destination: hollywood

Destination: HollywoodThe film industry found its feet in the 1910s, when the Nestor Company studio and directors such as Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith gravitated to Hollywood. The sleepy agricultural community, which until then had thrived on banana, pineapple, hay and grain production, caught their interest for its broad range of natural settings, ample sunshine and temperate climate. It also didn't hurt that the more than 2,700 miles that separated Hollywood from Menlo Park, N.J., the site of Thomas Edison's laboratory, complicated enforcement of Edison's fiercely protected motion picture patents.

Hollywood History in the Making

In just a few short years, the debut of movie studios enabled the industry to take on a new dimension. Under the guidance of such visionaries as Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer and Albert, Harry, Jack and Samuel Warner, the studios maintained sound stages and back lots. Filmmaking continued to explode as European directors, including Briton Alfred Hitchcock, Austrian Fritz Lang and Frenchman Jean Renoir, immigrated overseas and New York actors headed west. Vertical integration—in which studios exercised near-monopolistic control of everything from actors, writers and producers to theaters nationwide—and the rise of block booking, in which theaters were sold 20 or so films as a unit, allowed for continued growth, enabling studios to churn out 400 films annually at the industry's mid-1940s peak. After then, the Golden Age of Hollywood tarnished in the wake of studio-breaking federal antitrust rulings, post-war communist witch hunts and the advent of television.

Today, the centers of editing, effects and post-production remain in Hollywood, but much of the rest of the industry sprawls into Burbank, Culver City, Studio City and L.A.'s Westside. Such iconic spots as TCL Chinese Theatre , the Walk of Fame and Dolby Theatre, home to the Academy Awards ceremony, exemplify Hollywood's lingering importance in filmmaking, while the attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood plop you square in the middle of the action. A former studio at Selma and Vine streets, the Lasky-DeMille Barn lives on as the Hollywood Heritage Museum. The National Register of Historic Places officially protected Hollywood Boulevard's entertainment district in 1985, ensuring that the city's past be always preserved.