Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
film or TV set. With over 40 TV shows and scores of movies shot here annually, every
palm-lined boulevard or beach seems to come with its own IMDb resume.
It's a myth that most movie production ever took place in Hollywood, the social hub of
'the Industry.' Of the major motion-picture studios, only Paramount Pictures is in Holly-
wood proper, surrounded by block after block of production-related businesses such as
lighting and post-production. The high cost of filming has sent location scouts beyond
LA's San Fernando Valley (where most movie and TV studios are found) and even north
of the border to Canada. A few production companies are based in San Francisco, includ-
ing Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic,
and Pixar.
With increasing regularity, Hollywood films feature California as both a setting and a
topic and, in some cases, almost as a character. LA especially loves to turn the camera on
itself, often from a film-noir angle. Meanwhile, SoCal has become a versatile backdrop for
both edgy cable TV dramas and vapid reality-TV shows.
Director Alfred Hitchcock set some of his best thrillers in coastal California, including
Ver-
tigo
(1958), with unforgettable shots of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Muir
Woods, and
The Birds
(1963), mostly filmed in Bodega Bay.
HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN YEARS
The Industry, as it's called, grew out of the humble orchards of Hollywoodland, a residen-
tial neighborhood of Los Angeles, where entrepreneurial moviemakers (including many
European immigrants) established studios. In 1913 the first full-length Hollywood feature,
a silent Western drama called The Squaw Man,was shot by director Cecil B de Mille. The
silent-movie era gave way to 'talkies' in 1927, the same year that Sid Grauman opened his
landmark Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.
During the 1930s and '40s, American literary lions such as F Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy
Parker, Truman Capote, William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams did stints as Hollywood
screenwriters. In the 1950s, during the anti-communist 'Red Scare' of the Cold War era,
the federal government's House Un-American Activities Committee investigated and sub-
sequently blacklisted many Hollywood actors, directors and screenwriters, some of
whom left for self-imposed exile in Europe, never to return.
