Encyclopedia
- For the American film industry, see Cinema of the United States. See also Classical Hollywood cinema and New Hollywood.
Hollywood is a
district in
Los Angeles, California,
U.S.A., situated west-northwest of
Downtown. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and stars, the word "Hollywood" is often used as a metonym for the
American film and television industry. Today much of the movie industry has dispersed into surrounding areas such as
Burbank and the
Westside, but significant ancillary industries remain in Hollywood.
Many historic Hollywood theaters are used as venues to premiere major theatrical releases, and host the
Academy Awards. It is a popular destination for nightlife and tourism, and home to the
Walk of Fame.
There is currently no official boundary of Hollywood , but the
and the current can serve as guides. There is a sign at the northeast corner of Fairfax Avenue and
Melrose Avenue indicating that one is entering Hollywood. Generally, Hollywood's southern border follows
Melrose Avenue from Vermont Avenue west to Fairfax Avenue. From there, the boundary continues north on Fairfax, wrapping east around the separate City of
West Hollywood along Willoughby Avenue then wrapping around on La Brea and heads west along Fountain Avenue before turning north again on Laurel Canyon Boulevard into the Hollywood Hills. The eastern boundary follows Vermont Avenue north from Melrose past
Hollywood Boulevard to Franklin Avenue. From there, the border travels west along Franklin to Western Avenue, and then north on Western into
Griffith Park. Most of the hills between Laurel Canyon and Griffith Park are part of Hollywood. The commercial, cultural, and transportation center of Hollywood is the area where La Brea Avenue, Highland Avenue, Cahuenga Boulevard, and Vine Street intersect
Hollywood Boulevard and
Sunset Boulevard. The population of the district is estimated to be about 300,000.
As a portion of the City of Los Angeles, Hollywood does not have its own municipal government, but does have an appointed official that serves as "honorary mayor" for ceremonial purposes only. Currently, the "mayor" is Johnny Grant.
History
In 1853, one
adobe hut stood on the site that became Hollywood. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished in the area with thriving crops. In the 1880s, Harvey Henderson Wilcox of
Kansas, who made a fortune in real estate even though he had lost the use of his legs due to typhoid fever, and his wife, Daeida, moved to Los Angeles from
Topeka. In 1886, Wilcox bought 160 acres of land in the countryside to the west of the city at the foothills and the Cahuenga Pass.
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
English holly then growing in the area are incorrect. There is some disagreement as to who was the first to name the place Hollywood. One correct account says that the name in fact was coined by H.J. Whitley, the Father of Hollywood. He and his wife Gigi came up with the name in 1886 while on their honeymoon. Over the years Whitley had established more than 140 towns. Another account is that Mrs. Wilcox -- while on a train she became acquainted with a wealthy lady who often spoke of her country home named Hollywood, and when she returned to Los Angles she so named her country place.
By 1900, the community called Cahuenga also had a post office, a newspaper, a hotel and two markets, along with a population of 500 people. Los Angeles, with a population of 100,000 people at the time, lay seven miles east through the citrus groves. A single-track
streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue 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 of Hollywood.
The first section of the famous Hollywood Hotel, the first major hotel in Hollywood, was opened in 1902 by H.J. Whitley, eager to sell residential lots among the lemon ranches then lining the foothills. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue. Still a dusty, unpaved road, it was regularly graded and graveled.
Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. Among the town ordinances was one prohibiting the sale of
liquor except by
pharmacists and one 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.
By 1910, because of an ongoing struggle to secure an adequate
water supply, the townsmen voted for Hollywood to be annexed into the City of Los Angeles, as the water system of the growing city had opened the
Los Angeles Aqueduct and was piping water down from the
Owens River in the
Owens Valley. Another reason for the vote was that Hollywood could have access to drainage through Los Angeles' sewer system.
With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue was changed to
Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers in the new district changed. For example, 100 Prospect Avenue, at Vermont Avenue, became 6400 Hollywood Boulevard; and 100 Cahuenga Boulevard, at Hollywood Boulevard, changed to 1700 Cahuenga Boulevard.
Hollywood and the motion picture industry
In early 1910, director
D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troop consisting of actors
Blanche Sweet,
Lillian Gish,
Mary Pickford,
Lionel Barrymore, and others. They started filming on a vacant lot near Georgia Street in Downtown
Los Angeles. The Company decided to explore new territories and traveled several miles north to a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. This place was called "
Hollywood". D. W. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood called
In Old California, a Biograph melodrama about Latino/Mexican-occupied California in the 1800s. Biograph stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. After hearing about this wonderful place, in 1913 many movie-makers headed west. With this film, the movie industry was "born" in Hollywood which soon became the movie capital of the world.
Modern Hollywood
On January 22, 1947, the first commercial TV station west of the
Mississippi River,
KTLA, began operating in Hollywood. In December of that year, the first Hollywood movie production was made for TV,
The Public Prosecutor. And in the
1950s, music recording studios and offices began moving into Hollywood. Other businesses, however, continued to migrate to different parts of the Los Angeles area, primarily to
Burbank. Much of the movie industry remained in Hollywood, although the district's outward appearance changed.
In 1952,
CBS built
CBS Television City on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard on the former site of Gilmore Stadium. CBS's expansion into the Fairfax District pushed the unofficial boundary of Hollywood further south than it had been. CBS's slogan for the shows taped there was "From Television City in Hollywood..."
The famous
Capitol Records building on Vine Street just north of
Hollywood Boulevard was built in 1956. It is a recording studio not open to the public, but its unique circular design looks like a stack of old 45rpm vinyl records.
The now derelect lot at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Serrano Avenue was once the site of the illustrious Hollywood Professional School whose alumni reads like a Hollywood who's who of household "names".
The
Hollywood Walk of Fame was created in 1958 and the first star was placed in 1960 as a tribute to artists working in the entertainment industry. Honorees receive a star based on career and lifetime achievements in motion pictures, live
theatre, radio,
television, and/or
music, as well as their charitable and civic contributions.
In 1985, the Hollywood Boulevard commercial and entertainment district was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places protecting important buildings and ensuring that the significance of Hollywood's past would always be a part of its future.
In June 1999, the long-awaited Hollywood extension of the
Metro Red Line subway opened, running from
Downtown Los Angeles to the
Valley, with stops on Hollywood Boulevard at Western Avenue, at Vine Street and at Highland Avenue.
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.
While motion picture production still occurs within the Hollywood district, most major studios are actually located elsewhere in the Los Angeles region.
Paramount Studios is the only major studio still physically located within Hollywood. Other studios in the district include the aforementioned Jim Henson Studios, Sunset Gower Studios, and Raleigh Studios. Several local broadcasters such as
KTLA also maintain studios there, while ABC still has a studio facility on Hollywood's east side; but most of that network's programming is now produced out of the Walt Disney Studios in
Burbank. The Los Angeles ABC affiliate, KABC also moved to a new studio in
Glendale, California.
In 2002, a number of Hollywood citizens began a campaign for the district to secede from Los Angeles and become, as it had been a century earlier, its own incorporated municipality. Secession supporters argued that the needs of their community were being ignored by the leaders of Los Angeles. In June of that year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors placed secession referendums for both Hollywood and the
Valley on the ballots for a "citywide election." To pass, they required the approval of a majority of voters in the proposed new municipality as well as a majority of voters in all of Los Angeles. In the November election, both referendums failed by wide margins in the citywide vote.
Runaways
A serious problem for Hollywood since the
1960s has been its attractiveness for desperate runaways. Every year, hundreds of runaway adolescents flee broken homes across
North America and flock to Hollywood hoping to become movie stars, as portrayed by the lyrics of the 1960s
Burt Bacharach song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" whose lyrics include the words: "All the stars / That never were / Are parking cars / And pumping gas." Such individuals soon discover that they have extremely slim chances of competing against professionally trained actors. Many of them end up sinking into
homelessness, which is a problem in Hollywood for adults as well as youth.
Some return home, while others linger in Hollywood and join the
prostitutes and
panhandlers lining its
boulevards; others go to
Skid Row in
Downtown Los Angeles; and yet others end up in the large
pornography industry in the
San Fernando Valley. This side of Hollywood was portrayed in
Jackson Browne's 1980 song, "Boulevard", whose lyrics include reference to a notorious hustler hangout of the
1970s, with the words: "Down at the Golden Cup / They set the young ones up / Under the neon lights / Selling day for night." This phenomenon is also portrayed in the books of Charles Bukowski.
Revitalization
After many years of serious decline, Hollywood is now undergoing rapid gentrification and revitalization with the goal of urban density in mind. Many new developments have been completed, and many more are planned, and several are centered on Hollywood Boulevard itself. In particular, the Hollywood & Highland complex, which is also the site of the Kodak Theater, has been a major catalyst for the redevelopment of the area. In addition, numerous trendy bars, clubs, and retail businesses have opened on or surrounding the boulevard, allowing it to become one of the main nighttime spots in all of Los Angeles. Many older buildings have also been coverted to lofts and condominiums, and a W Hotel is planned at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, which will serve to even further revitalize the area.
Hollywood area neighborhoods
- Beachwood Canyon
- Cahuenga Pass
- East Hollywood
- Franklin Hills
- Hollywood Heights
- Hollywood Hills
- Laurel Canyon
- Little Armenia
- Melrose District
- Mount Olympus
- Outpost Estates
- Sierra Vista
- Spaulding Square
- Thai Town
- Yucca Corridor
Education
Students who live in Hollywood are zoned to Ramona Elementary, Gardner Elementary, Valley View Elementary School, Cherimoya Grammar School, Bancroft Middle, Le Conte Junior High and
Hollywood High School.
For many years, the motion picture Industry had its own private
Industry-run institution for child actors, the Hollywood Professional School.
The alumni of HPS reads like a veritable who's who of some of filmdom's greatest stars.
Landmarks and interesting spots
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- Rock Walk
- Sunset and Vine apartment complex
- Sunset Gower Studios
- William S. Hart Park
- Yamashiro Restaurant
See also
.- Hollywood Principle
- Fuchsia A color called "Hollywood cerise" is displayed.
External links
