At the start of the Twentieth Century the flegling American Movie Industry was based around New York, on the east coast. 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. And, you've guessed it, this place was called "Hollywood". Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood called, aptly enough, 'In Old California', a Biograph melodrama about Latino-Mexican occupied California in the 1800s. The movie company stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York.

At this time, with the movie medium in its infancy, many Jewish immigrants found employment in the U.S. film industry. They were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of short films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons, after their admission price of a nickel (five cents). Within a few years, ambitious men like Samuel Goldwyn, Carl Laemmle, Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer, and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to the production side of the business. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the movie studio.

After hearing about this wonderful place, in 1913 many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison, who owned patents on the movie-making process. In Los Angeles, California, the studios and Hollywood grew. Before World War I, movies were made in several U.S. cities, but filmmakers gravitated to southern California as the industry developed. They were attracted by the mild climate and reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film movies outdoors year-round, and by the varied scenery that was available. The first feature film made in Hollywood, in 1914, was called 'The Squaw Man'. All the films made in Los Angeles from 1908 to 1913 had been short subjects. 'The Squaw Man', marked the beginning of the modern Hollywood movie industry. Through the First World War when the movie industries of Europe declined, Hollywood went from strength to strength.

Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on top of the world in 1921. And why not? Two years earlier they and top director D.W. Griffith had formed their own studio, United Artists, for one thing because no one else could afford to pay their salaries.



By the 1920s, Hollywood reached what is still its era of greatest-ever output, producing an average of 800 feature films annually, or 82% of the global total. The comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the swashbuckling adventures of Douglas Fairbanks and the romances of Clara Bow, to cite just a few examples, made these performers' faces well-known on every continent.

With the growth of the studio system came its greatest publicity method, the star system, which characterized American and indeed, world, film for decades to come and provided models for other movie industries. The studios' efficient, top-down control over all stages of their product enabled a new and ever-growing level of lavish production and technical sophistication. At the same time, the system's commercial regimentation and focus on glamorous escapism discouraged too much daring and ambition.

During late 1927, Warners released The Jazz Singer, which was mostly silent but contained the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film. It was a great success, as were follow-ups like Warners' The Lights of New York (1928), the first all-synchronized-sound feature. The change was then remarkably swift. By the end of 1929, Hollywood was almost all-talkie, with several competing sound systems (soon to be standardized).

Thus began what is now often called "The Golden Age of Hollywood," which refers roughly to the period beginning with the introduction of sound until the late 1940s. The American cinema reached its peak of efficiently manufactured glamour and global appeal during this period. The top actors of the era are now thought of as the classic movie stars, such as Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and the greatest box office draw of the 1930s, child performer Shirley Temple.

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