Hollywood: The Origins, the Image, & the Legacy

What is Hollywood to you? Is it watching a movie that transports you to another world, a tabloid full of colorful celebrity stories, or the larger-than-life neighborhood in Los Angeles? In this episode of Fabric of History, Mary, Kirk, and Haley go back to the very beginning of show business in the once sleepy backwater of California to discover why Hollywood has endured and thrived in American culture.

View our episode page for additional resources!
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/podcasts/hollywood-the-origins-the-image-the-legacy

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute, Fabric of History weaves together US history founding principles and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what's inside.

Haley (00:20)
What is Hollywood to you? Is it watching a movie that transports you to another world entirely or looking at the front page of a tabloid full of colorful celebrity stories? Or the larger-than-life neighborhood in Los Angeles? In this episode of Fabric of History, Mary, Kirk, and I Haley, go back to the very beginning of show business in the once sleepy backwater of California to discover why Hollywood has endured and thrived in American culture.

Mary (00:53)
Hey, Fabric of History listeners, this is Mary Patterson, and I'm so glad that you are back with us again. I'm here with Kirk Higgins and Haley Watson. Hey, Kirk. Hi. So I don't know about you guys, but it's Oscar season, and whenever this time of year rolls around, I don't go to the movies a lot. I don't know that people really went to the movies a lot in the recent history because of all of the pandemic. But every time the Oscar lists come out, I'm super interested in the movies and discussing who's up for what awards. And it just makes me have movies on the brain. Yeah, for sure.

Haley (01:33)
I think even if you don't see every movie, there's just something about the atmosphere of Hollywood, of celebrities. There's a lot of intrigue, gossip. There's a lot to talk about. There's always a lot to talk about.

Kirk (01:47)
Yeah. It seems they continue to make headlines. Even though people have talked about whether people still watch the Oscars or still go to the movies, it's still a newsworthy event. I think the movies in the United States are certainly a central part of our culture. People know celebrities, people know kind of what the movies are, and definitely something that always comes up as a topic of conversation.

Mary (02:10)
Well, Haley, you mentioned Hollywood. We're using Hollywood as synonymous with the movies. And I think that's really interesting and something that we take for granted today. Why is Hollywood? Why are movies made in Hollywood? Are they still made in Hollywood? There are so many questions that that brings up for me and as we are want to do here on the Fabric of History. I think diving a little bit deeper into the topic could make for a good story.

Haley (02:36)
Yeah, absolutely. And I've always been very interested in Hollywood. I have a bit of a personal connection. Both my grandparents on my mom's side were very involved in Hollywood. They lived in Hollywood. My grandma used to talk about having dinner with Jack Warner of the Warner Brothers. Somerset mom even not quite Hollywood, but tied to it. But she grew up in Hollywood, and she actually made one movie when she was 14 in 1944. She's very proud of it was a wartime romance movie. And then she went on to run a successful interior decorating business later on. But some of her clients were Robert Stack from the Untouchables crime series, probably her most famous ones. But then my grandpa was the author of detective and espionage books and also was a screenwriter on shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Lou Grant. But growing up an essential part of our family gatherings was gathering around the TV and watching a movie from classic Hollywood. So my grandparents had a vast collection of VHS tapes. So I remember following them into the living room to pick the perfect Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers comedy or maybe a Thin Man Detective movie.

Haley (03:50)
So that was a really fun and unique part of my childhood. I remember talking to my friends sometimes about, did you watch this movie? And they're like, no, we don't know movies from the 1930s.

Mary (03:59)
Yeah.

Haley (04:00)
So, yeah, it's always been a part of my past. And that's why I was so excited to talk about Hollywood.

Mary (04:07)
That's so cool. I love hearing, like, personal histories and connections like that. That's amazing. Haley. I'm so jealous. But I mean, I also love classic movies. I don't know how I even got into it, but I used to watch Turner Classic Movies and I'm showing it to Kirk and Haley, but you guys can't see it. But it's this classic movie companion and it's just this huge list. I've had it since I was a kid, which shows you sort of kid. I was. And it lists all these movies, and I would just highlight them when I saw them.

Haley (04:38)
I love them.

Mary (04:39)
But there's something about the appeal of Hollywood, of the movie, of the story. I think that's timeless. But I think going back to the beginning and talking about how did Hollywood start is perhaps a good place to go first.

Haley (04:56)
Yeah. So turns out Thomas Edison was involved in early Hollywood, which I did not know about, but he actually was involved in creating some film equipment. And he eventually would take over a large part of the market with patents and forming a kind of conglomeration, powerful motion picture production association, and also entering into an exclusive contract with Eastman Kodak Company for supply of raw film stock. And this was centered in the East Coast. And this led to a lot of independent filmmakers resisting this kind of patent monopoly, which made them want to move elsewhere, move out of the East Coast and LA really appealed. It actually was pretty deserted back then. People would kind of talk about how it had no natural harbor, just kind of a desert with some rugged mountains around it. The Spaniards didn't actually put roots there for over two centuries. So it was always kind of a backwater in history generally. But it was the perfect place for movies to be made because you didn't have to wait for the winter to be over to shoot outdoor scenes. And during the early movies. About a quarter of them were Western movies, so they were shot outside.

Haley (06:17)
So it really was just kind of a natural fit for moviemakers who have all this space, all this desert, great weather, no competition to set up their Studios.

Mary (06:29)
I do love that. A big part of this is that people were just trying to get away from fees or getting in trouble from Thomas Edison and on the East Coast. But I also think it's really interesting, and I never really thought about this before until we were working on our BRI's online US history textbook, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, where it's called a motion picture, like the Oscars, is officially the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and it really is the technology and the science of the film and the picture actually moving and the sound. All of these things enable what we think of as the movies today. So I think that's just something that we kind of take for granted. But I was like, oh, yeah, it is a moving picture. When you think about it. It's aptly named.

Kirk (07:23)
Yeah. It reminds me when I was a very diligent student in class writing little images on the corners of my notebooks that I could flip really quickly, and then you would see it move or hop or do something really basic. But that's the technology. Right. And I do think it's interesting that both sort of the acquisition of the technology. So people being frustrated or feeling limited by certain patents or certain controls that Edison had over those motion pictures, looking for a place to develop that art into more complex ways. And so they move to a place where they can do that and they can find different opportunities to make those motion pictures with, like you said, ample sunlight, lots of space to do it, lots of space to spread out there, too. It wasn't as populated at the turn of the century as it now has become, but that's really all fascinating to me.

Haley (08:18)
Yeah. And so when they got there, competition between the different Studios was already starting. D.W. Griffith was a famous name from that early filmmaking time period. He founded United Artists in 1919, which still exists today. And his studio was turning out two films a week. So they were definitely responding to the demand of the public, who were growing and growing in interest in films at that time. But he decided to take more time and money to create a more large-scale movie which would be more highly produced, that he thought would bring in even more viewers. And that led to his completion of Birth of a Nation in 1915, which was a controversial film which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, and to this day remains very controversial. But it was a very big film at that time. And his rival kind of across the desert would be Cecil B. Demille, who is a director and producer who founded Paramount Pictures with Jesse Lasky and Adolf Zucker. And he actually popularized that stereotypical golden age of Hollywood. The producer-director outfit of the riding breeches, high leather boots, actually because they were filming in the desert.

Haley (09:39)
And he would also carry a revolver around for killing rattlesnakes. So he's one of those iconic style icons of the time. But he rivaled Birth of a Nation with The Virginian in 1923 with Gary Cooper, which is a Western. You can see that kind of already competition brewing between different studio heads, which would lead to bigger and more highly produced, slick movies.

Kirk (10:06)
Yes, I think it's interesting even talking. I think Birth of a Nation is famously the first film shown in the White House, and that was in 1915. Woodrow Wilson watched it with his entire cabinet. And as you mentioned, Haley, horribly racist and controversial film. But interesting, just from the development of the art itself and seeing how movies are developing, I don't know, it strikes me as incredible. That was just over what? 106 years ago or 107 years ago not that long ago. And yet it's become so central to the way that we think about entertainment. And obviously, I think motion pictures were interesting at the time because they were capturing on film events that were already of interest to people, whether vaudeville shows or what you would go and see at the theater or capturing sporting events. I know another movie from that era that was highly received, I guess, in the early 1900s, but was The Great Train Robbery. And I think part of the reason it was so popular is because train robberies were still in the news all the time. So you had this opportunity to kind of see this in action.

Kirk (11:20)
Of course, you would never want to be a part of a train robbery, but somehow seeing it displayed on a screen just drew people in and has been fascinating us ever since.

Mary (11:31)
I found this really cool. So what you guys are both describing I just found this really cool quote from a film critic, Andrew Sarris, and he said that cinema is not entirely in art, but rather a seamless fusion of life in art, which I thought was pretty cool because you have the quote-unquote fine arts where you capture something in a sculpture or something in a painting. But I think what a movie does, what a motion picture does is you can actually see a train robbery unfolding or you can see the Western landscape and people interacting with it. And I think people are just going to gobble this up as consumers like, as you mentioned, Kirk. So this having free time and going to the theater, seeing Vaudeville or a minstrel show or Nickelodeon, that's nothing new. But this new technology and this new open space with people dedicated to making these stories is something that's super cool. And again, even when I watched, I was watching pieces of the Charlie Chaplin movie, The Kids, which is a silent film. I was like, there's no noise, there's music, of course, and there's the title cards that have basically captions.

Mary (12:42)
But like, how is this going to be entertaining? But it really was it was kind of amazing. Like, Charlie Chaplin is considered a great artist for a reason. You still have the comedy and you still see the relationship forming between his character, the Tramp, and the kid from the title. But it is a little bit of escapism because I'm not in the desert shooting rattlesnakes, but it's also life. But if I can see it, I can sort of imagine myself there and escape to that world for a bit of time.

Haley (13:17)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why films remained a big business even during the Great Depression, World War I, and World War II because they had this escapism that people wanted to get away from their lives, whatever troubles they had. And especially during World War II, there was a huge effort from Hollywood to motivate the troops. So there's the famous Hollywood Canteen, co-founded by famous actress Betty Davis, which was a club in LA that basically a restaurant club that offered food, dancing, and entertainment for servicemen, usually on their way overseas. And a lot of stars would frequent this to entertain the troops, like Frank Sinatra, Kerry Grant, Judy Garland. And then a lot of Hollywood stars would even join the armed forces and go overseas. It was a huge part of American culture and American life. And its influence just, I think, grew over time. And then during that golden age of Hollywood, between 1930 to 1950, stars' images were controlled to kind of create that idealized version of themselves. On the one hand, you have the Studios controlling a lot of the stars' lives, pushing them to conform to strict diets, exercise regimens, speaking lessons, monitoring their behavior and social lives.

Haley (14:45)
So they actually tell a star to go out with another compatible star in their mind and then be seen in public for publicity to promote a movie that they're in or the studio as a whole. So you have that controlling side of the studio, but then you also have what the public sees, which are these kind of idealized humans, these perfect, beautiful humans to I wouldn't say worship, but to look up to in some way. So take that for good or for bad. But I think that's what was happening, and still is.

Kirk (15:20)
Yeah. I think that brings up two fascinating points, Haley. On the one hand, we started talking about why is Hollywood where it is, and why did it center itself in California? And we talked a little bit about technology, but I think that technology is sure the actual camera and the films and everything else, but technology is also expertise. So you need this whole industry that's built up in Los Angeles. I remember the first time I went to Los Angeles. I was struck by how much of that city really does revolve around the film industry, from writers to producers to set builders to camera crews to people who do lighting to makeup artists. Films are just a huge production. And so you see these movie Studios putting a lot into the characters who are on screen because that's what makes or breaks a film. You can see how those pressures begin to create that industry. But you can also see why that industry then centers itself in a location because you need all of that stuff when you're trying to make this stuff. And I think that's fascinating. The other piece that I think is really interesting is that nostalgia piece.

Kirk (16:36)
We're all suddenly sharing our shared love of classic Hollywood, which I don't know that we all shared before this, but...

Haley (16:42)
I know. Yeah.

Kirk (16:43)
But I have a book on my bookshelf that is classic Hollywood movies coupled with recipes. Every movie, it then has recipes that goes along with it. So you can watch Casablanca and then make like a Moroccan dish to eat while you're watching this thing. I think that points to what you were talking about, too, that movies are just transporting. It's true escapism in the sense that it takes you to another place or another time that you saw that movie with your family or if you've never been able to travel to Morocco, but now suddenly you can watch Casablanca and you're in 1941 and you're worried about these individuals trying to escape from fascism and what's going to happen to them. And you're invested in these people that you didn't know before you started the movie, but now you want to know if they're going to make it or not. I don't know, there's a real human connection to that. But there's also that nostalgic feeling of this glamorous thing. You're watching this sort of stylized, romanticized version of what the world can be. And that's what I think movies allow us to access and take us to that other place, I think. Yeah. That's fascinating. It's a part of their charm. Absolutely.

Haley (17:52)
Yeah, and I think Studios back then understood that the public wanted different things from their cinema experiences. So you had MGM, Louis B. Mayer, and Irving Thalberg that did big-budget musicals, comedies, melodramas. So just big spending studio. They did films like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. You had Paramount, which was more of a they call it a European studio. It had a lot of European people come in and work at it, and they did films like Shanghai Express and Morocco. So a little bit more exotically located. And then they had Warner Brothers, which was targeted towards a more working-class audience. They did gritty gangster movies. So you can see how each studio really kind of created a different form of escapism. I think that was cool. How segmented off and how they each had their own certain style and system of entertaining the public.

Kirk (19:01)
This idea of these iconic individuals and these iconic characters. And this escapism, again, points to the idea that Hollywood is so central to our culture, and that can be positive, but it can also be negative. Right. There's always challenges that come with that. Earlier, Haley, you were mentioning sort of this standard that people within the industry might pressure people into acting like or being like in order to meet this idealized version that they're trying to create. And obviously, that's problematic for a number of reasons. But here at the Bill of Rights Institute, we tend to think about history a lot. And history is another one of these things that people get very concerned about. Historians like to tie themselves up in knots when they see movies that portray things inaccurately. And spoiler alert, most movies portray things inaccurately. This goes back to the beginning of Hollywood. So we were talking about Birth of a Nation earlier. It has a very particular view on Reconstruction that I would argue is highly inaccurate and sympathetic to a school of history that has been disproven many times over and was highly debatable when the movie was published.

Kirk (20:14)
And yet that kind of became or at least represented that time period a lot of people. More recently, famously the movie Braveheart is not actually what William Wallace looked like, acted, or did. Some of my favorite quotes from historians about that movie are The Battle of Stirling Bridge would have been great if they might have included a bridge, which is funny because in the movie they don't. I heard another historian describe the outfits were so inaccurate that it would be like if they had dressed everybody in the Stone Ages in business suits that wore their dinner jackets backward. It's too far forward, but also just awkward and inaccurate. It's just wrong on a lot of levels. Anyway, my point in going down this rabbit hole is the idea that when we see these images, they really do form a certain kind of reality for us. They become how we access the past. And that can be a challenge. And that's, I think, why historians rightly get concerned about it because it could be a wrong image of the past. But there's also an opportunity there because it gets people excited about these topics and these issues and hopefully encourages them to learn more, to dig into these different historical events that they're witnessing and find out for themselves what happened, what is accurate, what isn't, and kind of feeds the debates and questions and conversations.

Kirk (21:38)
And that, I think, is all a part of what makes culture what it is. It's about sort of disagreement and conversation and discussion and debate. And I love that about Hollywood. I think that's just really an exciting and cool part of it, but certainly is sort of a double-edged sword. There's challenges and there's opportunities.

Mary (21:59)
I think another appeal or something immortal about Hollywood and the movies is that different people are going to come to the same film with a different lens. So you could come to Braveheart wanting to pull apart the historical inaccuracies, or you could come to Braveheart because it's such a stirring, moving story and there's such great music. So different people are going to see different things from that same film. And I think that's part of the fun as well. Just like in the United States, we're all coming from different places, we all have different backgrounds, and we're all going to look at something differently. That doesn't necessarily mean one way is better than the other, but it's a good starting point for the conversation. And I loved what you said, Kirk, about using about film and really kind of history, because I think movies are in this unique position where they can document history or recreate history, perhaps not accurately or have some flaws in it. But I think film in and of itself is history like the Birth of a Nation because we've mentioned that a few times, it was shot at a certain time and it captures a certain way of thinking at that time.

Mary (23:13)
So it's an artifact almost, and it is problematic. But again, using that as a starting point for discussion and thinking, okay, why was this made and how was this received and why do we think about it differently now? Those are all really great questions that historians ask and you can ask yourself or have with your family when you're having movie night in your living room. Or it could just be fun. I just watched Dune the other night because I was so exhausted. And I said to my husband, I just want to not think for an hour and Dune is not an hour long. It was a commitment for this mama that goes to bed early. But I really did escape for a minute and just think about this really otherworldly place and you kind of lose yourself in it. It can be many different things to many different people and depending on the day. And then there are certainly days, as the former history teacher where I'm like, well, that's not historically accurate. When I'm watching a movie, I'm such a killjoy. People are like, just shut up, you're not allowed to talk anymore. Let us just enjoy this. But again, different things, different strokes for different folks.

Kirk (24:23)
Yeah, I love that, Mary, because I think that's part of the appeal that Hollywood has. We live in a diverse nation with people from numerous different backgrounds and different perspectives, yet we can all find ourselves watching these films and getting something from it. I mean, I think that's why there's so many seminal moments in American history that can coalesce around a movie being released. Like Star Wars is the one that jumps out at me like Star Wars in the 1970s became this just this moment where American culture was just grabbed by this film. And so many people have stories of going to see that movie and what it meant to them or showing their now children for the first time, Star Wars. And to me, that's such a cool thing because there are so many different entry points. And it does take you to, in the case of Star Wars, a totally different universe. It's something so outside ourselves and it shows you this world that you wouldn't otherwise see except personally in your own imagination. But share that with somebody and somebody picks up on how cool is this spaceship? And somebody else is like, wow, this music is incredible. And somebody else thinks the scenery is just so cool and another person might just really like the characters. And to me, that sort of multiple access points, the way that different people can come in with that experience and all share it in a really deep way, but all have very personal experiences with it. It's really incredible.

Mary (25:50)
A funny story about Star Wars. So my oldest brother, they were young boys when the original Star Wars came out. And I guess back then you could just stay in the movie theater all day long. And that's what they did. They just watched Star Wars like again, again and again, and my parents couldn't find them. Where are they? They were in the movies watching Star Wars a million times. But I think you're right, Kirk. When a movie is a classic like Star Wars, like Casablanca, there's something in the story that even if it is taking place in a galaxy far, far away, there is something about the story that resonates, like the hero or the heroine overcoming something adversity, a great love story, these things are things that we are just drawn to those stories and we can be drawn to them in history and what actually happened. And we can be drawn to them in made-up or faraway places. And that, I think, is just human beings as a storytelling animal. And that's I think why we all love history and perhaps why we all love the movies.

Kirk (26:56)
I think it's cool that it all emulates or it all emerges out of these places like Hollywood, California. Obviously, Hollywood's not the only place, but these places were sort of dreams come alive. There are places where these worlds are created from these areas where these people concentrate this amazing creative power and develop really cool things that they can share with the country Well.

Mary (27:19)
I think one of the nicknames for Hollywood is the Dream Factory, right, Tinseltown? The Dream Factory. And I think there's a lot of even in the history of Hollywood itself, it was a desert, but we figure out how to get water there. And then people come there and try to make it rich. And people are a lot of immigrants come there and set up a studio or begin acting. So there's a lot of that like you can do it. And there's that sort of American dream piece of it.

Haley (27:48)
A lot of Jews went there escaping persecution in Europe. So for them, it was a new start. And it really seemed like they promised land to start a completely new industry in a safe place that welcomed them and their ideas.

Mary (28:02)
This conversation, I think, turned into a love letter to the movies, which is fair. I think, again, there's so many good things that can come out of it. There's also a lot of bad things, which we hit on a little bit of that. And there's also a ton of change and we kind of alluded to that, but we didn't even really touch on streaming and how things are. We're in this period of great change right now. But when has there not been a time of great change? I guess you could come back at me with that. But again, I think Hollywood or the idea of Hollywood, I don't think is going away. It's been around for a long time. So maybe who's putting out the stories or the actors and actresses that are in the stories may be changing, but the appeal of film, I don't think is going anywhere. It's impossible to say. I don't have a Crystal ball what people are going to think about this in 20 years, but I would put money not a betting Gal, but I would put money on people still talking about movies and films 20 years from now.

Kirk (29:09)
Yeah. In a cool way, they've kind of become the fabric of our society. Even though we have so many different ways to watch film now, with all the streaming services and everything else, we still find ourselves connecting over particular shows or particular movies. And that, I think, is something that is very national about our country and our community. I mean, it's something that we share in the United States. You can be watching the same shows as people from all over the place. And that cultural connectivity in a world that is more and more connected. I think movies are certainly one of those ways that we build those communities that expand far outside of wherever we may be living. I think that's pretty cool. And I think you're right, Mary. I don't think that's going anywhere. If anything, it seems like there's more and more ways to watch more and more movies every day.

Mary (29:56)
I love that point, Kirk, because even connection is so important, even just in the office. So it's a great "has anybody seen Batman?" I'm dying to hear people's reviews back in me, but it's such a...

Haley (30:08)
I've seen Dune. we'll talk about it after the podcast.

Mary (30:10)
Yeah, I would like to hear your thoughts about this.

Mary (30:13)
But it's just that connection. We're all rooting for Luke Skywalker or we're all going to root for Harry Potter. We all have something that we can latch onto and I think that's part of the appeal. Speaking of community and connection, we would really love to hear from our listeners. You can always write to us at comments@fabricofhistory.org. We'd love to hear your favorite movies. What movies mean to you? What takes you back? Is it Star Wars? Is it Scarface? What's your favorite film? Thanks for listening, guys. Thanks, Kirk. Thanks, Haley. Let's all go to the movies.

Haley (30:53)
Yeah, let's go to the movies. Let's ditch work.

Kirk (30:55)
Let's do it.

Mary (30:56)
Take care, everybody, and keep asking questions.

Intro/Outro (31:03)
The Bill of Rights Institute engages, educates, and empowers individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exists in a free society. Check out our educational resources and programs on our website. Mybri.org. Any questions or suggestions for future episodes? We'd love to hear from you. Just email us at comments@fabricofhistory.org and don't forget to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay connected and informed about future episodes. Thank you for listening.