THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN HAS LONG CAPTURED the imagination of the world. Many know its origins as a real estate development, but no one has before pieced together the full history of the sign, its decay and dilapadation in midcentury, and its reconstruction by the likes of Hugh Hefner and Alice Cooper. Here Leo Braudy gives a tantalizing glimpse into the stuff of his book, The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon (Yale University Press, 2011)