Why Is That Cross Beaming into My Bedroom?
As exciting as it sounds to be ‘Living in Hollywood,’ only those of us who live here really know what it’s like. One day your neighbor wins an award and says on TV she never gets invited to neighborhood parties, and the next day you’re yelling at her for not picking up her dog’s poop.
I used to really resent that 32-foot cross beaming into my bedroom window for the past 30 years. It’s in the hill across the Hollywood Freeway from the Hollywood Bowl looking down at Tinseltown almost as warning that your sins are being seen.
There it is — as stark as ever — all white — a big giant cross lit all night, as if peeking into my bedroom to see what is or isn’t going on. Invading my privacy.
I cheered when it fell into disrepair and some guy with an ax went up to cut it down because it was once on public land. I howled with glee when a windstorm knocked it down. I’’s been destroyed by fire, desecrated by vandals, and degraded by Nazi sympathizers who outlined a swastika in white lime on the hillside under the cross three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Then, the American Civil Liberties Union sought an injunction to prevent public money from being spent on the cross. For a while the light was dimmed.
Meanwhile, I joined a local church located near the shadow of the cross, sang in the choir, got baptized, ignored my Catholic upbringing, and even served on the church council. I found religion again, at least for a time. I relished in the history of the cross that overlooked the heathens on the streets below.
The cross is a memorial for Christine Wetherill Stevenson who was the heiress to the Pittsburgh Paint fortune. More importantly, she helped build the Hollywood Bowl. Christine wanted the Bowl to only show outdoor plays based on the life of Jesus and conducted the first Easter sunrise service there in 1921. But the Bowl board out-voted her and insisted on providing something more than Biblical plays.
So, Christine bought 29 acres right across the freeway and started the Pilgrimage Play Theater featuring performances only based on Bible passages.
Then, Christine died suddenly at age 43 in 1922 (I can’t find out how, it’s such a mystery). Friends put up a 40-foot wooden cross. The Pilgrimage Theater became the John Anson Ford Theater named after a county supervisor.
It has no official name: Pilgrimage Cross, Cross on Cahuenga, Hollywood Cross, and more. It’s now made of steel and Plexiglas and it’s a historic cultural monument.
But then it gets weird.
Linda Goodman — a best-selling author on astrology and psychic in the 1970s — saw the cross outside her window at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and was told by a mysterious visitor that the Egyptian god Osiris’ phallus was buried in tunnels under the cross.
The legendary love story of Osiris and Isis involves trickery during a dinner when Osiris is killed and his body cut up into 14 pieces and scattered throughout the world. How such an important piece of him got to Hollywood was explained away by the psychic.
Linda spent a bunch of money to prove that something was under the cross — even a buried pyramid — but after she died in 1995, all the studies and reports disappeared.
Now the cross is on private property run by The Church on the Way in Van Nuys.
I’ve come to accept this intrusive light into my bedroom window, and even admire the history of the cross.
I don’t feel threatened by the cross anymore. Especially since there’s a group of people who think there’s a giant penis buried underneath it somewhere.
You can reach the author at mikeszy@aol.com.
