Today's selection-- from This was Hollywood by Carla Valderrama. How Hollywood became Hollywood:
“Hollywood became the film capital of the world through the flip of a coin. In 1911, director Al Christie was making Westerns in New Jersey and had grown tired of the inappropriate landscape there. He wanted to try filming in California. His producer, David Horsley, favored Florida, thinking it would be cheaper. Christie had a silver dollar. ‘Heads for California and tails for Florida,’ he declared. It was heads. On the train west, the two met a theatrical producer who told them Hollywood was a pretty place. ‘None of us had heard of Hollywood before,’ Christie recalled.
“Indeed, in the first decade of the 20th century, it was another city, on the other side of the country, that played host to the film industry, still just in its infancy. It was a boomtown, gloriously diverse in its scenic beauty, an Edenic paradise in which to build America's first dream factory. It was Fort Lee, New Jersey. While there were numerous studios in New York and minor film centers in Philadelphia and Chicago, the New Jersey town on the banks of the Hudson River provided something those larger cities couldn't. As narrative-driven motion pictures became a dominant form, it became clear that audiences preferred scenes set outdoors to be shot outdoors instead of on clumsily painted sets. Fort Lee's proximity to the river as well as to steep cliffs, waterfalls, forests, and farmland made it a natural choice.
“And it was only fitting that the movie business set up shop in the home state of the man who had done more to pioneer film technology than anyone else. Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope was developed at his laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, in the early 1890s, where the first motion picture studio in the world was built in December 1892. When Edison unveiled the Kinetoscope, he launched an entertainment revolution, with arcades that played the Kinetoscope films on individual-viewing machines popping up everywhere. Not long after, another revolution began, as newly formed moving picture companies began selling admission to see their products on large screens in theaters. An industry was born.
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| Nestor Studios, Hollywood's first movie studio, 1912 |
“As it grew, so did Edison's stranglehold on the technological patents that made it all possible. In December 1908, eleven film companies, including Edison's, formed a new organization, the Motion Picture Patents Company, known as the Trust. The companies pooled their patents for essential equipment, from projector machines to cameras to sprocket holes on film. Their plan was simple: Prevent anyone outside the Trust from making motion pictures in the United States. And they went to great lengths to make their plan a reality.
“‘[W]e were shadowed, harassed, threatened and assaulted,’ said Carl Laemmle, founder of the Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP). Edison hired detectives to spy on and harass the independent filmmakers who weren't paying royalties to the Trust. Double agents posed as actors or technicians and gathered information on these ‘pirates.’ Once, Laemmle and his cameraman hid all night in a Fort Lee cellar with his camera while sleuths from the Trust scoured the neighborhood. According to Laemmle, ‘[C]ameramen were selected in the early days not for their artistic ability, but for their fistic prowess.’
“When surveillance and harassment didn't stop the independent filmmakers, the Trust turned to violence. They hired gangsters to burn down independent studios and destroy their equipment.
‘They found that by shooting holes through the camera, they could stop their use, and that became their favorite method,’ filmmaker Allan Dwan said.
“Eventually, independent filmmakers hired gangsters of their own. According to Laemmle, today's commonplace industry jargon meant something else entirely on a film set back then. ‘When the present-day director instructs his cameraman to “shoot,” he probably does not realize that a similar order a couple of decades ago may have been taken literally,’ Laemmle explained. ‘A six-shooter was part of a cameraman's equipment in the early days.’
“Independents were now hiring lawyers to beat the Trust in the courts. But all of this was expensive and taking time away from making films. So, many of the independent companies began to search for a new home where they could ply their trade without interference from Edison or the Trust.
“‘That's one of the reasons most of us went to California, and distant places,’ Dwan said.
“If a Trust representative should happen to make the journey west, Southern California had the added benefit of being close to Mexico, where their patents were meaningless.
“Dwan felt secure in California. ‘I had my three cowboys, the Morrison brothers, arm themselves with Winchesters, hire some other cowboys, and station them outside our area of work. So, if anybody appeared carrying any kind of weapon, they were challenged by our people and disarmed.’ One day ‘a sneaky-looking character’ got off the train and asked to see the boss. Dwan suspected he worked for the Trust. They walked to an arroyo, a little stream under a bridge, which was full of tin cans. ‘To impress me, he whipped out a sidearm and fired at one of the tin cans in the arroyo. I immediately whipped mine out and fired,’ Dwan said. ‘He missed his, but I hit mine three times. He turned around towards the depot and ran right into the three Morrison brothers with three Winchester rifles aimed at him, and he decided it was about time to leave town.’ Dwan's company wasn't bothered by the Trust again.
“And then there were Al Christie and David Horsley and their fateful coin flip. Other film companies had established studios in downtown Los Angeles as well as neighboring towns like Glendale, Santa Monica, and Long Beach. D.W. Griffith had even made a film in Hollywood: In Old California (1910). But there were no studios in Hollywood; it was just a small town of God-fearing folk, once described by the Los Angeles Times as a place where ‘the saloon and its kindred evils are unknown.’”
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author: Carla Valderrama |
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title: This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories
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publisher: Running Press Adult |
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date: |
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page(s): 2-4 |
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