.
Waymark Code: WMGT75
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 04/07/2013
Views: 6
Informally known as "The Four Ladies of Hollywood", this work is located on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the intersection of Hollywood and La Brea.
The 1993 work by Harl West and designed by Catherine Hardwicke depicts four famous actresses of different ethnic backgrounds as caryatids upholding a stainless-steel art-deco gazebo. On each side, the word "HOLLYWOOD" is shown in neon vertically below a small statue of Marilyn Monroe.
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"The Four Ladies of Hollywood gazebo —known officially as the Hollywood and La Brea Gateway—stands upon a small triangular island formed by the confluence of Hollywood Boulevard, Marshfield Way, and North La Brea Avenue at the westernmost extension of the Walk of Fame. It was commissioned in 1993 by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency Art Program and created by the architect, production designer, and film director Catherine Hardwicke as a tribute to the multi-ethnic women of Hollywood. The gazebo is a stainless steel stylized Art Deco lattice structure. The roof is an arched square supporting a circular dome, which is topped by a central obelisk with descending neon block letters spelling "HOLLYWOOD" on each of its four sides. Atop the obelisk is a small gilded weathervane-style sculpture of Marilyn Monroe in her iconic billowing skirt pose from The Seven Year Itch. The domed structure is held aloft by four caryatids sculpted by Harl West to represent the African-American actress Dorothy Dandridge, Asian-American actress Anna May Wong, Mexican actress Dolores del Río, and the multi-ethnic, Brooklyn-born actress Mae West.
The gazebo was dedicated on February 1, 1994 to a mixed reception. Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight called it "the most depressingly awful work of public art in recent years," representing the opposite of Hardwicke's intended tribute to women. "Sex, as a woman's historic gateway to Hollywood," he wrote, "couldn't be more explicitly described." Independent writer and film producer Gail Choice, however, called it a fitting tribute to a group of pioneering, courageous women who "...carried a tremendous burden on their feminine shoulders. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe I'd ever see women of color immortalized in such a creative and wonderful fashion." Hardwicke contended that critics had missed the "humor and symbolism" of the structure, which "embraces and pokes fun at the glamour, the polished metallic male form of the Oscar, and the pastiche of styles and dreams that pervades Tinseltown.'"
The Smithsonian Inventory (
visit link) describes it thusly:
"Sculptural four-sided gateway is an art-deco style gazebo with four stainless steel full-length portraits of Hollywood actresses supporting an open roof structure. The actresses portrayed are Mae West, Dorothy Dandridge, Anna May Wong and Dolores Del Rio. All four figures wear glamorous long gowns. Each figure stands on a square base. A spire rises from the top of the rounded, open gazebo roof. Neon lettering runs vertically down the four sides of the spire. At the top of the spire is a small windvane. The windvane is a gilded full-length portrait of Marilyn Monroe holding her billowing skirt in place. The gazebo stands directly on a plaza. The plaza floor within the gazebo is granite tile mosaic patterned in the shape of a star."