Hollywood in the 1920s
The American film industry, based mainly in and around Hollywood today, has had a huge effect on the world’s cinema since the first film was produced there on 10 March 1910. It has produced the most commercially successful movies in the world, such as Gone with the Wind (1939) and, 70 years later, Avatar (2009). Today, the Hollywood-based American film industry is the third most prolific film producer in the world, after India and Nigeria (both of these have had massive influence from Hollywood. For example, the industries are nicknamed Bollywood and Nollywood respectively). Today, Hollywood is most importantly the cultural capital of film making, with Hollywood being well known not just in the USA, but also in Europe, Asia and Africa. But what has made this collection of film studios so successful?
As mentioned, the first film produced inside Hollywood was made on 10 March 1910. This was the decade that Hollywood began its life as a ‘film-making town’. Director D.W. Griffith made a 17-minute film called ‘In Old California’ in Hollywood, filmed around the town itself. Griffith was sent to the area with his troop of actors, originally filming on a lot in Los Angeles, before moving on to Hollywood, enjoying the friendliness and the enjoyment of the community towards the filming of his movie, about Mexican occupied California. Throughout the decade, studios from the East Coast (predominantly from New Jersey and New York) began to move to Hollywood as a means of escaping licensing costs, necessary in the region at the time, and also due to the reliable weather for outdoor filming. The first studio to be built in Hollywood itself was by the New Jersey based Centaur Co., building Nestor Studio in Hollywood in 1911, although a studio had been built east of Hollywood in Edendale in 1909. In 1911, 15 film companies located studios here, and this trend continued. The first feature film, being a film that is the main attraction of a theatre audience rather than a short film shown before it (this was common at the time), made by a Hollywood studio was during 1914. The film, ‘The Squaw Man’, was filmed at various locations around the town. In 1917, The Charlie Chaplin Studios were built in Hollywood, and since his death the studio has been producing several television series in Hollywood. By 1911, the Los Angeles area was the second best film making area after New York, and by 1915, it was the centre of American film making. Also, Hollywood had changed the industry, as before this time, most films had been made by foreign organisations, but by the end of this decade, the American cinemas were dominated by Hollywood produced films.
