About HollywoodHollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los

Angeles, California. It is notable for its place as the home of the entertainment industry, including several of its historic studios. Its name has come to be a metonym for the motion

picture industry of the United States. Hollywood is also a highly ethnically diverse, densely populated, economically

diverse neighborhood and retail business district.

How it all startedHollywood was a small community in 1870 and was

incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It officially merged with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, and soon thereafter a

prominent film industry began to emerge, eventually becoming the most dominant and recognizable in the world.

By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production near or in Los Angeles. In the early 1900s, Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey held most motion picture

patents, and filmmakers were often sued to stop their productions. To escape this, filmmakers began moving out west, where Edison's

patents could not be enforced. Also, the weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the

capital of the film industry.

Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood. His 17-minute short film In Old California (1910) was filmed for the Biograph Company. Although Hollywood

banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction. The

first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911. The Whitley home

was used as its set, and the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves at the corner of Whitley Avenue and

Hollywood Boulevard.

The first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a

roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard (the corner of Gower), in October 1911.

IndustryFour major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO,

and Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was

the fifth largest industry in the nation.

Hollywood became known as Tinseltown and Movie Biz City because of the glittering image of the movie industry. Hollywood has since

become a major center for film study in the United States.

Cinema of the US.The cinema of the United States, often generally referred to as

Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes

separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period. While the French Lumière Brothers are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, it is American cinema that soon became the most dominant force in an emerging industry. Since the 1920s, the American film

industry has grossed more money every year than that of any other country.

Motion pictures

In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first

commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The United States was in the

forefront of sound film development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based

in and around Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Picture City, Florida was also a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, the idea

collapsed and Picture City returned to its original name of Hobe Sound. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar. Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in

critics' polls as the greatest film of all time.

Rise of HollywoodIn early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troupe, consisting

of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore and others. They started filming on a vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood, a little village that was

friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old

California, a Biograph melodrama about California in the 19th century, when it belonged to Mexico. Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. After hearing about Griffith's success in Hollywood, in 1913, many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison, who owned patents on the movie-making

process

Golden age of HollywoodDuring the Golden Age of Hollywood, which lasted from the

end of the silent era in American cinema in the late 1920s to the early 1960s, thousands of movies were issued from the

Hollywood studios. The start of the Golden Age was arguably when the Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the silent era and increasing box-office profits for films as sound was

introduced to feature films.

Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a formula – Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, biographical film (biographical picture) – and the same

creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For example, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart

always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. De Mille's films were

almost all made at Paramount, and director Henry King's films were mostly made for 20th Century Fox.

Nestor Studios of Bayonne, New Jersey, built the first studio in Hollywood in 1911. Nestor Studios, owned by David and

William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, now called

the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. California's more hospitable and cost-effective climate led to the eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the West Coast by the 1930s. At the time,

Thomas Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and movie producers on the East

Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his

agents, while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control

The studio systemMovie-making was still a business however, and motion

picture companies made money by operating under the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of people on

salary — actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, crafts persons, and technicians. They owned or leased Movie

Ranches in rural Southern California for location shooting of westerns and other large-scale genre films. And they owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across the nation,

theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material.

The Hays codeIn 1930, MPPDA President Will Hays created the Hays

(Production) Code, which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government

threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after the Catholic

watchdog organization The Legion of Decency – appalled by some of the provocative films and lurid

advertising of the era later classified Pre-Code Hollywood- threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it didn't go into effect. Those films that didn't obtain a

seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $25,000 fine and could not profit in the theaters, as the MPPDA controlled every theater in the country through the Big Five studios.

New HollywoodPost-classical cinema is the term used to describe the

changing methods of storytelling in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and

characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled,

storylines may feature "twist endings", and lines between the antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in film noir, in Rebel Without

a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho.

Home video marketThe 1980s and 1990s saw another significant development. The full acceptance of home video by studios opened a vast new business to exploit. Films such as Batman, Showgirls, The Secret of NIMH and The Shawshank Redemption, which may have performed poorly in their theatrical run, were now able to find success in the video market. It also saw the first generation of film makers with access to video tapes emerge. Directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson had been able to view thousands of films and produced films with vast numbers of references and connections to previous works.

Modern cinemaThe drive to produce a spectacle on the movie screen has largely shaped American cinema ever since. Spectacular epics which took

advantage of new widescreen processes had been increasingly popular from the 1950s onwards. Since then, American films have become increasingly divided into two categories: Blockbusters and

independent films.Studios have focused on relying on a handful of extremely

expensive releases every year in order to remain profitable. Such blockbusters emphasize spectacle, star power, and high

production value, all of which entail an enormous budget. Blockbusters typically rely upon star power and massive

advertising to attract a huge audience. A successful blockbuster will attract an audience large enough to offset

production costs and reap considerable profits.

FACTS ABOUT HOLLYWOOD1. Hollywood was given its name by the real estate developer

Hobart Johnstone Whitley while on his honeymoon in 1886.

2. The huge ‘Hollywood’ sign was put up in 1923 and originally spelt out the word ‘Hollywoodland’.

3. In 1932, Broadway actress Peg Entwistle committed suicide by jumping off the letter H.

4. The annual Academy Awards or Oscars were first held in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This fairly cozy banquet was attended by 270 people. Only 15 different awards were presented on that night. However, in true Hollywood fashion, even back then there was an after-party!