Filmed on Monday, March 4 2024, I drive around the Hollywood Hills in Hollywood, California to see what's going on.
Prior to development, the area known as Hollywood today was occupied by a 480 acre ranch. H. J. Whitley, a real estate developer, arranged to buy the E.C. Hurd ranch. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Ivar Weid, a prominent businessman in the area.
The naming of Hollywood is credited to Daeida Wilcox, wife of Harvey H. Wilcox, who purchased 120 acres in 1887. She learned of the name Hollywood from an acquaintance who owned an estate by that name in Illinois. Wilcox is quoted as saying, "I chose the name Hollywood simply because it sounds nice and because I'm superstitious and holly brings good luck."
By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel, and two markets. Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479, lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, and citrus groves. Hollywood was connected via a single-track street car line, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours.
The Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H.J. Whitley. Having finally acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. The structure fronted on Prospect Avenue (later Hollywood Boulevard), and although it was still a dusty, unpaved road, it was regularly graded and graveled. The hotel became internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of movie stars for many years.
On January 30, 1904, the voters in Hollywood decided, 113 to 96, to banish the sale of liquor within the city, except for medicinal purposes.
In 1910, the city voted for a merger with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L.A. sewer system.
By 1912, major motion-picture companies had come West to set up production near or in Los Angeles. In the early 1900s, most motion picture camera and equipment patents were held by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey, which often sued filmmakers to stop their productions. To escape this, filmmakers began moving to Los Angeles, where attempts to enforce Edison's patents were easier to evade.
Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry in the United States. The mountains, plains and low land prices made Hollywood a good place to establish film studios.
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 had banned movie theaters before merging with LA, Los Angeles had no such restriction.
The Nestor Film Company was the first studio, established in October 1911 by the New Jersey-based Centaur Film Company at 6121 Sunset Boulevard.
Four 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 movie production was the fifth-largest industry in the nation. By the 1930s, Hollywood studios became fully vertically integrated, as production, distribution and exhibition was controlled by these companies, enabling Hollywood to produce 600 films per year. Hollywood became known as Tinseltown because of the glittering image of the movie industry.
A large sign reading HOLLYWOODLAND was erected in the Hollywood Hills in 1923 to advertise real estate developers Woodruff's and Shoults' housing development. In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce entered a contract with the City of Los Angeles to repair and rebuild the sign. The agreement stipulated that LAND be removed to spell HOLLYWOOD so the sign would now refer to the district, rather than the housing development.
The Capitol Records Building on Vine Street, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, was built in 1956. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was created in 1958 as a tribute to artists and other significant contributors to the entertainment industry.
In 1994, Hollywood, Alabama, and ten other towns named Hollywood successfully fought an attempt by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to trademark the name and force same-named communities to pay royalties to it.
The Dolby Theatre, which opened in 2001 as the Kodak Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center mall, is the site of the annual Academy Awards programs. The mall is located where the historic Hollywood Hotel once stood. In this video, you can see the area blocked off in preparation for the 2024 Academy Awards.
The neighborhood underwent years of serious decline in the 1980s, with crime and drugs increasing. Since 2000, Hollywood has been increasingly gentrified due to revitalization by private enterprise. In 2022, there were 1,374 homeless individuals in Hollywood.
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