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 In Hollywood, you can become famous overnight. You don’t need an agent or a hot shot publicity person. All you’ve gotta do is put your smiling face or sexy bod on one of those giant billboards on the Sunset Strip. But don’t take my word for it, ask Angelyne, the busty blonde Hollywood billboard queen.
Before she decided she wanted to wake up in the morning and be a star, she was just another busty blonde bimbo, busting her butt trying to get somebody in Hollyweird to notice her. Believe me, it wasn’t hard to do.
 Girl-watchers are everywhere in Hollywood, but, sexy blonde bimbos are everywhere in Hollywood, too, standing on every street corner and hanging out at every coffee shop in town, hoping to be discovered and become a sexy show biz legend like Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, June Wilkinson and Pamela Anderson.
Sex still sells like hotcakes in tinseltown, but it takes more than sex to launch a show biz career. In fact, in a town full of gals who look like Boobie Bimbo, it can almost become a liability. Unless you can hang in there (or hang out there) until your big break comes along.
In Hollywood, you gotta have a gimmick to get noticed. And having gorbanzas bigger than Dolly Parton ain’t good enough anymore. You’ve also gotta have staying power. The best way to beat the odds in Hollywood is to get yourself a sugar daddy.
 Things being what they are today, you can almost buy yourself fame and notoriety, and you don’t necessarily have to camp out on the casting couch or at some dude’s Hollywood penthouse to do it.
Angelyne figured that out for herself one day when she got tired getting hit on by every Tom, Dick and Harry on the Sunset Strip who thought she was a hooker or a dumb blonde bitch who would compromise her principles for a hot meal or an introduction to a casting agent.
Not everybody she met was a jerk. Angelyne ran into a few legit dudes who offered to help her, they just didn’t have the right connections or have a clue about how to hype “a nobody who wanted to be a somebody.”
Angelyne solved that problem right away, once she ran into a dude who had a few extra bucks in his pocket and was more interested in making money than he was in making her. “Look, dude, don’t worry about trying to make me a big star,” she told him, “let me take care of that. And, don’t worry about getting a good return on your investment. Trust me. This time next week, I’ll be famous and you'le ll be rich.”
 From the first day that Angelyne became the billboard queen of the Sunset Strip, she became an icon, a living phenomenon, the hottest commodity on talk radio and in gossip columns since Jayne Mansfield lived in the Pink Palace and strolled the Strip with leopards on a leash.
 It could only happen in Hollywood, where gaudy billboards on the Sunset Strip rival the HOLLYWOOD sign, the stars on the sidewalks on Hollywood Boulevard and Marilyn Monroe’s handprints immortalized in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater as the top tourist attractions in the film capital of the world.
For as long as I can remember, the mammoth, hand-made billboards have always been one of the Strip’s trademarks. There have been many over the years that have stalled early morning rush hour traffic. The one that caught my attention, as I drove down the Strip toward my offices, at the corner of Sunset and La Cienega, was for the controversial, hot movie “Myra Breckinridge,” starring Raquel Welch.
She was all dolled out in a skimpy patriotic looking halter top and bikini panties outfit, wearing a white cowboy hat and white boots and red gloves, strutting her stuff in front of a giant star.
 Tantalizing, yes, but no cigar, if you compare it to the likes of the Sunset Strip billboards that made Angelyne famous. The early, colorful Sunset Strip billboard advertisements were originally designed by folks to catch the eyes of Hollywood movie producers and “deal-makers” as they drove to work in Hollywood from their homes in Beverly Hills.
Today, many of the Hollywood billboards serve primarily to “puff up” egos of the stars they promote - which is why the industry often refers to them as "Vanity Boards."
Occasionally, these billboards have not only been spectacular, they’ve been clever: the one for the Disney film, “Aladdin,” for instance, featured a magic lamp that actually emitted smoke. Another, advertising a luxury car company, actually put $30,000 in cash on their own billboard (watched over daily by a security guard).
Every year at Oscar time, the various film studios go nuts with all kinds of promotional billboard hype. It’s kinda like reading through the advertisements in the Hollywood Reporter or Daily Variety, except they’re a lot bigger, and often more offensive.
 Believe it or not, Hollywood even has a Sunset Strip Billboard Awards program, founded in 2000 by the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the City of West Hollywood, to honor creative excellence in outdoor advertising on the historic Sunset Strip.
Since the days when I made the trip from the Hollywood Hills down the Strip to the office and back again in the evening (and sometimes back again to the Strip and back home again later at night) the Hollywood billboard scene has made a number of radical changes.
 Gone are the days when you saw one of those clever, simple eye-catching billboards from some hip Hollywood dive like the Rain Check with a “Want Ad” message that said: Mary Jane is an out of work actress. She needs a job. Call her at the Rain Check and leave a message. (The busty, blonde bombshell Angelyne saw to that).
Her initial campaign for fame was a billboard blitz throughout Los Angeles, extending to cities like New York, Washington, D.C. and overseas to England, Germany and Japan. Since then she has consistently appeared on billboards, posters, bus shelters, bus sides, and murals, establishing her sexy image internationally as part of the L.A. skyline and far beyond.
 Those promotional advertisements, in effect, were her “agent.”
Angelyne received calls from all over the world through her billboards for magazine interviews, photo layouts, television, talk show and personal appearances, radio interviews and feature film roles.
Not content to be labeled a singer, actress, dancer or performer of any kind, Angelyne’s image and persona captured the magic of stardom in its purest form. Angelyne represented the power people have within themselves to reach their dreams and make anything happen.
 For visitors who come to Hollywood in hopes of catching a glimpse of a glamorous celebrity, an “Angelyne sighting” became an unforgettable experience.
Driving through the streets of Los Angeles in her famous pink Corvette, smiling and greeting her fans, Angelyne personified Hollywood. Some people become famous for music, films, TV, sports, whatever. She became famous for being on billboards. No one had ever done that before, or had even thought it was possible, especially without a specific project that was attached to the advertisements.
When Angelyne was asked why she chose to have her image splashed all over the Sunset Strip and also all throughout the world on billboards, she said, “Because billboards are huge! I love huge! I am huge! Billboards are what works for me, and I love the attention! My billboards are my agent. I get calls from all over the world for TV interviews, magazine interviews, radio shows, personal appearances, films; everything! I also have a Fan Club that has all the Angelyne merchandise: T-shirts, posters, postcards, buttons and all kinds of goodies.
“All because of my billboards! I also enjoy the benefits of the massive daily exposure. My billboards are always popping up and out at you on TV shows, books and magazines, music videos and especially from films. My image has become synonymous, with Hollywood and Los Angeles. They inspire people and cheer them up too! That's why I'm on billboards!!!”
 Before the Angelyne billboards first went up on the Sunset Strip there was much anticipation and excitement. The minute the billboards went up, Angelyne said she felt a great since of accomplishment. Suddenly, she was a star.
“I have continued to be famous and successful and have had thousands of billboards ongoing,” she observed. “I have been on every billboard size imaginable,” the buxom beauty noted, “from billboards 12 feet to 50 feet and everything in between.”
Angelyne’s biggest image was seen on a mural 100-feet tall on a 10-story building in Hollywood. It helped establish her as a bona-fide star and brought the blonde bombshell much of her international fame.
Angelyne’s billboards have been up on occasion around the nation and around the world (New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, England, Japan, and Germany). Still, Hollywood
is her favorite city to be on Billboards.
“Hollywood is the glamour capitol of the world and I represent glamour,” she said.
  Many people who spotted the giant billboards on the Strip wanted to know who paid for them. “Mainly, I do,” she said. “I don't have to pay any management company or publicity firm or agent for the jobs I get. My billboards are my agents and people call me.”
Angelyne earns her income today in many ways. She receives royalties from her records, especially in Europe. She also has done some European ads, in fact, 75 percent of what she does is outside the United States.
“I've also had investors from time to time,” Angelyne observed. “They see the potential in what I'm doing and they want to be a part of it.
“Some invest in billboards or they may have a specific project in mind. Angelyne products are merchandised all over the world as well. Literally millions of dollars have gone into my career on many levels and I always make a profit.”
Angelyne is very proud of the fact that when she meets people they always tell her that she looks better than her billboards. “I love maintaining the glamorous beauty of classic Hollywood and I'm the only one doing it today,” she said. “My image is seductive and sensual without being campy or burlesque. I carry on the tradition of the ‘Hollywood Blonde Bombshell’ in my own unique way and I'm very proud of that."
 The likenesses of the pouting, ageless little sexpot, who calls herself Angelyne, looked down from gigantic billboards at the populace of Hollywood and their visitors for fully a decade. At another, in the spring of 1987, an eight-story-high, 85 x 44 likeness of her perched atop her famous pink Corvette adorned the side of the old building at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.
 At one point, she was on display in Times Square. She's been exposed and exploited in everything from National Geographic to Self magazine, and was glimpsed every week beneath the opening credits of “Moonlighting.” The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce folks say she's as essential a part of the Hollywood landscape as the famous Hollywood sign or the new mini-malls.
Angelyne has purchased fame in Los Angeles since the early ‘80s and beyond, particularly in Germany. Her billboards, which have numbered in the thousands over the years, have made her a strange new type of celebrity – the kind who is famous for no other reason than for that of being famous – the kind you really know nothing about.
 Almost everyone in Los Angeles seems to know who Angelyne is and everyone, it seems, has heard a different theory as to who she is, how the billboards are paid for and why the hell all this is being done. Very few have claimed to have actually seen her, however. It’s kinda like an Elvis sighting.
People think they see her and call a radio station. It’s all a part of the myth and magic of show biz. And, in her particular case, it all started with a blonde bimbo with big boobs who wanted to be somebody on a billboard on the Sunset Strip.
Well, that’s show biz, baby.
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