Many Hollywood history buffs know that the Hollywood sign, erected in December 1923, originally read “HOLLYWOODLAND,” an advertising gimmick meant to sell plots of land on a subdivision of the then-sparse Hollywood Hills.
Far fewer know that the sign also once featured a giant, white dot beneath it.
The circle, which appeared in late 1924, measured 35 feet in diameter. Unlike the Hollywoodland sign — which was illuminated by 3,700 10-watt lightbulbs to flash “HOLLY,” then “WOOD, then “LAND” in succession — it was not lit.
Who put it there and why has been a topic of some debate over the years. One circulating theory is that the dot was meant to draw the eye to the sign — but the sign itself was 540 feet wide and 45 feet high, and hardly needed more attention.
The real story behind the white dot is more complicated than that — and involves a slogan with impossible-to-ignore racial undertones: “Keep the White Spot White.”
In 1920, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce produced a map of the country that coded itself according to economic conditions. The parts of the U.S. covered in black were poor; white with black stripes, or gray, were fair; and areas covered in white were considered good.
An early 1920s US Chamber of Commerce map designated L.A. a “White Spot” of prosperity.
The burgeoning Los Angeles was the only white spot on the map. And so Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler coined the catchphrase, “White Spot of America,” to tout the city as being a rare oasis where businesses thrived and crime, corruption and communism did not.
The phrase took off and then evolved into the rallying cry, “Keep the White Spot White,” which was adopted as the official slogan of the Greater Los Angeles Association (GALA), an association of L.A. businessmen formed in 1924. A photograph of the first GALA banquet dinner ran in the L.A. Times on March 28, 1924.
The first Greater Los Angeles Association banquet dinner in March 1924
One of the founding members of GALA was Eli P. Clark, a railway tycoon and Hollywoodland investor. Sydney H. Woodruff, the manager of Hollywoodland, was also an active member.
The group came up with clever marketing campaigns. In April 1924, 3,000 Boy Scouts were enlisted to place “Keep the White Spot White” stickers on every car and truck in the city.
And later that year, Hollywoodland pitched in by adding the giant, white dot to the hillside beneath its relatively new Hollywoodland sign. The cost of the white dot was $936.16, or $17,260 in 2024, according to The Homestead Museum, an L.A. history site.
An ad urging to “Keep the White Spot White” ran in the Los Angeles Express on March 29, 1924.
So what became of the sign and the dot?
In April 1949, the Recreation and Park Commission ruled that the sign, by then a landmark, could remain as a tribute to the Hollywood district so long as the commercial aspect (the “LAND”) was removed. They also permitted the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to rebuild the H, which had decayed to the point of collapsing entirely, resulting in a sign that read “OLLYWOODLAND.”
As for the white spot, there is no definitive date as to when it came down, but according to the Forgotten Los Angeles Instagram account, photos suggest it existed well into the 1930s.
But, was it racist? There are enough reasons to assume it was. For one, GALA was comprised entirely of white businessmen, many of whom belonged to then-restricted social clubs like Jonathan Club. There is also evidence that Hollywoodland had racially exclusionary real-estate sales policies.
But Forgotten Los Angeles did some deeper research into the era and found evidence that the slogan “Keep the White Spot White” may not have been overtly racist — and was even embraced by minorities.
Forgotten Los Angeles writes that it “dug into some 1920s issues of The California Eagle, one of LA’s Black papers at the time and found that its [Black] journalists had been embracing the phrase as well, celebrating the Jazz Corridor of Central Avenue as the ‘Dark White Spot’ of the city.”
The term “White Spot” to refer to L.A. fell out of use entirely by the mid-1940s.
English (US) ·