Recently, I was watching a recorded rerun of “Adam-12,” the popular Los Angeles-based police drama that ran from 1968 to 1975. 

In this particular episode, from 1971, the intrepid duo of Malloy and Reed head to the L.A. County sheriff’s office in Malibu to transport a prisoner (played by William Campbell, best known for portraying different aliens in two episodes of what is now known as “Star Trek: The Original Series”). 

After picking up their charge, the two cops head back to L.A. over a mountain road, at one point driving through a tunnel, above which loomed a gray cliff. The rock, however, was not a uniform color; over the tunnel portal was a large, irregular whitish patch that somehow looked familiar enough to me that I paused the recording, examined the scene for a few seconds, then turned to my wife and said, “I think there might be a giant naked woman hiding on that cliff.” 

She was dubious to say the least, but after a little research, I discovered I was right. The explanation for why I was aware of that remarkable bit of trivia requires a trip back in time — way back over half a century — to a location thousands of miles from the West Coast.

In 1967, I was a seventh-grade kid living in a small Maryland town that was my home until I went away to college. At the time, I had an affinity for paperback books, generally because of their low cost (most were 50 cents, plus a penny or two in tax; long, bulky bestsellers, like Arthur Hailey’s “Airport,” were in the stratosphere at $1.50). One Friday afternoon after school, I ventured to the local stationary store to peruse the paperback racks, and for some reason lost to the ages I chose for my weekend reading a book titled, “Bill Alder’s Graffiti,” which showcased examples of unauthorized wit and graphics from around the country. 

The most spectacular example of graffiti in this book was a photo of a huge nude woman painted on a cliff face over a road tunnel somewhere in that far-away, alien land called California (I had not traveled even as far west as West Virginia at that point). It was definitely memorable, especially for someone just a few months past his 12th birthday.

The book disappeared after a year or so, but the image obviously survived in some obscure corner of my brain because, after being dormant for decades, it immediately came to mind when I saw the “Adam-12” police cruiser approach that tunnel that somehow seemed familiar. 

So I had a strong suspicion that the location on TV and in Bill Alder’s book were the same, but verification was needed. Naturally, I turned to that modern, magical source of information, the internet, and it did not disappoint. On my first try, by Googling “California tunnel nude,” a torrent of information burst forth on my computer screen regarding the short-lived and semi-famous “Pink Lady of Malibu.”

On Friday it did not exist, but at dawn on Saturday, Oct. 29, 1966, there it was: A mammoth, 60-foot tall painting of a young woman frolicking on the cliff over the Malibu Canyon Road tunnel, about four miles north of the beach. 

She was a smiling brunette holding a bouquet of flowers, and she was totally nude, with her bright pink flesh exposed from head to toe. Because of the subject, her size, and her sudden, mysterious appearance, the Pink Lady immediately became a local sensation.

Hundreds of people flocked to the site, newspaper reporters and TV crews among them, and photos and stories about the eye-catching, anonymous artwork soon appeared across the country.

As the Pink Lady was fast gaining national notoriety, Los Angeles County officials came to a quick decision: Even though graffiti scrawled on many of the rocks and walls in the vicinity had remained untouched for years, this particularly prominent graffito had to be immediately removed, one way or another (or yet another, as it turned out). 

After dismissing sandblasting as too pricey, several fire trucks were brought to the scene to blast away the image with high-pressure hoses. But the Pink Lady did not dissolve under this onslaught, not even a little.

In fact, the dousing only made her pinker, as if she had just emerged from a refreshing shower. After that failure, hard-hatted workmen descended the cliff on nylon ropes and attempted to wipe away the artwork with paint remover. This effort also failed to strip off even one fleck of paint, but did make the lady’s pink skin warmer, reportedly more alluring.

Meanwhile, about 20 miles away in Northridge, Lynne Westmore Bloom (known at the time as Lynne Seemayer, and referred to hereafter as Lynne) was seething. 

For one thing, the 31-year-old single mother learned from a TV report that everyone was wondering about the identity of the man (or men) who painted the Pink Lady, and she was outraged at the gender assumption. For another, she became aware of the effort to eradicate the artwork she had worked on for months.

Despite her sudden appearance to the public, the Pink Lady did not come into being overnight. Starting in January 1966, Lynne decided to improve the graffiti-marred Malibu Canyon Road cliff with her own creation.

“Because,” she later stated, “the tunnel was an eyesore.” 

She made dozens of trips to the site and dozens of climbs up the mountain ridge over the course of ten months to prepare her rocky canvas, removing brush, scraping away old graffiti and marking the outline of her subject in a way that was not noticed from the road below.

She always worked at night, during the hours that moonlight adequately illuminated the scene, and she always wore black. Then, under a full moon, in a marathon 11-hour session in late October, she completed her masterpiece.

Just four days later, however, a full-court press was underway to do away with the Pink Lady, motivating Lynne to return to the scene to take ownership of her artwork and attempt to stop its destruction. She arrived to find a circus-type atmosphere. 

“When I came through the tunnel I was greeted by the most unbelievable sight — at least four fire engines, nine sheriff’s cars, four highway department cars and at least 300 people,” she later told a reporter. 

A little fearful that she might be arrested, she made her case to a county official, but, frustrated at the fire hose and paint remover debacles, the supervisor only wanted to know what special paint formula she had concocted that had thwarted his efforts. Lynne stayed silent concerning the fact that she had used off-the-shelf pink exterior house paint from Sears, then left the area.

The following day, county public works employees decided to cover rather than remove Lynne’s work. They ended the Pink Lady’s six-day existence by spraying her over with 14 gallons of paint.

Some sources say the paint was brown, others say it was gray. Whatever the color, it did not match the surrounding rock very well, and by the time the “Adam-12” crew arrived on scene five years later to film Malloy & Reed’s police cruiser driving through the tunnel, it had lightened enough to draw my attention to the possibility that something noteworthy might be hidden on that rock face.

While Lynne was not successful in her effort to save her art, her visit to the site on Nov. 2, 1966, did identify her to the world, and all post-destruction articles on the Pink Lady mentioned her as well, including a story in uber-popular Life magazine two weeks later that showed photos of both Lynne and her creation, before and after the brown (or gray) paint obscured it.

This recognition resulted in offers to display some of her other art in Los Angeles area galleries, but also brought in too much negative attention from whackos in the general populace who inundated her with inappropriate messages ranging from marriage proposals to death threats. 

Like all things viral, the attention faded as weeks turned into months, and Lynne went on to five decades of other accomplishments, none of which involved colossal cliff graffiti. She passed away in 2017, just three weeks shy of her 82nd birthday. Her grave marker in Chatsworth identifies her as an artist, but only one work is specifically mentioned in the last line: “Creator of ‘The Pink Lady.’”

After discovering all I could about the Pink Lady online, I felt a visit to the site of this historic artwork was in order. I enlisted a friend of mine, Apple Valley’s Bryce Kelchner, and off we went to Malibu on a sunny Sunday. 

We kept it legal, heeding the countless “No Parking” signs along both sides of Malibu Canyon Road. After parking at a designated lot about a mile north of the tunnel, we hiked south.

Because pedestrians are prohibited from going through the narrow tunnel (and with good reason, given some of the wild driving we witnessed), we were forced to take a detour to reach our destination, necessitating a precarious 200-foot descent over rocks and brush to Malibu Creek, a scramble over boulders on the banks of the waterway for several hundred feet, and a steep climb up loose gravel and dirt back to road level. From there, we ascended a rough path leading over the tunnel portal. 

Finally, we were finally face to face with what was left of Lynne’s mural. 

The first thing I noticed was the slope of the rock face. While not a vertical cliff, the surface on which the Pink Lady was painted is dangerously steep, requiring rope support to do much of anything. A fall from the top would probably be fatal. 

The next thing I discovered was that those who expressed hope online that the Pink Lady might someday be again visible to the public after the county-applied covering wears away are going to be eternally disappointed.

While the paint sprayed over the Pink Lady is in fact almost completely gone, so is much of the Sears exterior house paint. What was pink in the 1960s has faded to a ruddy, earthy tone nearly indistinguishable from the colors of the original rock, which is itself flaking off in many places. For all intents and purposes, there is no longer a painting on that wall. 

Although I was disappointed to find that only trace evidence of the Pink Lady remains, the trip did give me a profound appreciation for Lynne’s phenomenal accomplishment. It must be tough enough for a whole group of artists to take an image, scale it up to an enormous size, then, out in the open and in daylight, paint it on a flat surface like a parking lot.

Lynne, on the other hand, worked alone. The surface she painted on wasn’t level, but dangerously steep. She suspended herself from ropes and tied buckets of paint to her waist to get to her canvas, the surface of which was uneven and jagged. She did it all clandestinely, at night, dressed in black. And even taking into account Lynne’s months of preparation, the fact that the bulk of the painting — about 630 square feet by my estimate — took place in one night is incredible. 

We are all fortunate that this short-lived artwork lives on in legend, in the minds of those who witnessed her 55 years ago this week, and in numerous photos, articles, a website, and at least two Facebook pages. 

“The Pink Lady of Malibu,” one of the most amazing feats of guerrilla street art ever created, is well-deserving of a prominent place in Southern California lore.

Byron Ward lives in Spring Valley Lake.