- For other articles with the name Hollywood, see: Hollywood (disambiguation)
Hollywood is a district of the City of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Hollywood was founded in 1857. Accounts of the name coming from imported English holly bushes are said to be incorrect. The
name actually came about, the story goes, because the wife of Harvey Henderson
Wilcox, a real-estate developer in the late 1880s, was travelling on a train when she
met a woman whose home was called "Hollywood." When Mrs. Wilcox returned home she gave that name to her ranch.
Greetings from Hollywood
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. In 1910, the townsmen voted to become part of the City of Los
Angeles to secure a badly needed water supply.
In the early 1900s, motion picture
production companies from New York and New Jersey started moving to sunny California because of the good weather and longer days. Although electric lights existed
at that time, none were powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for movie production was
natural sunlight. Nestor
Company, the first movie studio in the Hollywood area was founded in
1911 by David Horsley. In the same
year, another fifteen Independents settled there.
The distance of Southern California from New Jersey also made it more difficult for Thomas Edison to enforce his motion picture patents. At the time,
Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and, in the East, filmmakers acting independently of
Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents. Thus, filmmakers
working in California could work independent of Edison's control. If he sent agents to California, word would usually reach Los
Angeles before the agents did and the filmmakers could escape to nearby Mexico.
The Hollywoodland sign in the 1920s
The famous Hollywood sign originally read "Hollywoodland." It was erected in 1923 to
advertise a new housing development in the hills above Hollywood. For several years the sign was left to deteriorate. In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to remove the last four letters and
repair the rest.
The sign, located at the top of Mount Lee, is now a registered trademark and cannot be used without the permission of the
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which also manages the venerable Walk of Fame.
The Hollywood sign as it appears today
The Charlie Chaplin Studios, at La Brea and De Lonpre Avenues just
south of Sunset Boulevard, was built in 1917. It has had many owners after 1953, including Kling Studios, who produced
the Superman TV series with George Reeves, Red Skelton, who used the sound stages for his CBS TV variety show, and CBS filmed Perry
Mason with Raymond Burr there. It has also been owned by Herb Alpert's A&M
Records and Tijuana Brass Enterprises. It is currently The Jim Henson
Company, home of the Muppets. In 1969, The Los
Angeles Cultural Heritage Board named the studio a historical cultural monument.
The Hollywood walk of fame
The word "Hollywood" is also colloquially used to refer to the motion picture and
television industry in Southern California, the term deriving from the famous
community.
The first Academy Awards presentation ceremony took place on
May 16, 1929 during a banquet held in the Blossom
Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Tickets were $10.00 and there were two hundred and fifty people in
attendance.
Hollywood and the movie industry of the 1930s are described in P.G. Wodehouse's novel Laughing Gas (1936) and in Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941),
and is parodied in Terry Pratchett's novel Moving Pictures (1990), which is a takeoff of Singin' In The Rain.
The famous Capitol Records building, on Vine Street just north of Hollywood Boulevard, is a recording studio not open to the
public, but its unique circular design looks like a stack of old 45s.
In November 2002, a measure calling for Hollywood to secede from Los Angeles and form
its own incorporated city failed by a wide margin.
The recently constructed Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard at
Highland Avenue, where the historic Hollywood Hotel once stood, has become the new home of the Oscars.
Landmarks and Interesting Spots
See Also
|