HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

Hollywood Studios

Hollywood Studios

In 1923, 50-foot letters spelling Hollywoodland were installed at the top of Mount Lee above Beachwood Canyon in Los Angeles, California, to advertise a new housing development. Two decades later, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce repaired the sign, which had deteriorated, and removed the last four letters, creating a world-famous icon. Today, it signifies a district of Los Angeles that runs from Vermont Avenue near downtown on the east, to Laurel Canyon about a mile from Beverly Hills on the west, to the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains along Mulholland Drive on the north, and to the City of West Hollywood on the south. Hollywood Boulevard (originally Prospect Avenue) is the area's major arterial. However, more important than its geographic reference, the word Hollywood is most often used colloquially to mean the American motion picture industry. By association, the word also signifies an illusory state of mind, a glamorous and profit-driven “Tinsel Town” that helped birth the movies, leaving an incalculable effect on the growth, development, and image of Southern California.

Daeida Wilcox, wife of real estate developer Harvey Henderson Wilcox, gave the area of Los Angeles its new name. In 1886, after moving from Topeka, Kansas, to fledgling Los Angeles, Harvey Wilcox bought 160 acres of agricultural land 7 miles west of the city along the foothills. On a train trip back east, his wife heard a woman speak about her country home, called Hollywood, and liking the sound of it, Mrs. Wilcox gave the name to the couple's ranch. The name first officially appeared the following year, when Harvey Wilcox filed with the county his grid map for a new residential suburb with Prospect Avenue as its main street and began selling lots. By 1903, the municipality was incorporated with 166 adults. A new trolley car line, called “the Hollywood boulevard,” linked the town with Los Angeles along Prospect Avenue. In 1910, 2 years after Angelenos approved the bond measure to create the Los Angeles aqueduct, Hollywood's 4,000 residents voted for annexation to secure an adequate water and sewer system. Ironically, about a century later, in 2002, the area's residents—then numbering about 300,000—took a vote on seceding from Los Angeles and becoming an incorporated city again, with the goal of gaining more local control over the area's social and economic challenges. The proposal failed.

In the intervening years, Hollywood became synonymous with the film and entertainment industry and the widely publicized reputations of its stars. In the early 1900s, East Coast motion picture companies, beginning in 1906 with New York-based Biograph, began moving out to Southern California and settling in Edendale, Santa Monica, and eventually Hollywood. The good weather and abundant sunlight needed for making films allowed for more shooting days on a year-round basis. The area also included a wide variety of natural scenery, from mountains to prairies to the seaside. Of equal importance, the West Coast was far from Thomas Edison, who owned most of the patents related to motion picture operations and ...