Hollywood, California

For other articles with the name Hollywood, see: Hollywood (disambiguation)\n----

Hollywood is a district of the City of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A Hollywood was founded in 1857. Accounts of the name coming from imported English holly bushes are said to be incorrect. The name actually came about, the story goes, because the wife of Harvey Henderson Wilcox, a real-estate developer in the late 1880s, was traveling on a train when she met a woman whose home was called "Hollywood." When Mrs. Wilcox returned home she gave that name to her ranch. The first section of the famous Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by a subdivider eager to sell residential lots among the lemon ranches then lining the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on a dusty, unpaved road with pepper trees that would eventually become Hollywood Boulevard. A single-track streetcar line ran from Los Angeles, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit packing house would be converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. In 1910, the townsmen voted to become part of the City of Los Angeles to secure a badly needed water supply. In the early 1900s, motion picture production companies from New York and New Jersey started moving to sunny California because of the good weather and longer days. Although electric lights existed at that time, none were powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for movie production was natural sunlight. Another reason was the distance of Southern California from New Jersey, which made it more difficult for Thomas Edison to enforce his motion picture patents. At the time, Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and, in the East, movie producers acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents. Thus, movie makers working on the West Coast could work independent of Edison's control. If he sent agents to California, word would usually reach Los Angeles before the agents did and the movie makers could escape to nearby Mexico. The first movie studio in the Hollywood area, Nestor Studios, was founded in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. In the same year, another fifteen Independents settled in Hollywood. Creators of dreams began arriving by the thousands; cameras cranked away, capturing images of custard pies, bathing beauties, comedy and tragedy, villains leering, heroines with long curls and heroes to save the day; and they built a new world to replace the lemon groves. Thus, the fame of Hollywood came from its identity with movies and movie stars; and the word "Hollywood," a word that, when spoken in any country on Earth, evokes worlds, even galaxies of memories, came to be colloquially used to refer to the motion picture industry in Southern California, the term deriving from the famous community.\n The famous Hollywood sign originally read "Hollywoodland." It was erected in 1923 to advertise a new housing development in the hills above Hollywood. For several years the sign was left to deteriorate. In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to remove the last four letters and repair the rest. The sign, located at the top of Mount Lee, is now a registered trademark and cannot be used without the permission of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which also manages the venerable Walk of Fame. \nThe Charlie Chaplin Studios, at La Brea and De Lonpre Avenues just south of Sunset Boulevard, was built in 1917. It has had many owners after 1953, including Kling Studios, who produced the Superman TV series with George Reeves, Red Skelton, who used the sound stages for his CBS TV variety show, and CBS filmed Perry Mason with Raymond Burr there. It has also been owned by Herb Alpert's A&M Records and Tijuana Brass Enterprises. It is currently The Jim Henson Company, home of the Muppets. In 1969, The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board named the studio a historical cultural monument. The first Academy Awards presentation ceremony took place on May 16, 1929 during a banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Tickets were $10.00 and there were two hundred and fifty people in attendance. Hollywood and the movie industry of the 1930s are described in P.G. Wodehouse's novel Laughing Gas (1936) and in Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run (1941), and is parodied in Terry Pratchett's novel Moving Pictures (1990), which is a takeoff of ''Singin' In The Rain. The famous Capitol Records building, on Vine Street just north of Hollywood Boulevard, is a recording studio not open to the public, but its unique circular design looks like a stack of old 45s. The Kodak Theatre, which opened in 2001 on Hollywood Boulevard at Highland Avenue, where the historic Hollywood Hotel once stood, has become the new home of the Oscars. In November 2002, a measure calling for Hollywood to secede from Los Angeles and form its own incorporated city failed by a wide margin.

Landmarks and interesting spots

\n*Blessed Sacrament Church\n*Bob Hope Square (Hollywood and Vine)\n*Capitol Records\n*Charlie Chaplin Studios\n*Cinerama Dome\n*Columbia Square\n*Crossroads of the World\n*Designer Donuts\n*Grauman's Chinese Theater\n*Grauman's Egyptian Theater\n*El Capitan Theater\n*Frederick's of Hollywood\n*Gower Gulch\n*Griffith Observatory\n*Griffith Park\n*Hollywood Althletic Club\n*Hollywood and Highland\n*Hollywood Bowl\n*Hollywood Forever Cemetery\n*Hollywood Heritage Museum\n*Hollywood Palace Theatre\n*Hollywood Palladium\n*Hollywood Reservoir\n*Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel\n*Hollywood Sign\n*Hollywood Walk of Fame\n*Hollywood Wax Museum\n*Janes House\n*John Anson Ford Theatre\n*KCET\n*Knickerbocker Hotel\n*Kodak Theatre\n*KTLA\n*KTTV\n*Magic Castle\n*Musso & Frank's Grill\n*Pantages Theatre\n*Paramount Studios\n*Pig 'N Whistle\n*Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Odditorium\n*Rock 'n' Roll Ralphs\n*Rock Walk\n*Sunset Gower Studios\n*William S. Hart Park\n*Yamishiro Restaurant

See also

\n*List of Hollywood novels\n*List of movie-related topics\n*List of movies set in Los Angeles\n*List of television shows set in Los Angeles\n*West Hollywood, California \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Category:Los Angeles neighborhoods