Lesson Seven: Hollywood's Beginnings
Movies kick-started in France, England, and landed across the ocean where you'd expect: New York. So when and how did Hollywood work itself in to the mix?
I felt like the first ever movie to be shot in Hollywood merited a lesson, right? Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find even a small clip of the first film set in Hollywood, a 17 minute 1910 Western called In Old California, anywhere. Apparently it tells the story of a Spanish woman during the reign of Spanish and Mexican owned California in the early 19th century. If it’s at all along the lines of A Great Train Robbery, another influential Western (but for narrative, not location), I probably would have to force myself through it, anyway. Some things are timeless for me, some things are not. More interesting is imagining how Hollywood as we know it today got its modest start.
Influential early director D.W. Griffith fatefully discovered the little town of Hollywood, and thought the friendly people and warm weather ideal for filming. That first was shot in February 1910 (Hollywood had its 100th anniversary in film this year). Only one month previously, Hollywood had given up its status as a separate community in favor of incorporation into greater Los Angeles because of a desire for access to water. Fate would have it that Hollywood would, within a few years, become a world-famous name. Of course, today Hollywood still enjoys insane name-recognition. I remember when I lived in New Zealand, a dreamy co-worker asked, wide-eyed, if I’d ever been there. It ultimately became synonymous with American film production as a whole, and has numerous connotations.
I felt like the first ever movie to be shot in Hollywood merited a lesson, right? Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find even a small clip of the first film set in Hollywood, a 17 minute 1910 Western called In Old California, anywhere. Apparently it tells the story of a Spanish woman during the reign of Spanish and Mexican owned California in the early 19th century. If it’s at all along the lines of A Great Train Robbery, another influential Western (but for narrative, not location), I probably would have to force myself through it, anyway. Some things are timeless for me, some things are not. More interesting is imagining how Hollywood as we know it today got its modest start.
Influential early director D.W. Griffith fatefully discovered the little town of Hollywood, and thought the friendly people and warm weather ideal for filming. That first was shot in February 1910 (Hollywood had its 100th anniversary in film this year). Only one month previously, Hollywood had given up its status as a separate community in favor of incorporation into greater Los Angeles because of a desire for access to water. Fate would have it that Hollywood would, within a few years, become a world-famous name. Of course, today Hollywood still enjoys insane name-recognition. I remember when I lived in New Zealand, a dreamy co-worker asked, wide-eyed, if I’d ever been there. It ultimately became synonymous with American film production as a whole, and has numerous connotations.