Hollywood is a district of the city of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1857. The accounts that the name "Hollywood" comes from imported English holly bushes are incorrect: the name actually comes from the wife of Harvey Henderson Wilcox, a real-estate developer in the late 1880s. Wilcox's wife, on a train trip, met a woman who had a house she called "Hollywood", and so Mrs. Wilcox returned home and gave her ranch the same name.
This city was incorporated as a municipality in 1903; in 1910 it voted to become part of L.A., thus securing a water supply. A measure calling for Hollywood to secede from Los Angeles failed by a wide margin in November 2002.
"Hollywood" is also used to refer to the film industry located in and around Hollywood, California. The first studio in Hollywood was founded 1911 by David Horsley for the Nestor Company. In the same year, another 15 Independents settled there. Film production companies began to flock to Hollywood because of the good weather and longer days. In the early days of film, there were no electric lights and so the only source of enough light to adequately expose the film was sunlight. Up until that point, New York had been the center of U.S. film production.
Hollywood and the film industry of the 1930s are described in P. G. Wodehouse's novel Laughing Gas (1936) (see 1936 in literature) and in Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) (see 1941 in literature), and parodied in Terry Pratchett's novel Moving Pictures.
Landmarks and interesting spots:
- Griffith Observatory
- Griffith Park
- Hollywood sign (see image)
- the Sunset Strip
- Hollywood Bowl
- Echo Lake
- Grauman's Chinese Theatre
- Hollywood Walk of Fame
See also: Bollywood, Hollywood movies
