Peter the Hermit Resurfaces in England
Thanks to the magic of the Internet, my entry on Peter the Hermit was read by an Englishwoman named Suzanne Summers, who came across a portrait of Peter and his greyhound at a car boot sale. She bought it without knowing anything about Peter or his odd profession because she loves greyhounds and recognized the picture's artistic merits.
The photo is expertly composed and lit in a way that highlights Peter's haunting, pale eyes. The photographer was Bruno of Hollywood, a prolific local portrait photographer. Ironically, it was Bruno who shot the infamous half-nude that Kenneth Anger claimed was of Peg Entwistle in his 1959 book, Hollywood Babylon. It wasn't until I asserted the model wasn't Peg in my documentary "Under the Hollywood Sign" that anyone questioned the portrait's veracity. (Though the model has platinum hair, as Peg did in her final year, her face, especially the nose, is completely different. Yet no one noticed, probably because they were focussed on her bare breasts.)
But the man in the portrait above is definitely Peter, who had no imitators. Though his world probably encompassed three miles--the distance between his tent in Beachwood Canyon and his workplace on Hollywood Boulevard--his portrait, framed and labeled "Peter the Hermit of Hollywood, Calif.," has traveled across the Atlantic and back again, this time in digital form.