Hollywood

I've touched on Hollwood a couple times, so it's probably about time to do a post about the town that's become a synecdoche for Los Angeles. This is only going to scratch the surface, but that's the design of this blog. Scratching away at LA's history.

Important dates have already come up on the blog. Hollywood was consolidated into Los Angels Feb 7, 1910. In January 1910, DW Griffith convinced his bosses at Biograph Pictures in New York that he needed to go to Los Angeles to film an adaptation of Ramona in authentic locations. Ramona used to be a staple in elementary school reading lists: it's about a part Scottish and part Native American orphan girl in Southern California. It gives a sentimental version of Spanish colonial life in California, and for the early part of the century, shaped what East Coasters thought of California. It's influence is seen in the rise of the Western genre. It's also the film that launched Mary Pickford's career, and everyone knows Mary Pickford is awesome. And Canadian!

Mary Pickford, a curly blonde Canadian, dons a native looking wig for Ramona. 

Anyhow, Griffith gets here in Los Angeles, and then here's about this little village called Hollywood. They travelled up and shot another short called In Old California, generally regarded to be the first film of any length shot in Hollywood. Naturally it's another love letter to Spanish colonial California. The East Coasters loved that stuff.

Biograph decided to move to LA permanently, setting up a studio in downtown in 1911. In 1913, Cecil B. DeMille is credited with setting up Hollywood's first major film company studio. He rented a barn at what is now Vine St. between Sunset and Hollywood for $250 a month, then used it to film a Western called The Squaw Man. Made for just $15k, the movie grossed $200k - LA's first big hit.

The old barn was moved to the Paramount Studios lot in the 20s, and was even used as part of the Bonanza set. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The Squaw Man was released by Famous Players Film Company, again a New York racket, who boasted established theater stars as their calling card. "Famous Players in Famous Plays".

Famous Players opened a studio at 5300 Melrose in 1915, one of the oldest studios in Hollywood. Of course, Famous Players, through some mergers and whatnot, became Paramount Pictures, whose studio still stands at 5500 Melrose today.

Paramount's Melrose entrance. 

Fast forward to the 1920s. In 1923 Harry Chandler erected a sign reading "Hollywoodland" to advertise his development on the Hollywood hills. It was during this decade that the "Big 5" studios became established: Warner Bros (1923), Paramount (1912 as Famous Players), RKO Pictures (as Mutual Films in 1912), MGM (1916), and 20th Century-Fox (1912).

The Reason these are the Big 5 is because they owned all three parts necessary for vertical integration. In vertical integration, the studios owned their studio space, they owned the actors/writers, and they owned theaters to show their films. The product was created and distributed all within the same corporate family.

There were also the Little 3 studios, which owned a lot and their stars, but didn't own movie theaters. Those were: Universal (1912), United Artists (1919), and Columbia (1920). UA is interesting is that it was founded by some of the biggest stars of the day (Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, DW Griffith) so they could produce and distribute their own films (not every theater was owned by one of the big five). In the end though, I think most people today just know the UA theater chain.

This map shows how all the movie studios used to be clustered in Hollywood. Fox over on Western, Warner Bros. on Gower and Sunset. Lasky, also on Western, is what merged with Famous Players to create Paramount. FBO merged with RCA and Keith-Orpheum to form RKO Studios. MGM is out in Culver City. United Artists are there on Sunset and La Brea, Universal out where they still are in Universal City. 

A few other things to point out Mack Sennett was originally making comedy's for a studio called Keystone, then went independent out in Glendale. The Hollywood Studio club, where all the arrows are pointing from, was a chaperoned dormitory for young women in the movie industry. It was founded by the YWCA, taking pity on all these poor young women coming out to California to try and make it in the movies.  

Indeed, this map was drawn for an article by Photoplay magazine, a four part series in 1927 called "The Truth About Breaking into the Movies". Photoplay had been trying to warn young women since 1923 about the dangers of coming out to Hollywood, calling it a "port of missing girls". In the 1927 article, Photoplay sent an undercover reporter to try and get work as an extra. 

The article describes the loose morals of women willing to sleep their way into a little work. It caps off by warning that many young women have to return home, pretending to be the stewards of dead bodies: "a chaperone to a corpse".

I should mention I've watched both DW Griffith's Ramona, and another silent film whose name escapes me; the second film dealing with a young woman driven to Hollywood by her father, only to discover she wasn't so special after all. The agency Central Casting, set up to coordinate the work as movie extras, reported having 9,690 extras registered, but only 1,000 of them working. 

And still, I've only scratched the surface. The history of Hollywood is so layered, but I think the most important thing to see it as is a boom industry. Just like the Gold Rush of 1949, Hollywood went from being combined with Los Angeles in 1910, to having multiple movie studios and a house for lost girls in 1927. I'll have more posts on Hollywood, I'm sure of it, as well as LA's other boom industry: Aerospace.