hollywood culture

Cinematic history: A defense of Hollywood

Recently, while traveling on a train out of New York City, I introduced myself to a businessman sitting next to me. When I indicated that I was a university professor who conducted research on Hollywood's treatment of history, the traveler smiled and rolled his eyes. Suggesting that I had "plenty to complain about," he communicated a cynical view of Hollywood's portrayals. The man assumed that I agreed with him, expecting that a professional historian would be eager to decry Hollywood's tendency to favor fiction over fact, entertainment over education. "Why can't moviemakers present the truth?" the businessman asked. Answering his own question, he claimed that real history was much more interesting than Hollywood's myth-based stories.

This traveler echoed a familiar criticism of history from Hollywood. On numerous occasions I hear related complaints. Once new acquaintances learn about my professional interest, they often respond with sharp critiques of the movies' portrayals. Their reactions to Hollywood's depictions of the past are almost uniformly negative. Many complain that movies serve primarily as instruments for communicating the directors' personal agendas.

They argue that cinema does not provide sophisticated commentaries on the past. Some who are wedded to traditional print-oriented approaches to history consider motion-picture entertainment largely irrelevant. They do not see much educational value in productions that manipulate and distort evidence excessively.

Moviemakers cavalierly violate scholarly standards for the handling of evidence, they charge. Hollywood filmmakers readily bend, distort, and invent facts to create appealing stories. Because filmmakers exhibit little concern for discovering truths about the past, say these critics, their productions should not be considered serious interpretations of history

When Spanish explorers first entered the area now known as Hollywood, Native Americans were living in the canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains. Before long, the Indians had been moved to missions and the land which Hollywood now occupies was divided in two by the Spanish Government. Acreage to the west became part of Rancho La Brea and settlements to the East became Rancho Los Feliz.

By the 1870s an agricultural community flourished in the area and crops ranging from hay and grain to subtropical bananas and pineapples were thriving. During the 1880s, the Ranchos were sub-divided. In 1886, H. H. Wilcox bought an area of Rancho La Brea that his wife then christened "Hollywood." Within a few years, Wilcox had devised a grid plan for his new community, paved Prospect Avenue (now Hollywood Boulevard) for his main street and was selling large residential lots to wealthy Midwesterners looking to build homes so they could "winter in California."

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 libraryand Hollywood quickly became a complete and prosperous community. The community incorporated in 1903, but its independence was short-lived, as the lack of water forced annexation in 1910 to the city of Los Angeles, which had a surplus supply of water.
In 1911, the Nestor Company opened Hollywood's first film studio in an old tavern on the corner of Sunset and Gower. Not long thereafter Cecil B. DeMille and D. W. Griffith began making movies in the areadrawn to the community for its open space and moderate climate.