It's A Sign: The Brown Derby

One of the greatest restaurants in Hollywood was the Brown Derby, and now you don’t have to travel to Florida’s Walt Disney World to get a glimpse of this Hollywood institution…(Ugg…don't even get me started) because the neon sign from the Brown Derby restaurant that sat at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street (the restaurant's most famous location and birthplace of the Cobb salad) is alive and well at MONA, the neon Museum in Glendale.

The Brown Derby on Wilshire Blvd

The original Brown Derby opened in 1929 and after opening and closing many locations, (if you don't count that weird redo that was on Highland a few years ago or the one open today in Walt Disney World...which we DON'T) the restaurant officially closed in 1985, but the neon sign from the Hollywood location, which dates to the 1930s and looks like a Derby hat, that passed through two private collections and was eventually donated to MONA is alive and well.

The Brown Derby Hollywood

The restaurant was a favorite of celebrities, gossip columnists, and the Hollywood elite. The location on Vine Street was, at the time, close to the studios and stayed open 24 hours, "making it a favorite of transplanted New Yorkers," KCET writes. One of the inventions of the Brown Derby’s chefs, the Cobb salad, has proven to have better longevity than the restaurant itself.

The MONA museum is now displaying the classic sign that hung over the Hollywood location in an exhibit called  "Hats Off to Hollywood!" and "John Swope, Photographs of Los Angeles Neon From 1938" (through Dec. 31). The original Derby neon sign, MONA notes, "glowed in a period-appropriate shade of ruddy neon" that was later changed to the white and yellow visible on the sign today.

The exhibit included other neon signs from days gone by…and hopefully soon might include the 37-foot neon dragon from outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre that the museum is repairing.

If you Hollywood. and want to travel to Glendale to see some of it..this is a place for you. Wow....now I am in the mood for a Cobb Salad.

MONA...hats off to you for honoring Hollywood history...we ❤️ you!!!