She was “famous for being famous,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, making her, as the New York Times noted, “a forerunner to Paris Hilton.” 
 
 Famous in Hollywood, that is. But her true identity has remained secret all these years … until now. “Like Banksy, there are countless theories as to her true identity, but no concrete proof,” wrote the A.V. 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. Until this week, when journalist Gary Baum, reporting with a mixture of public documents and family testimony, published a report in the Hollywood Reporter claiming to have unearthed her true identity. By her own cosmetic surgery confessions, Angelyne has had quite a bit of work done — and if the genealogist was right, that high school junior is now 66 years old. Angelyne’s birth name is Ronia Tamar Goldberg, later Americanized to Renee Tami Goldberg, according to Baum, who said she was born in Poland in 1950 to Polish Jews who met in the Chmielnik ghetto during World War II and later settled in Los Angeles. They boarded a ship leaving Haifa for New York and settled in L.A.'s Fairfax District. She claims it worked so well that she became overloaded with inquiries. Then, in 1965, her 44-year-old mother died of cancer. Later, the only child will confide, the lilt of her girlish voice ebbing for a moment, "I lost my parents at a young age, and because of that I sought the attention of the world through my tricks. I said, ‘Well, I’m going to get the love of the world.’” 
 
 Those tricks included more than just the billboards, though at one point she had “about 200” of them around town, her spokesman, Hennig, told the Los Angeles Times, adding, “And we have about 100 more bus-shelter ads going up. "It's just a long story," she said, the cartoonishly girly lilt of her voice gone flat. "I don't recommend it," she says wanly of the cosmic event. "I'm not a publicity whore," she insists, pressing an espadrille wedge on the gas pedal on the way to visit her dentist in Century City. Angelyne was similarly mum or vague when I inquired about other things that might have forged her, from religion ("I've tried them all — Jewish, Catholic, Hindu: too many dogmas") to her place of origin. Her disdain extends, unsurprisingly, to Kardashian's all-access evolution of her model: "I don't see anything that's inspiring or beauteous. But I'd fallen short in penetrating who she really is, why she'd dedicated her life to transforming herself into what she described to me as a "Rorschach test in pink" — a figure who simultaneously elects to commute among us and hold herself apart, in her formulation, "on top of a pink cloud on top of a pink mountain." ••• 
 
 Scott Hennig, a 60-year-old portrait illustrator from Idaho, has been Angelyne's assistant, close friend and gatekeeper since the late 1980s. Angelyne’s spokesman, Scott Henning, denied the accuracy of Baum’s report, telling him: “This stuff comes up every few years — it seems to get more and more ridiculous. "My favorite one of all was this 300-pound black woman who claimed to be her mother. ‘I’m your long-lost brother,’ ‘your twin sister.’ Chalk it up to life in Hollywood. "As wonderful as my flesh body is to me, what I've created, I've exploited the human body to its max." I’ve never heard of ‘Renee Goldberg.’ It’s laughable; it’s outrageous.” 
 
 But Baum insists that he has solved the decades-old Hollywood mystery of Angelyne’s identity. "This guy needs to get a life. As L.A. Weekly put it, “Angelyne is the stuff of Hollywood legend. As she puts it now, "I'm the professor." As it happens, that's a verdict people have been rendering about Angelyne for 30 years, ever since she began appearing on hundreds of billboards and circumnavigating the city in that pink Vette. I know I've got this car covered." I put that question to the genealogist soon afterward, who'd communicated with me under the pseudonym Ed Thompson. He looked just like the lanky fellow whose over-exposed vintage photos had appeared beside his boss' in the 2005 premiere issue of Hot P!nk, Angelyne's short-lived glossy fan magazine. In the past she'd told me she'd filed restraining orders against two stalkers. She may have perfected self-promotion, but Angelyne doesn't like talking about herself. How could this kind of information about her past possibly be part of a plot to force her to do anything?") Her work gave people permission to make the public expression of their eccentric selves a goal in itself. Angelyne says that while he was the type of guy who was "obsessed with legs and feet," theirs was a purely platonic relationship: "He was married!" I asked if it would be her business attorney, William Remery, or the attorney on the document, David Lehr. "I know you want it to be true because you're Jewish — and that's adorable!" When Baum asked about her past in 2015, she said, “I want to save it for my memoirs — that’s my right for my own financial interest.” 
 
 Baum suggested Angelyne thought revealing her name or her origin would “detract from her carefully burnished glamour.” What made her famous, in other words, was that very mystery. What instead caught my eye were the advertisements, which on closer inspection all seemed to be personally connected to her: the North Hollywood auto body shop that I'd elsewhere read custom-paints her Corvette; the late Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. George Semel, who she'd previously told me was her "artistic collaborator." "I just laid down there, and I kept seeing this vision of pink. Where, at least, was the follow-up from the mystery attorney? She also recorded at least four records, according to the Los Angeles Times. She told me she was inspired by me before she was known. Strauss had tender memories of Goldberg, referring alternatively in the past and present to her as "Angelyne" and "Renee." Regardless, "she has never considered herself Jewish." Of him, Angelyne once said, “I felt like I was working with an artistic collaborator. That her entire presentation — the hair, the clothes, the voice, the pink car, the whole shebang — riffs on femininity, fame and Hollywood ideals. Both the famous-for-being-famous reality culture of the 2000s and the brand-yourself social media hustle of this moment can be traced back to her pioneering DIY billboard campaign. This was before YouTube and reality TV, when her available platform was the space of advertising. Angelyne brushes off such assertions — she possesses no MFA degree, though she did take life drawing classes at one point, and she claims (or feigns) ignorance of such highbrow luminaries as Marina Abramovic. "The only time I had enough attention, where I never wanted another bit of it ever again, was when I rode in Gay Pride." "When you ask New Yorkers, 'Do you know Angelyne?' One of the things we can gain from looking at Angelyne is that life is a performance." A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
– About a year after Hollywood Reporter journalist Gary Baum profiled Angelyne, the mysterious billboard bombshell he describes as LA's "modern myth," a hobbyist genealogist contacted him claiming to have proof of a compelling back story: that she was born in Poland to Holocaust survivors. Now, also for the Hollywood Reporter, Baum unravels what he believes is likely the iconic blonde's true identity, publishing yearbook photos, marriage certificates, and more. The woman who's adorned hundreds of billboards across LA since the 1980s under the one-name pseudonym Angelyne—she's been called a precursor to other "famous for being famous" celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian—appears to have started off as Ronia Tamar Goldberg. She came to California in 1959 by way of Israel, and her mother died of cancer at the age of 44 when Goldberg, who upon arrival to LA became Renee, was just 14. Baum reached out to Goldberg's alleged younger sister, now Annette Block, and her husband, as well as an ex-husband and a stepsister, all of whom are generally hazy on details if willing to talk at all. Angelyne, for her part, has gone on AirTalk with host Larry Mantle to claim that the story contains "a lot of inaccuracies" and that the "vindictive" piece can never change the fact that she is "not a woman" but "an icon." Indeed, she ran for mayor of Hollywood in 2008, per the Washington Post, and came in 28th out of 135 candidates; she also ran for governor of California in 2003 and, of course, has made numerous paid appearances at events and is the subject of a documentary. For now, the legend and sometimes-actress/singer who says she was orphaned at a young age and whose Hollywood start traces back to a 1974 porno tells Baum she wants to save her story for a memoir for "my own financial interest." (The Kardashians have erected an elaborate and bizarre business empire.)