Hollywood is in the west of California. There is the beginning of movie. In 1917 a director was making a movie in Chicago but the weather was so bad, he couldn't finish his movie. Then he travelled to southern California and there the weather was better. So his companies built a movie studio in Hollywood other companies followed. The next years were Hollywoods greatest years.
There they made thousand of movies with lots of directors, actors and writers. Many famous and glamourus movie stars, like Bette Davis and Clark Gable, lived in Hollywood. Visitors from all over the world can go down to the "Walk of Fame" on "Hollywood Boulevard", and see the golden stars in the sidewalk! There are five-pointed stars about 80 centimeters big which are set into the cement along "Hollywood Boulevard" . Written on the stars are the names of different movie, TV or radio stars. On "Walk of Fame" fiends one over 2500 actors name on brass stars. Today most of the movie studios aren't in Hollywood anymore they are a few miles outside of the city where they have more space.
And there you can see stuntpeople jump off of buildings, how animals trained and how the stars put on make-up. When people say "Hollywood", they usually don't mean a certain are within the city of L.A., but the whole American movie industry. That business was born in the sunny suburb of Hollywood at the beginning of the century. In those days, sunlight was the most important light for the movies.
In southern California, the weather stayed warm and sunny enough to make movies even in the wintertime. The golden age of Hollywood was the 1980s when 90%(per cent) of all movies in the world were made there. It was a time when people laughed at stars like Charly Chaplin, Stan Laurell and Oliver Hardy and enjoyed the romantic adventures of Duglas Fairbanks and Marry Pickford.
|