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California Tour & Travel Magazine

Early Moviemakers
        “California Here I Come!”

    American Thomas Alva Edison is credited with the birth of “the movies” in the late 19th century. Edwin, S. Porter, chief of production at the Edison Studio, shifted films to a storytelling style in 1903 as seen in The Great Train Robbery, one of the first westerns. The twelve-minute western showcased “new” film techniques like out of sequence shooting, editing and multiple camera angles.
The first filmmakers traveled from New York and New Jersey to the California in 1907, for the varied landscape, the temperate climate, and to extend the days and months of filming. Two years later, the 9,000 movie theatres in the United States showed films that were typically one reel, or 12 minutes long, and the New York Times began using the term “stars” to describe the movie actors, previously looked down on by theatre actors.
Carl Laemmle introduced the “star system” and he started his Independent Motion Picture Company(IMP) to compete with Edison in 1910.  That same year, film companies began to move to the area later known as “Hollywood” and Max Factor created the first film makeup. The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) set up the General Film Company in an attempt to monopolize film distribution.


Photoplay, the first real movie fan magazine, gave rise to celebrity culture when it debuted in 1911, when the Nestor Company built the first full time studio in Hollywood and the independents flocked there to avoid the MPPC.  That year, credits began to appear at the beginning of motion pictures. In 1912, Carl Laemmle merged IMP with other studios to yield Universal Pictures Company.  Adolph Zukor founded an independent studio named Famous Players Film Corporation, with distribution handled by the newly formed Paramount.  Jesse Lasky and his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish(later Goldwyn) partnered with Cecil B. DeMille to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.
Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Company located in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb, in 1912.  That same year, film pioneer Thomas Ince devised standard production budgeting and introduced detailed movie scripts that spawned the role of “film producer.”  In 1915, producer/director Thomas Ince introduced the “factory system” a method to mass produce films, and he began to build his first Culver City studio, still famous for its landmark colonnade entry.

Paramount Studios began in 1913 in a rented horse barn near Sunset and Vine, but in 1926 it moved to Gower Street in Hollywood.  DeMille’s “The Squaw Man” was filmed in that historic barn that now operates as the Hollywood Studio Museum across from the Hollywood Bowl.
Raleigh Studios in Hollywood has been operating since 1915, and successfully transitioned to television with classic shows like Superman, Gunsmoke and Perry Mason. William Fox founded the Fox Film Corporation the year Raleigh began.  The four Warner Brothers (Jack, Albert, Harry and Samuel) opened their first west coast studio in 1918.  Warner Brothers, located in Burbank today, offers a museum and tours on site.
Charlie Chaplin, who is considered the first major film star, took his $125 salary to $10,000 weekly in 1916.  Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford established United Artists in 1919, the same year Hal Roach moved from Los Angeles to his Culver City Hal Roach Studios.  Roach was proud of his “laugh factory to the world” which gave us Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang Comedies.
In 1921, Rudolph Valentino starred in “The Sheik,” the romantic film of the day that catapulted Valentino into cinema’s best-known lover.  That same year, comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was arrested for the alleged rape and murder of starlet, Virginia Rappe, at a wild party in a San Francisco hotel. Although he was not found guilty, it ruined his career.  The movie industry reacted by creating the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) to censor themselves.  Still headquartered in California, the organization, which transitioned into public relations arm of the industry, became known later as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The Disney Company began in the back of a realty office in Los Angeles in 1923.  They moved into the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank in 1937.  By that time, “talkies” had replaced silent films.
C.B.C. Films Sales Company made “B” films, but the Cohn brothers and Joe Brandt, tired of being called “Corned Beef and Cabbage” productions, changed their name to Columbia Pictures in 1924.  The Torch Lady became their symbol at their “Gower Gulch” studio in Hollywood.  That same year, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer merger took place.  MGM’s history started in Culver City, on Thomas Ince’s first studio there (Triangle, with D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett), where they stayed through the MGM/UA days, and although they sold the six studio lots of 180+ acres, they moved to the Filmland Corporate Center across from their main lot, until their 1992 move to Santa Monica, and more recently to Century City.  The one surviving MGM lot became Lorimar in the 1980s, to become a part of the Sony family in 1990, known first as Columbia Pictures and then Sony Pictures Studios. 
Ince established his second Culver City studio in 1919, which he held until his untimely death in 1924.  Since then the studio has been known as DeMille, RKO, Pathe, Selznick International, Desilu, Culver City Studios, Laird International, and The Culver Studios.  Facades on its backlot, known as “the 40 acres” included “Tara” from Gone with the Wind, while the old King Kong sets were ablaze to simulate the burning of Atlanta. Although their names never appeared on the front lawn, Howard Hughes, Joseph Kennedy and others have held financial interest.
During the 1930s, after there were three major studios in Culver City and no credit, stationery at the Chamber of Commerce read “Culver City, where Hollywood movies are made!” +reduced to a friendly rivalry, when the Hollywood and Culver City Chambers of Commerce held a “bury the hatchet” ceremony in Hollywood. 
And the studios are still thriving today in Southern California, with the entertainment industry still a major revenue stream. It’s all about location, location, location!