Famous for being Famous - Angelyne
By Hannah Schmidt-Rees
Now this is an interesting one. Can't say that I've seen this for myself, but many LA locals over the past 20 years may remember seeing billboards or murals depicting a blonde Barbie doll-esque woman hidden behind sunglasses. Apart from her, there's two words; a name and a number:
Angelyne
213-285-9399
There will be a few different reactions when seeing Angelyne for the first time. Those who don’t care who she is, those who do, and those are curious to find out.
Who is Angelyne? Why is she so famous to have numerous billboards across LA?
In 1978, Angelyne became the singer of Baby Blue, a rock band created by her boyfriend at the time. Whilst Baby Blue toured across various bars and clubs across LA, the band never became successful. By 1984, Angelyne left the band and started a solo music career, releasing her first self-titled album and later Driven to Fantasy in 1984 and 1986 respectively. Also in 1984, the first Angelyne billboard went up, starting a decades long campaign that still exists today. She met Hugo Maisnik, a wealthy display-printer in LA. Apparently Maisnik saw the potential in advertising Angelyne's image, using his 'eccentric' personality to create the billboard campaign.
Her first billboard was put up on Sunset Boulevard in 1984, with another notable addition being a 85 foot tall painted mural on the side of a Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street (which is where the Hollywood Walk of Fame is), which apparently cost $22,000. Many billboards featured her pink Corvette, which she's consistently owned and can be seen driving around the LA streets. By 1995, Angelyne had 200 billboards across LA. From the attention garnered from these billboards, Angelyne was offered; TV show appearances, film cameos and magazine interviews. She's been featured in Earth Girls are Easy (1988) and Dangerous Love (1988), as well as being interviewed by People Magazine and Interview Magazine. She’s also been spotted surrounded by fans wanting pictures and paparazzi wanting the latest shot.
“It was like BOOM! But to me, being huge is normal. I do well big, I do well at 100ft. Wherever I came from, whatever is core to me, I was born with that.” She was soon inundated with requests – “from regular fans, naughty ones, X-rated authors, TV shows, newspapers, films”. And the rumours started too. She rattles them off: “I’m married to a sheikh. Maybe I am a man. My husband paid for everything. A gay guy died and left me all his money. There is a new Angelyne every two years. I’m a prostitute. I was a mystery.”
She's also run for Governer of California twice, in 2003 and 2021, which is wild. But both runs were unsuccessful.
After her success in the 80s and 90s, Angelyne hasn't been up to much. She offers personal tours on her website, as well as selling paintings (which have also had several successful galleries in LA). She's become like a cult-favourite figure, a representation of Hollywood in the 80s. She's the personification of fame in Hollywood, a favourite of those who are interested and a weird figure to those who aren't. In 2022, a series based on Angelyne's 'career' starring Emmy Rossum and Martin Freeman. It's not sanctioned by the real Angelyne, but it paints a good picture of her life, as clear as it can get, but I’ll explain what I mean by that below;
So after all this, one question still remains, who is Angelyne? It sounds weird to ask, but where did she come from? How did she become Angelyne? She just sort of popped up out of nowhere"?
There's a reason to why Angelyne seemed to come out of nowehere and simply exist since the first billboard went up. She's made it very clear to keep her past private and only present herself as a blonde 'sex goddess'.
Angelyne was born in 1962 in Idaho, a 'small-town girl moving to LA to achieve her dreams'. She was an only child and was orphaned at a young age.
And that story, the one I just told you, is completely fake. That the most anyone's know about Angelyne's past, from bits and pieces that she's told in various interviews. That was until, The Hollywood Reporter did a bit more research and released an article in 2017 after a genealogist working with the federal government gave him a tip. (Let me repeat that, it took a federal government genealogist to work out Angelyne’s true identity, 33 years after she became famous).
Renee Goldberg
Angleyne is Renee Goldberg. She was born in Poland in 1950, to two holocaust survivors; Hendrik Goldberg and Bronia Zernicka. After immigrating to Isreal when she was a child, Renee's family moved to LA in 1959. Renee's mother passed away in 1965 and not much is known of her father after 1969. Renee's sister Annette, born in 1952, is also vastly unknown to this day. From the age of 19, Renee was essentially left to her own devices, in a city that was on the cutting edge of American culture and fame. The Golden Age of Cinema in Hollywood had just ended, the American youth were coming into their own and the ground-breaking 80s were just around the corner. By the mid 70s, Renee had made her full transition into Angelyne. Her orange hair was bleached blonde, she had a breast augmentation and her voice became higher. She wanted to escape into the fame and glamour of Hollywood, creating a life for herself that she could fully envelope, now to the point of no return. She transformed herself into something that was perfect for Hollywood's tendency to capitalise, sexualise and glorify. And whilst it did work, I don’t think it fully lived up to her expectations. And there's nothing else Angelyne can turn to, except to keep going. She wanted to embody Angelyne and she did just that. Renee Goldberg never really existed.
You can still see her pink corvette driving around LA, or meet ups where she’s selling mercandise to her fans. Angelyne is still famous, you’ve got to give her that.
Regardless of how obscure Angelyne is, she does have a point. And I would say that she predicted modern fame in the social media era. If you think about people like Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and Charli D'Amelio, they're not particularly famous for something in particular (no shade), but they just are famous. They're famous for being famous, famous for a certain look, exactly what Angelyne did in the 80s and 90s. I will credit that Angelyne cracked the code for fame, regardless if she took full advantage of it at the time. And that code is what many modern celebrities rely on today.
“I’m often asked what it is that I do. Being judged by what I do rather than by what I am is a sore point with me. It’s very difficult to just be famous for being yourself. I could have been famous for being in a rock band, though ultimately, through some strange twist of fate I became famous for just being good, famous for just being me. ”
Angelyne is obscure, shrouded in mystery and eccentric. We still don’t really know who she is or why she's famous, but she is. And I think that’s the whole point. Angelyne is purely Angelyne. She’s famous because she’s famous. And I think you should know about her, regardless of how much there is to know about her.
