ANGELYNE REVEALED?
Writer says he has identified Hollywood’s ‘bombshell billboard princess’ of the ’80s If you visited Los Angeles in the mid-1980s through the early 2000s, you’ve seen her.
Billboards towered over the city showing a blond, buxom woman, generally clad in pink.
Sometimes they displayed all of her, sometimes just her heavily powdered face, sometimes just her bust, straining against a lacy bra.
Near these photos was a phone number, the word “management” in small print, and a signature in looping cursive: Angelyne.
As National Public Radio put it, she was the self-described “blond bombshell billboard princess.”
But that was a pseudonym. Everyone knew what she looked like, but no one knew who she was.
Until recently, when journalist Gary Baum, reporting with a mixture of public documents and family testimony, published a report in the Hollywood Reporter claiming to have unearthed her true identity.
Angelyne’s birth name is Ronia Tamar Goldberg, later Americanized to Renee Tami Goldberg, according to Baum, who said she was born in Poland in 1950 to Polish Jews who met in the Chmielnik ghetto during the Second World War and later settled in Los Angeles.
Angelyne spokesman Scott Henning rejected Baum’s report: “This stuff comes up every few years; it seems to get more and more ridiculous. My favourite one of all was this 300-pound black woman who claimed to be her mother. ‘I’m your long-lost brother;’ ‘your twin sister.’ Chalk it up to life in Hollywood. I’ve never heard of Renee Goldberg.”
But Baum insists he has solved the mystery of Angelyne’s identity.
The first Angelyne billboard went up in the early 1980s. She just appeared. And through sheer force of will, she became famous around town.
She was “famous for being famous,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, making her, as the New York Times noted, “a forerunner to Paris Hilton.”
Eventually, Angelyne began zooming around in a pink Corvette.
But her identity remained unknown. She was both famous and mysterious at once. As L.A. Weekly put it, “Angelyne is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Everyone knows about her and yet doesn’t.”
Novelist Ajay Sahgal wrote in the L.A. Times in 1995, “I have lived in Los Angeles all my life, I have seen Angelyne billboards almost every day for 10 years and I have no idea who this woman is.”
His readers had their own opinions. One wrote in a letter to the editor, “When my five-year-old son saw an Angelyne billboard across the street from his nursery school, he summed up her essence by saying: ‘Mommy, that lady needs a bigger bra.’ Angelyne’s people should either locate her billboards to places with an appropriate audience or put some clothes on her.”
Another offered an answer to Sahgal’s question: “Angelyne is simply a self-made, typically-L.A. character seeking desperately to be a celebrity.”
That letter wasn’t incorrect. What was missed, though, was how aware of that desperation Angelyne was.
As she told Baum in 2015, perhaps falsely, “I lost my parents at a young age, and because of that I sought the attention of the world through my tricks. I said, ‘Well, I’m going to get the love of the world.’”
Another “trick” was her run for mayor of Hollywood in 2008. Out of 135 candidates, she placed 28th.
Her self-created fame led to parts in movies like Earth Girls Are Easy and Dangerous Love. None of her film roles were large — she has been credited as Busty Lady, Gas Girl and Blonde — but they were roles, nonetheless. She also recorded at least four albums, according to the L.A. Times.
Perhaps her most lucrative business offerings were her personal appearances and her likeness, which she kept in tune with the help of George Semel, the plastic surgeon known for working on Elizabeth Taylor.
Of him, Angelyne said, “I felt like I was working with an artistic collaborator. Fillers are amazing.” The money flowed in. She was hired to make an appearances at high-profile events, such as the birthday party of David Fincher, director of The Social Network and Gone Girl.
She auctioned off rides in the pink Corvette. She sold T-shirts bearing her picture. She licensed images of her face for US$10,000 a pop.
Through it all, she was credited merely as Angelyne.
When Baum asked about her past in 2015, she said, “I want to save it for my memoirs — that’s my right for my own financial interest.”
Her profile has faded somewhat in recent years. But she still makes appearances, still drives around in her pink Corvette, still plays coy with the media.