THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

“VASILE ALECSANDRI” NATIONAL COLLEGE, BACAU

Hollywood from its very beginning to what

it is today

COORDINATING TEACHER: CANDIDATE:

STEFANA BALAN SILVIA – ELENA LUPU
GRADE: XII C

MAY 2010
Table of Contents

Foreword……………………………………………………………………………………..page 3

Chapter I: The birth of film, the birth of Hollywood

1.1 Precursors of film and experimental films………………………………………………..page 4

1.2 Hollywood – first steps……………………………………………………………………page 4

Chapter II: The development of film art

2.1 Classical cinema…………………………………………………………………………..page 5

2.2 Golden age of Hollywood…………………………………………………………………page 6
2.3 The structure of the American film industry………………………………………………page 7

Chapter III: Modern Hollywood

3.1 Post-classical cinema………………………………………………………………………page 7

3.2 Independent film and home video market…………………………………………………page 8
3.3 Academy Awards and the Walk of Fame………………………………………………….page 9

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………page 10

Bibliography............................................................................................................................page 11

2
 Foreword

I chose this topic because I have always been fascinated by the film techniques and by the whole history
of Hollywood. Once, I actually wanted to study film art and to become a stage director. If I do not have
this possibility, at least I can learn more about film industry, about its beginnings and the process of
shooting a movie.
I explained in this paperwork how the first motion pictures and experimental films were created and then
how Hollywood was built, about the development of new kinds of movies and the success of the
American film industry with all its improvements. In the end I presented the modern Hollywood and its
innovations.
Although many films are shot on location in cities and countries throughout the world, Hollywood
remains the symbolic center of the U.S. motion-picture industry. Since the first film was made there, the
community has come to signify the film industry in general - its morals, manners, and characteristics.

3
 Chapter I: The birth of film, the birth of Hollywood

1.1 Precursors of film and experimental films

Technically speaking, the history of film covers over a hundred years, from the latter part of the 19 th
century to the present day and beyond. Motion pictures developed gradually from Edison’s invention – the
Kinetoscope – to one of the most important tools of communication, entertainment and mass-media in the
20th century. Films have had a substantial impact on the arts, technology and politics.
Many inventors, scientists and manufacturers have observed the visual phenomenon that a series of
individual still pictures set into motion created the illusion of movement - a concept termed persistence of
vision. This illusion of motion was first described by British physician Peter Mark Roget in 1824, and was
a first step in the development of the cinema. Optical toys, shadow shows, 'magic lanterns,' and visual
tricks have existed for thousands of years.
By the 1880s the development of the motion picture camera allowed the individual component images to
be captured and stored on a single reel, and led quickly to the development of a motion picture projector to
shine light through the processed and printed film and magnify these "moving picture shows" onto a
screen for an entire audience. These reels, so exhibited, came to be known as "motion pictures". Early
motion pictures were static shots that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic
techniques. In 1878, under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge successfully
photographed a horse named Sallie Gardner in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The
experiment took place on June 11 at the Palo Alto farm in California with the press present. The cameras
were arranged along a track parallel to the horse, and each of the camera shutters were controlled by a trip
wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves.
In the silent era of film, marrying the image with synchronous sound was not possible for inventors and
producers, since no practical method was devised until 1923. Illustrated songs were a notable exception to
this trend that began in 1894 in vaudeville houses and persisted as late as the late 1930s in movie theaters.
His main purpose of illustrated songs was to encourage sheet music sales, and they were highly successful
with sales reaching into the millions for a single song. Later, with the birth of film, illustrated songs were
used as filler material preceding films and during reel changes.

1.2 Hollywood – first steps

The word “Hollywood” is often used for the American cinema. Today, much of the movie industry has
dispersed in surrounding areas, but auxiliary industries such as editing, effects, props, post-production and
lighting companies remain in Hollywood, and so does Paramount Pictures.
One etymology for the name "Hollywood" traces to the ample stands of native Toyon or "California
Holly", which cover the hillsides with clusters of bright red berries each winter. By the 1870s an
agricultural community flourished in the area and crops ranging from hay and grain to subtropical bananas
and pineapples were thriving. In 1886, H. H. Wilcox bought an area of Rancho La Brea that his wife then
christened "Hollywood". The probable origin of the name is from "Holy Wood" but based upon published
papers and other documents, it now seems that the name Hollywood was coined by H. J. Whitley, the
Father of Hollywood. He came up with the name in his honeymoon, with his wife, Gigi, in 1886,
according to Margaret Virginia Whitley's memoir.

4
Within a few years, Wilcox had devised a grid plan for his new community, paved Prospect Avenue1 for
his main street and was selling large residential lots to wealthy Midwesterners looking to build homes so
they could "winter in California." By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel and two
markets, along with a population of 500. Prospect Avenue soon became a prestigious residential street
populated with large Queen Anne, Victorian, and Mission Revival houses. Mrs. Daeida Wilcox raised
funds to build churches, schools and a library and Hollywood quickly became a complete and prosperous
community. Banks, restaurants, clubs and movie palaces sprang up, catering to the demands of the
burgeoning film industry during the 1920s and 1930s. The architectural styles of the buildings were
representative of those most popular between the World Wars. Banks were typically designed in the more
formal Beaux Arts styles, but other buildings in the community took on more playful personalities. By
1920, Hollywood had become world famous as the center of the United States film industry.

Chapter II: The development of film art

2.1 Classical cinema

The years 1914-1919 in America saw the consolidation of the forms of what was to become the dominant
mode of commercial cinema: “classical cinema”. Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film
history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of
production used in the American film industry between the 1910s and the 1960s. During this period there
were other styles that were still important, and these can be considered to lies along a spectrum between
the best examples of “continuity cinema” at one extreme, and at the other extreme the “dis-continuity
cinema” of D.W. Griffith. As well as all this there was Griffith's habit of moving the action into another
shot in an adjoining space, and then back again if it was at all possible, he produced a marked change in
background, which also made its small contribution to the discontinuity between shots. Griffith had a
major influence on the simplification of film stories. After he had been at Biograph for a year, Griffith
started to make some films that had much less story content than any previous one-reel films.
The style of Classical Hollywood cinema, as elaborated by David Bordwell, has been heavily influenced
by the ideas of the Renaissance and its resurgence of mankind as the focal point. The mode of production
came to be known as the Hollywood studio system and the star system, which standardized the way
movies were produced. All film workers were employees of a particular film studio.
While the boundaries are vague, the Classical era is generally held to begin in 1927 with the release
of The Jazz Singer. Since its premiere in 1927, many jazz critics have overlooked The Jazz Singer,
America's pioneer talking picture but despite its title, the talkie's account of Old World vs. New World
tension and Jewish assimilation has little to do with the jazz sound made famous by such artists as Louis
Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Using jazz to represent Raboniwitz's break from Old World tradition
and featuring a finale in blackface minstrelsy, The Jazz Singer lays the foundation for cultural
representations of jazz in American cinema.
Hollywood classicism gradually declined with the collapse of the studio system, the advent of television,
the growing popularity of auteurism among directors, and the increasing influence of foreign films
and independent film making.

1
Now Hollywood Boulevard
5
2.2 Golden Age of Hollywood

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, which lasted from the end of the silent era in American cinema in
the late 1920s to the early 1960s, movies were prolifically issued by the Hollywood studios. Most
Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a genre and the same creative teams often worked on films made
by the same studio. This development was contemporary with the growth of the studio system and its
greatest publicity method, the star system, which characterized American film for decades to come and
provided models for other movie industries.
In 1927, Warner Bros. gained huge success and was able to acquire their own string of movie theaters.
MGM had also owned the Loews string of theaters since forming in 1924, and the Fox Film Corporation
owned the Fox Theatre strings as well. Also, RKO2 responded to the Western Electric monopoly over
sound in films, and developed their own method, known as Photophone, to put sound in films. Movie
making was still a business, however, and motion picture companies made money by operating under
the studio system. The major studios kept thousands of people on salary actors, producers, directors,
writers, stunt men, crafts persons, and technicians. And they owned hundreds of theaters in cities and
towns across America, theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material.
By 1930, the motion picture industry had become, in economic terminology, a mature oligopoly. The
merger movement had run its course, with the result that five companies dominated the screen in the
United States. The largest was Warner Bros. with its one hundred subsidiaries; the wealthiest was Loew’s,
Inc., the theater chain that owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; and the most complex and far-flung was
Paramount. These and two other giants with equally formidable holdings, RKO and Twentieth Century-
Fox along with their allied theater enterprises, became known as the Big Five. All were fully integrated:
they produced motion pictures, operated worldwide distribution outlets, and owned chains of theaters
where their pictures were guaranteed a showing. These majors companies held monopolostic control of a
type that is „frequently hard to trace and appraise, and though more or less consistently evolved, that
varies endlessly in methods or application and degrees of effectiveness”, in the word of Robert A. Brady.
„One might regard the movie industry as dominated by a semicompulsory cartel”, Brady adds „or even a
community of interests’ of the type that typically stops short of the more readily indictable offenses under
usual Anti-Trust procedure.” The Big Five competed with one another at the first-run level in the large
cities, but in the neighbourhoods and smaller towns, the situation was different. In building their chains,
the Big Five acquired theaters in different regions of the country.
Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the industry and had the top
stars in Hollywood, and was also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. MGM stars
included at various times King of Hollywood Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gary Cooper, Mary
Pickford, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Gene Kelly, Gloria
Stuart, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, John Barrymore, Audrey Hepburn and Judy
Garland. Sound films emphasized and benefited different genres more so than silent did. Most obviously,
the musical film was born; the first classic-style Hollywood musical was The Broadway Melody (1929).
The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics
as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Only Angels Have
Wings and Midnight. Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be
classics: Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, King Kong, Citizen Kane, Some Like
It Hot, All About Eve, Duck Soup, etc.

2
a 1928 merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America
6
2.3 The structure of the American film industry

By 1930, the motion picture industry had become, in economic terminology, a mature oligopoly. The
merger movement had run its course, with the result that five companies dominated the screen in the
United States. The largest was Warner Bros. with its one hundred subsidiaries, the wealthiest was Loew’s,
Inc.,the theater chain that owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the most complex and far-flung was
Paramount. These and two other giants with equally formidable holdings, RKO and Twentieth Century-
Fox along with their allied theater enterprises, became known as the Big Five. Operating in a sort of
symbiotic relationship with the Big Five were the Little Three: Universal, Columbia, and United Artists.
With stables of stars, writers, directors, producers, cameramen, and other artists and technicians, each of
the majors (with the exception of UA) produced from forty to sixty pictures a year. Although in total their
productions represented around 60 percent of the industry’s annual output, practically all the class-A
features, the ones that played in the best theatres and generated the most revenue, were made and
distributed by these eight companies. They regularly loaned one another high priced stars and technicians
on mutually satisfactory terms. Independent producers, for the most part, were not accorded this right or
had to pay premium rates.
The monopolistic structure of the industry was chalenged by the Department of Justice, culminating in
1938 in the antitrust case United States vs. Paramount Pictures, Inc.3 The case reached the Supreme Court
ten years later, after thousands of pages of testimony an exhibits, two consent decrees, two lower-court
decisions, and appeals. In a landmark decision, the Court held that the Big Five were parties to a
combination that had monopoly in exhibition as a goal. One result was that the five integrated companies
were directed to divorce their theater holdings from the production-distribution ends of their business. The
proceedings, along with the rise of television brought an era to a close.

Chapter III: Modern Hollywood

3.1 Post-classical cinema

The New Hollywood and post-classical cinema are terms used to describe the period following the decline
of the studio system during the 1950s and 1960s and the end of the production code. During the 1970s,
filmmakers increasingly depicted explicit sexual content and showed gunfight and battle scenes that
included graphic images of bloody deaths.
The beginnings of post-classical storytelling may be seen in 1940s and 1950s with films such as Rebel
Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's Psycho. 1971 marked the release of controversial films
like Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, The French Connection and Dirty Harry. This sparked heated
controversy over the perceived escalation of violence in cinema.
Hollywood could not always predict which films would do well - what worked in the past no longer was a
sure thing in the present. However, it was clear that more emphasis had to be placed into the hands of the
director (regarded as a creative and powerful auteur), who was functioning very independently of the
weakened studio system.
3
(1948) also known as the Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948, the Paramount Case, the Paramount Decision or the Paramount Decree was a
landmark United States Supreme Court anti-trust case that decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theatres and holding
exclusivity rights on which theatres would show their films.
7
Frankenheimer4, who gained experience directing TV plays for Playhouse 90, started the decade with The
Young Savages (1961), a film with Burt Lancaster about juvenile delinquency, and then his first critical
hit The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), about the ornithologist-inmate Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster)
sentenced to life imprisonment. His most acclaimed film at the time was the chilling, political spy
thriller/black comedy based on Richard Condon's novel The Manchurian Candidate (1962). It was a stark
black-and-white film that starred Laurence Harvey as a Korean War hero/veteran ("the kindest, bravest,
warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known...") who was brain-washed by the Communists
and upon his return to the US was programmed to kill on command and attempt a political assassination.
Angela Lansbury played his evil mother who goaded her son into assassination.

3.2 Independent film and home video market

The drive to produce a spectacle on the movie screen has largely shaped American cinema ever since.
Spectacular epics which took advantage of new widescreen processes had been increasingly popular from
the 1950s onwards. Since then, American films have become increasingly divided into two
categories: blockbusters5 and independent films. Studios have focused on relying on a handful of
extremely expensive releases every year in order to remain profitable.
The individualist "underground" movement began almost immediately in the decade with actor John
Cassavetes' first film, the experimental, psychological thriller Shadows (1960) with Rock Hudson - an
improvisatory, independent work filmed with a 16 mm camera. Outside the industry system, the
technically rough film was a milestone in the development of independent American films, winning the
Critics Award in the 1960 Venice Film Festival.
American independent cinema was revitalized in the late 1980s and early 1990s when another new
generation of moviemakers, including Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Kevin Smith, and Quentin
Tarantino made movies like, respectively: Do the Right Thing, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Clerks
and Reservoir Dogs. In terms of directing, screenwriting, editing, and other elements, these movies were
innovative and often irreverent, playing with and contradicting the conventions of Hollywood movies.
Furthermore, their considerable financial successes and crossover into popular culture reestablished the
commercial viability of independent film. Since then, the independent film industry has become more
clearly defined and more influential in American cinema. Many of the major studios have capitalised on
this by developing subsidiaries to produce similar films; for example Fox Searchlight Pictures6.
The 1980s and 1990s saw another significant development. The full acceptance of home video by studios
opened a vast new business to exploit. Films such as The Secret of NIMH and The Shawshank
Redemption, which performed poorly in their theatrical run, were now able to find success in the video
market. The VCR was still a popular appliance in most households (about three quarters of them in 1991)
and rentals and purchase of videotapes were big business - much larger than sales of movie theater tickets.
Rather than attending special film screenings, members of the Academy of Motion Pictures viewed Oscar-
nominated films on videotape, beginning in 1994.
By 1997, the first DVDs (digital video discs) had emerged in stores, featuring sharper resolution pictures,
better quality and durability than videotape, interactive extras, and more secure copy-protection. In just a
few years, sales of DVD players and the shiny discs proliferated and would surpass the sale of VCRs and
videotapes. And with the digital revolution, some pioneering film-makers were experimenting with
making digital-video (DV) films, pushing digital imagery and special effects, or projecting films digitally.
The Independent Film Channel was launched by the Bravo cable network in 1994 as an outlet for
independent films. In similar fashion, in 1995, the Sundance Channel was created by the Showtime cable
TV network (in partnership with Robert Redford). Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute (established in
4
John Michael Frankenheimer (February 19, 1930 – July 6, 2002) was an American filmmaker.
5

6
Fox Searchlight Pictures is a film division of 20th Century Fox, established in 1994. It specialises in indie and British films,
alongside dramedy and horror as well as non-English language films, and is variously involved with the production and/or distribution of
these films.
8
1980) took over the Utah/US Film Festival. In 1991, it was renamed the Sundance Film Festival (the film
festival was held annually since 1981 in January in Park City, Utah and expanded in length) - "dedicated
to the support and development of emerging screenwriters and directors of vision, and to the national and
international exhibition of new, independent dramatic and documentary films."
By the end of the decade, however, independent film-making had become more mainstream and
institutionalized - sharing some of the same concerns and corporate worries that traditional Hollywood
studios had always confronted.

3.3 Academy Awards and the Walk of Fame

On January 11, 1927, 36 people met for dinner at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to hear a proposal
to found the International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (“International” dropped from
the name soon after). By mid-March of that year, articles of incorporation were presented and the first
officers were elected, with Douglas Fairbanks as president. On May 11, 1927, a week after the state
granted the Academy a charter as a non-profit organization, an official organizational banquet was held at
the Biltmore Hotel. Of the 300 guests, 230 joined the Academy, paying $100 each. That night, the
Academy also awarded its first honorary membership, to Thomas Edison. Initially five branches were
established: producers, actors, directors, writers and technicians.
In June 1930, the Academy rented a suite of offices at 7046 Hollywood Boulevard to give more space for
the increased staff of four executives, three assistants and six clerks. The Academy’s operations remained
at that location until 1935, when the accounting and executive offices moved to the Taft Building on the
corner of Hollywood and Vine, and the library was relocated to 1455 North Gordon Street.
Usually the ceremony is televised in February or March and six weeks after the announcement of the
nominees. In the United States it is televised by ABC, and according to the agreement it will continue
broadcasting the live telecasts through 2014. Since 1953, when the 25th ceremony was celebrated; the
Academy Awards have been televised. Until the 32nd edition held in 1960, it was televised by NBC. From
1961 to 1970 it was broadcasted by ABC; then in 1971 NBC took over again until 1975. Since 1976 ABC
is the official broadcaster of the ceremony. ABC paid $65 million for the rights to air the Academy
Awards. Since 2004, the ceremony is held in late February or early March. Before that, over sixty
preceding ceremonies have been celebrated between late March and early April.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is undoubtedly one of the most successful marketing ideas ever produced.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of inaccurate information circulating about the history of the Walk. The man
credited with the idea for creating a Walk of Fame, was E. M. Stuart, who served in 1953 as the volunteer
president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. In that year, according to a Chamber press release he
proposed the Walk as a means to “maintain the glory of a community whose name means glamour and
excitement in the four corners of the world.” It was not until 1955 that the basic tenets of the proposal
were agreed upon, and in that year, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce proceeded to secure the
necessary signatures to present to the City for further action in the formation of an assessment district.
These plans were crystallized and submitted to the Los Angeles City Council in January of 1956. The
Council embraced the idea and instructed the Board of Public Works to prepare the engineering
specifications and to create the necessary assessment district to pay for the improvements. The Chamber
established the Hollywood Improvement Association to work with the City in pursuing the idea.
Construction on the Walk was expected to begin shortly thereafter. However, two lawsuits were filed that
delayed construction. The first was by property owners opposed to the assessment district, and the second
was filed by Charlie Chaplin, Jr., seeking $400,000 in damages for the exclusion of his father from the
Walk.
When constructed, the Walk was designed to accommodate 2,518 stars. By the 1990s, space in the most
popular areas was becoming difficult to find. To solve the problem, Johnny approved the creation of a
second row of stars on the sidewalk, which would alternate with the existing stars. On February 1, 1994
9
(which was Hollywood’s birthday anniversary), the Walk of Fame was extended one block to the west
from Sycamore to LaBrea on Hollywood Blvd. as part of a revitalization project by the Los Angeles
Community Redevelopment Agency. Thirty stars were added to the block to create an instant attraction.
At this time, Sophia Loren was honored with the 2,000th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Today, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce continues to administer the Walk as the representative of
the City of Los Angeles. An average of two stars is added to the Walk on a monthly basis. The Walk is a
tribute to all of those who worked so hard to develop the concept and to maintain this world-class tourist
attraction.

Conclusion

The American film industry is often referred to as Hollywood and it represents the industry leader in the
form of artistic expression that came to dominate the twentieth century and continues as a popular art form
While the Lumiere Brothers are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, it is indisputably
American cinema that quickly became the dominant force in the industry.

Hollywood has been an essential weapon the arsenal of American imperialism, especially leading up to
and after World War II. It played nearly as important a role as military and economic forces in bringing
about allied victory during World War II.

Although many films are shot on location in cities and countries throughout the world, Hollywood
remains the symbolic center of the U.S. motion-picture industry. Since the first film was made there, the
community has come to signify the film industry in general - its morals, manners, and characteristics.
Cinema introduced a new visual culture. The immediacy of the medium created a system of stars with the
powerful ability to influence the rest of the culture, for good or for ill. At its best, film creates visual
narratives that teach and inspire as they entertain.

“I wanted to do another movie that could make us laugh and cry and feel good about the world. I wanted
to do something else that could make us smile. This is a time when we need to smile more and Hollywood
movies are supposed to do that for people in difficult times. “

Steven Spielberg

Bibliography
10
 Allen, J Scott - Hollywood: the Place, the Industry, Princeton University Press, 2005
 Balio, Tino - The American film industry, revised edition, edited by Tino Balio, 1998
 De Mille, William C. - Hollywood saga, E.P. Dutton & co., 1939
 Dirks,Tim - The History of Film, 2000
 Gail, K. and Piazza, J. - The Academy Awards the Complete History of Oscar, Black Dog &
Leventhal Publishers, 2002
 Hall, Phill - The History of Independent Cinema, Andre Soares, 2009
 Keith, Gaelyn Whitley - The Father of Hollywood: The True Story, Book Surge Publishing, 2006
 Koszarski, Richard - An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture,
University of California Press, 1994
 Mamet, David - On Directing Film, Penguin Books, 1991
 Mills, Michael - Graphics Films, Aaron Rose, 2009
 Niver, Kemp R. - Biograph Bulletins, Locare Research Group, 1896–1908
 Park, William - Hollywood: An Epic Production, 1stbooks, 2002
 Parris Springer, John - Hollywood Fictions: The Dream Factory in American Popular
Literature, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002
 Robertson, Patrick - Film Facts, Billboard Books, 2001
 Scott, Allen J. - On Hollywood: The Place, The Industry, Princeton University Press 2005
 Shipton, Vicky - The Oscars, Penguin Readers, 2006
 Virilio, Paul - War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, Editions de l’Etoile, 1984
 Vogel, Amos - Film as a Subsersive Art C.T. Editions, 1974

11