History of Hollywood
Hollywood Sign
Harvey Wilcox, a prohibitionist from Kansas laid out a real-estate subdivision in 1887, in which he envisioned a community based on religious principles. H.J. Whitley, who was known as the “Father of Hollywood,” transformed Hollywood into a wealthy and p9pular residential area. Whitley was responsible for bringing telephone, electric and gas lines into the new suburb, but in 1910 because of its inadequate water supply, Hollywood residents voted to consolidate with Los Angeles.
Hooray for Hollywood, a name associated with the American film industry, it is lying northwest of downtown Los Angeles, it is bounded by Hyperion Avenue and Riverside Drive (east), Beverly Boulevard (south), the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains (north), and Beverly Hills (west).
What early moviemaking pioneers found in southern California during the early 1900’s was a blend of ideal whether, mild climate, lots of sunshine, and a varied terrain and a large labor market. Hollywood became know as tinsel town full of cinematic dreams. The first house in Hollywood was an adobe building (1853) on a site near Los Angeles, then a small city in the new state of California
One of the first movies in Hollywood was in 1908 was The Count of Monte Cristo, was completed in Hollywood after its filming had begun in Chicago. By 1911, a site on Sunset Boulevard was turned into Hollywood’s first studio, and soon about 20 companies were producing films in the area.
In 1913 Cecil B. DeMille, Jesse Lasky, Arthur Freed, and Samuel Goldwyn formed Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company (later Paramount Pictures). DeMille produced The Squaw Man in a barn one block from present-day Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, and more box-office successes soon followed.
Hollywood is known as the center of American film industry by 1915, as more independent filmmakers relocated to the East Coast.
The golden age of Hollywood has more than three decades of history starting with silent films, to the advent of “talkies.” Some of the greats included these filmmakers and studios. D.W. Griffith, Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Louis B. Mayer, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Harry Cohn served as overlords of the great film studios — Twentieth Century-Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, and others. Some of the writers who were fascinated by Hollywood in its “golden age” were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, and Nathanael West.
