Hollywood … the beginning
Hollywood symbol of fame, power and film. All they want to go to Hollywood in search of glory and wealth, someone successful and someone returned empty-handed. But Hollywood has not always been the glory and fame as today’s modern Hollywood. Everything has its beginning, and not all beginnings must be famous and great. Let this truly unique images of old Hollywood at the beginning of their path of glory. In 1853, one adobe hut stood on the site that became Hollywood. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished in the area with thriving crops. A locally popular etymology is that the name “Hollywood” traces to the ample stands of native Toyon or “California Holly”, that cover the hillsides with clusters of bright red berries each winter. But this and accounts of the name coming from imported holly then growing in the area, are not confirmed. The name Hollywood was coined by H. J. Whitley, the Father of Hollywood.
Hollywood was finally incorporated as a municipality in 1903. As Daeida Wilcox-Beveridge was an ardent prohibitionist, among the town ordinances was one prohibiting the sale of liquor except by pharmacists. Another that demonstrates the vast difference between today’s and early Hollywood was a law outlawing the driving of cattle through the streets in herds of more than two hundred. In 1904, a new trolley car track running from Los Angeles to Hollywood up Prospect Avenue was opened. The system was called “the Hollywood Boulevard.” It cut travel time to and from Los Angeles drastically.
Filmmaking in the greater Los Angeles area preceded the establishment of filmmaking in Hollywood. The Biograph Company filmed the short film A Daring Hold-Up in Southern California in Los Angeles in 1906. The first studio in the Los Angeles area was established by the Selig Polyscope Company in Edendale, with construction beginning in August 1909. The first motion picture to be filmed in Hollywood was taken on October 26, 1911. Although the movie never really had a name, it was a true piece of Hollywood’s history. The Whitley home was used as its set. The movie was filmed in the middle of their groves on the corner of Whitley Ave and Hollywood Boulevard. The motion picture was directed by David and William Horsley and Al Christe.
Four major film companies — Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO and Columbia — had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. Hollywood had begun its dramatic transformation from sleepy suburb to movie production capital. The residential and agrarian Hollywood Boulevard of 1910 was virtually unrecognizable by 1920 as the new commercial and retail sector replaced it. The sleepy town was no more, and to the chagrin of many original residents, the boom town could not be stopped.
By 1920, Hollywood had become world famous as the center of the United States film industry. From the 1920s to the 1940s, a large percentage of transportation to and from Hollywood was by means of the red cars of the Pacific Electric Railway.
