The Persistent — and False — Tale That Joanne Woodward Was the First Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Bizarre & Myths2/5 wildness

The Persistent — and False — Tale That Joanne Woodward Was the First Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Joanne Woodward / 1960s

For decades a charming piece of Hollywood folklore held that Joanne Woodward was the very first celebrity to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The truth is much more prosaic and was quietly recorded at the time: the original 1,550 stars were fabricated and installed as a single unit in 1960, so there was no chronological "first" awardee. The first star actually completed was director Stanley Kramer. The myth likely took root because Woodward, newly an Oscar winner in 1958 and a hot commodity, was among the first celebrities to publicly pose with her star for photographers; Johnny Grant, the long-time honorary mayor of Hollywood, later said she was singled out for that reason. Over the years the anecdote transmogrified into an outright claim of primacy — an evocative, but historically inaccurate, shorthand that persisted until sources like studio records and Walk of Fame documentation were cited to debunk it.