Seeing Stars: Where the Stars are Immortalized
  


Beverly Drive at Olympic Boulevard,
Beverly Hills, CA.



This small monument commemorates the Hollywood movie stars who helped save Beverly Hills. Back in 1923, the rapidly-expanding City of Los Angeles attempted to swallow up the area, just as L.A. had annexed so many other once-autonomous communities (including Hollywood itself). A handful of movie stars led the battle to preserve the independence of Beverly Hills, and won.

The Monument to the Stars, erected in 1959, consists of a bronze-green spiral of sprocketed "camera film" sitting atop a multi-sided tower, which is embossed with full-length likenesses of these early stars - as they appeared in their famous silent movie roles.

Those honored include Douglas Fairbanks (sporting long hair for his role in "The Iron Mask"), Mary Pickford (looking like a waif in "Tess of the Storm Country"), Will Rogers (as his usual relaxed self, in "Lightnin'"), Conrad Nagel (dressed in a Revolutionary War outfit from "Glorious Betsy"), Rudolph Valentino (wearing a bolero hat in his role from "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"), Fred Niblo (the director of the original "Ben-Hur"), Tom Mix (in his cowboy duds, from "Hardboiled"), and comic Harold Lloyd (sporting his trademark glasses, in "Why Worry?")

A plaque on the sidewalk below reads:

"In tribute to those celebrities of the motion picture industry  who worked so valiantly for the preservation of Beverly Hills as a separate municipality."


Another plaque on the site lists those who helped erect the monument, a list that includes
Jack Benny, Buddy Rogers, and Louis B. Mayer.


Valentino


Pickford & Fairbanks


Will Rogers


Harold Lloyd

 Getting there: The monument is located on a traffic island in Beverly Hills, about half a mile south of Wilshire Boulevard, at the three-way intersection of Beverly Drive, Olympic Boulevard & Beverwil Drive. It isn't really worth going out of your way for, but if you happen to be on Beverly Drive, keep an eye out for it.



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