Hot Slut Of The Day!

Angelyne, the humanized pink rhinestone that has been ruling the streets of Los Angeles in one of her hot pink chariots for decades, was Hot Slut of the Month during Dlisted’s birth year of 2005. But she’s HSOTD again today for obvious reasons. The obvious reasons being the riveting details of her (alleged) origin story.

My undying love for the forever reigning Queen of Los Angeles was tested yesterday. On Tuesday night, the retina in my left eyeball decided it was a really good time to tear. It tore in two places and my vision in my left eye went from “perfectly clear” to “the aftermath of getting punched and jizzed on while drunk.” I couldn’t see (and still can’t really) see shit. When my retina doctor asked me if I hit my head or anything, I told him no and said I was just reading a story about R. Kelly on my site. To which, the doctor said, “Yup, reading about R. Kelly will definitely cause your retina to tear.” While I was waiting for the doctor to laser those retina tears, the fascinating tale of Angelyne’s pre-Angelyne life broke. If you were in the waiting room with me, then you saw me looking like a big ole’ gay pirate pepaw, because I had a homemade patch (aka a piece of paper taped over my eyeglass lens) on my left eye and my one working eye glued to my phone screen.

By now, I’m sure you’ve read every word of The Hollywood Reporter’s exposé about Angelyne’s identity several times, wrote a 400-page dissertation about it and made plans to present your dissertation at a Learning Annex course called Angelyne 101. So I won’t give you every little detail about THR’s story titled: The Mystery of L.A. Billboard Diva Angelyne’s Real Identity Is Finally Solved. But basically, a wannabe genealogist contacted Gary Baum, a senior writer at THR, and asked if he’d be interested in the real identity of the mysterious Angelyne. Gary spent time with Angelyne a couple of years ago, because he wrote a profile on her. She really didn’t want to get into her past and said she’s saving it for her memoirs, because if anybody is going to make money off of her story, it’s going to be her. Angelyne just said that she’s an only child and she lost her parents at a young age. The story I’ve heard several times is that she was a small town American girl who moved to Hollywood, married rich and used her husband’s money to buy billboards and become the bright pink shining star she is today. I never believed that story, because in my mind, Angelyne is what was born after Adonis did a lot of Ecstasy and busted a nut on a delicate pink rose.

But the wannabe genealogist discovered (and THR confirmed) that Angelyne’s born name is Renee Goldberg and her parents were Polish jews who survived the holocaust and moved to Israel and later Los Angeles. Angelyne was born on October 2, 1950 in Poland, which makes her 66 years old (but she’ll forever be ageless to me). She has a younger sister, Annette, who was born in 1954. Angelyne’s mother died of cancer when she was 14. Her father remarried. In the late 60s, Angelyne married Michael Strauss, the heir to a Beverly Hills dynasty. They divorced in 1969 and that’s where “Renee Goldberg’s” paper trail ends.

Here’s a picture of “Renee Goldberg,” courtesy of Michael Strauss. Obviously, a gorgeous swan in a slutty raver toddler’s clothes is going to play Angelyne in the sweeping big-budget epic of this story, but for the role of “Renee Goldberg,” I suggest either Jane Levy or Lauren Ambrose or a baby swan in a Christina Hendricks wig.

To get more answers about Renee Goldberg’s transformation into Angelyne, Gary Baum talked to her sister Annette, her ex-husband Michael Strauss and tried to talk to her assistant. He also writes that some Jews who immigrated to the U.S. after the war took up Anglicized surnames and Americanized their image to “better conform” to their new homeland and to escape the traumas they suffered through in Europe. Gary says that Angelyne’s transformation in a peroxide blonde California goddess is a steroids version of that.

While writing this history of Angelyne, he ran into her one night and asked her about “Renee Goldberg.” She didn’t want to get into it and accused the wannabe genealogist of stalking her.

“I have a weird stalker who has been following me and hanging underwear outside my home and all sorts of things. We’re going to catch him — big time!” Usually, she explained of her history with obsessives, “I use reverse psychology on them and they go away.”

“It was a complication thing,” she said, tipping from one foot to the other. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I pressed, and she said she’d have her lawyer call me. I asked if it would be her business attorney, William Remery, or the attorney on the document, David Lehr. “Someone else.”

The wannabe genealogist denied that he’s stalked her. Angelyne also told Gary what she told him before, which is that she’ll be the one to tell her story when she’s ready.

I had mixed emotions while reading Gary Braum’s history of Angelyne. On one hand, I was on it like a hard 9″ dick, because the history of Angelyne is my kind of history class. On the other hand, I felt a little “err” about it since Angelyne doesn’t want that info out there just yet, and wants to be the one to make money off of it. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to see Angelyne out in the wild and asked her for a picture, you know she likes to get paid. (Who doesn’t?) She’ll try to sell you t-shirts and pictures from her trunk. So it filled me with dull pink sadness knowing that Angelyne probably didn’t get a check for THR’s story.

And really, an article about Angelyne’s true identity should only have five words in it: Angelyne’s true identity is Angelyne!

Pics: Wenn.com, Getty, Michael Strauss via The Hollywood Reporter