Moose and Squirrel Spotted on Sunset Boulevard

On September 24, 1961, a crowd of 5,000 people gathered outside Jay Ward Productions’ animation studio on the Sunset Strip across from the Chateau Marmont. All but one lane of traffic was cordoned off that day as Jayne Mansfield unveiled what would become a long-lasting and beloved Sunset Strip icon: a 14-foot, 1,200-pound statue of Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, the ubiquitous stars of The Bullwinkle Show, posed alluringly and spinning atop a tall rotating base.

The statue, initially conceived as a publicity stunt to coincide with Rocky and Bullwinkle’s NBC television premiere that week, parodied a commercial advertisement sited directly across the street from Jay Ward Productions. Promoting the Sahara Casino in Las Vegas, the neighboring sculpture consisted of a similarly posed bikini-clad mechanized showgirl spinning on her own rotating base, which resembled a silver dollar. Through the ensuing years, whenever the Sahara showgirl’s swimsuit changed colors, Bullwinkle’s wardrobe color palette was likewise updated.

While the showgirl statue became famous in its own right – inspiring the cover art of GoreVidal’s satirical novel, Myra Breckinridge – it was removed a decade later and replaced by a 60-foot-tall Marlboro Man. While the Rocky and Bullwinkle statue eventually stopped spinning and slowly began to deteriorate, it somehow managed to remain in place at 8218 Sunset Boulevard for 52 years before it was rather unceremoniously removed in July 2013, causing consternation among its countless fans who worried the statue was likely lost forever.

However, the statue had, instead, been transferred to DreamWorks Animation where it was carefully restored by Ric Scozzari, a longtime friend of the Ward family whose multi-disciplinary talents run the gamut from painting and illustrating to sculpting, welding and woodworking. Scozzari, a longtime designer of Rose Parade floats, restored the fiberglass Rocky and Bullwinkle statue using aircraft paint and sealer.

The reinvigorated statue was unveiled anew in October 2014 at The Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills as part of its Jay Ward Legacy exhibit. Following that retrospective, the Ward family contributed the artwork to the City of West Hollywood’s Urban Art Collection. After appearing briefly in the lobby of West Hollywood City Hall in August 2015, Rocky and Bullwinkle were placed in storage as the City of West Hollywood worked to identify and prepare a permanent outdoor Sunset Strip home for the sculpture.

Rocky and Bullwinkle now make their permanent new home at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Holloway Drive, several blocks west of the artwork’s original location. The sculpture is part of more than 70 other sculptures belonging to West Hollywood’s impressive and always growing Urban Art Collection. Given the artwork’s long and fascinating history on the Sunset Strip, its reappearance at Sunset and Holloway is certain to cement its legacy status within the City of West Hollywood.