The Mystery of L.A. Billboard Diva Angelyne’s Real Identity Is Finally Solved
by Gary Baum
Scott McKiernan/ZUMA Press/Newscom
Way before Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the enigmatic blonde bombshell was famous for being famous, perpetually driving the streets of Hollywood in that pink Corvette. But her true identity has remained secret all these years … until now.
“Would you be interested in a story on Angelyne’s true identity?” the man wrote last fall under a pseudonym, referring to the enigmatic L.A. billboard diva who has been a pop culture icon of self-creation and self-marketing since the early 1980s — and is now regarded as a forerunner to Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and every personal-brand hustler on social media. “I have many details on her life — all well documented — from when her parents met to early adulthood. It’s very different from her public, concocted story — and more interesting.”
Angelyne is one of the vanishingly few contemporary public figures whose background has remained shrouded in mystery, along with the conceptual artist Banksy, Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto and aircraft hijacker D.B. Cooper. The man, who claimed to work in an undefined role for the federal government, said he was a hobbyist genealogist, occasionally taking on paid assignments in the field as an amusing side gig. A few years earlier, he’d decided it’d be fun to set himself the challenge of cracking Angelyne’s case. “And I did,” he explained.
Later, at the 101 Coffee Shop in Hollywood, the genealogist — who looks like Michael Kelly’s contained political operative Doug Stamper from House of Cards — unfurled an elaborate story of Angelyne’s past, based on material he contended he’d enterprisingly pulled and synthesized from a global network of public databases. He laid down a folded printout of a row of yearbook photos.