50 Fun Facts About Hard Hollywood

In which year did Harvey Wilcox file the subdivision map that first recorded the name Hollywood?

Harvey Wilcox filed the Hollywood subdivision map with the Los Angeles County Recorder on February 1, 1887, the first official use of the name for the tract he and Daeida owned.

Why did the independent city of Hollywood vote to merge with Los Angeles in 1910?

Hollywood merged with Los Angeles in 1910 to secure water and sewer access: the village, incorporated only in November 1903, had no adequate water supply or sewage system of its own.

Which 1910 D. W. Griffith Western is credited as the first film shot in Hollywood?

In Old California, a 1910 Biograph short directed by D. W. Griffith during the company's winter trip west, is credited as the first film shot in the still-rural village of Hollywood.

Hollywood's first permanent movie studio, opened by the Nestor Film Company in 1911, was housed in what?

The Blondeau Tavern stood on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street.

What 1914 Western was Cecil B. DeMille's directorial debut and the first feature shot in Hollywood?

The Squaw Man (1914), co-directed by DeMille and Oscar Apfel, was the first production of the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, shot in a rented barn at Selma and Vine.

Many filmmakers moved west around 1913 to escape fees and lawsuits from whom?

Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, formed in 1908, controlled almost every patent relevant to cameras and film, and its fees and lawsuits pushed independents west to California.

Which New Jersey town was once the motion-picture capital of America, before Hollywood?

Fort Lee, New Jersey, on the Palisades across the Hudson from Manhattan, was America's first motion-picture capital in the 1910s, home to studios such as Champion, Éclair and Solax.

The Hollywood Sign was erected in 1923 to advertise what?

The sign advertised a housing development: it read HOLLYWOODLAND, the name of the hillside real-estate subdivision, was meant to stand about 18 months, and lost its last four letters in 1949.

When the Hollywood Sign was entirely rebuilt in steel in 1978, how tall were the new letters?

The 1978 steel letters stand 45 feet tall, five feet shorter than the 50-foot 1923 originals; nine donors paid about $27,777 per letter for the rebuild.

Actress Peg Entwistle died in 1932 after climbing which letter of the Hollywoodland sign?

Entwistle climbed a workman's ladder to the top of the letter H and jumped on the night of September 16, 1932, aged 24; her story became a grim Hollywood legend.

Which is the oldest surviving film studio in the United States, founded on April 30, 1912?

Universal, incorporated on April 30, 1912 by Carl Laemmle and partners, is the oldest surviving American film studio; Paramount's ancestor Famous Players followed on May 8, 1912.

In 1916 Adolph Zukor put 24 actors under contract and honoured each with what on the Paramount logo?

Each of Zukor's 24 contract players was represented by a star in the arc above the Paramount mountain; the count was cut to 22 in the 1987 redesign.

Which four film figures founded United Artists on February 5, 1919?

Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks formed United Artists to control their own films' financing and distribution; Metro's Richard Rowland quipped that the inmates had taken over the asylum.

Which four brothers founded Warner Bros. Pictures on April 4, 1923?

It replaced their earlier Warner Features Company, founded in 1910.

Which 1927 Warner Bros. film was the first feature with synchronized singing and speech?

The Jazz Singer, premiered October 6, 1927, was the first feature with synchronized singing and spoken dialogue; Al Jolson's ad-libbed 'You ain't heard nothin' yet!' announced the talkies.

Which company merged with Fox Film Corporation in 1935 to form one of the Golden Age's Big Five studios?

Twentieth Century Pictures, the independent Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph Schenck founded in 1933, merged with Fox Film in May 1935 to form 20th Century-Fox, with Zanuck as production chief.

RKO's initials stood for what?

RKO stood for Radio-Keith-Orpheum: RCA's David Sarnoff merged the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville circuit with the FBO studio in 1928 to create a market for RCA's Photophone sound system.

Which industrialist took over RKO in 1948, nine years before the studio ceased production?

Howard Hughes bought a controlling interest in RKO in May 1948 for about $8.8 million; under his erratic ownership the studio lost money and halted production in 1957.

Which 'Big Five' studio was owned by the Loews Incorporated theater chain?

Marcus Loew formed MGM in 1924; the Little Three lacked big theater chains of their own.

Irving Thalberg, MGM's 'Boy Wonder', died at what age in 1936?

Thalberg was 37 when pneumonia killed him on September 14, 1936; born in May 1899, he had run MGM production since 1924, and F. Scott Fitzgerald modeled The Last Tycoon's Monroe Stahr on him.

Thomas Ince, pioneer of assembly-line filmmaking, fell fatally ill in 1924 aboard whose yacht?

Ince collapsed aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht Oneida during a November 1924 birthday cruise and died days later; heart failure was the official cause, but rumours of a Hearst gunshot persist.

Mack Sennett founded Keystone Studios in 1912 in which Los Angeles district?

Edendale is now part of Echo Park; the Keystone Cops and a young Charlie Chaplin worked there.

Chaplin's studio at La Brea and Sunset later housed A&M Records and then which puppeteer's firm?

Chaplin ran it from 1917 to 1953; a statue of Kermit dressed as the Tramp stood over the gate in the Henson years.

How long did the first Academy Awards ceremony last in 1929?

The May 16, 1929 ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel took just 15 minutes: the winners had been announced three months earlier, tickets cost $5, and host Douglas Fairbanks handed out the awards.

Which actor won the first Best Actor Oscar for two films, The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command?

Emil Jannings, the German star of The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command, received the first Best Actor award; he collected his statuette early because he was sailing home to Europe.

Who designed the Oscar statuette, sculpted by George Stanley?

MGM art director Cedric Gibbons sketched the Art Deco knight standing on a five-spoked film reel; sculptor George Stanley realized it, and the statuette stands 13.5 inches and weighs 8.5 pounds.

Academy librarian Margaret Herrick is said to have named the Oscar after whom?

The story dates to 1931; the statuette is gold-plated bronze on a black metal base.

Between 1949 and 1959 the Academy Awards were held at which Hollywood Boulevard theater?

The RKO Pantages Theatre, then owned by RKO, hosted the ceremonies from March 1950 to April 1960; the Oscars did not return to Hollywood Boulevard until the Kodak Theatre opened in 2002.

The Motion Picture Production Code, or Hays Code, governed studio films between which years?

The Code was adopted in 1930 but strictly enforced only from July 1934, when Joseph Breen's Production Code Administration began vetting scripts; it was abandoned in 1968 for the MPAA ratings system.

The 1948 Supreme Court 'Paramount decision' ended what studio practice?

It also opened American screens to more foreign and independent films.

The Hollywood blacklist began on November 25, 1947, a day after ten filmmakers were cited for what?

The House voted on November 24, 1947 to cite the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress after they refused to answer HUAC's questions about Communist ties; the studios' Waldorf Statement the next day launched the blacklist.

Which Hollywood Ten screenwriter did Otto Preminger openly hire for Exodus in 1960?

Preminger announced in January 1960 that Dalton Trumbo would receive screen credit for Exodus; Kirk Douglas then credited him openly for Spartacus the same year, and the blacklist crumbled.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre opened on May 18, 1927 with the premiere of which Cecil B. DeMille film?

The theatre opened on May 18, 1927 with DeMille's biblical epic The King of Kings; Sid Grauman's forecourt of celebrity hand- and footprints in concrete began in the same year.

Which Douglas Fairbanks film had Hollywood's first movie premiere, at Grauman's Egyptian in 1922?

Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, premiered at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922, the first gala film premiere held in Hollywood itself.

Which entertainer is the only person honoured with a Walk of Fame star in all five original categories?

Gene Autry holds stars in all five original categories — film, television, recording, radio and live performance — the only honoree to do so; Bob Hope has four.

Walk of Fame stars are made of coral-pink terrazzo rimmed with what?

Each star is coral-pink terrazzo set in a charcoal terrazzo square and rimmed with brass, with a brass category emblem; the first permanent stars were laid in 1960.

By count, which milestone star on the Walk of Fame was Jennifer Lopez's?

Jennifer Lopez received the 2,500th star on June 20, 2013, in the recording category; a plaque beside it records the milestone.

The Hollywood Bowl officially opened on July 11 of which year?

The Hollywood Bowl's first official season opened on July 11, 1922, in a natural amphitheatre then called Daisy Dell; the concentric-arch shell of 1929 stood until 2003.

The blinking light atop the Capitol Records Building spells out what in Morse code?

Samuel Morse's granddaughter switched it on; in 1992 it blinked 'Capitol 50' for the label's anniversary.

Architect Louis Naidorf designed the Capitol Records tower, considered the world's first what?

The 13-story tower, completed in 1956, is called the world's first circular office block; Naidorf, a 24-year-old at Welton Becket Associates, drew it, and it was nicknamed 'The House That Nat Built' after Nat King Cole's sales.

Which restaurant, opened in 1919, is the oldest in Hollywood?

It is named for original owners Joseph Musso and Frank Toulet and was a haunt of writers like Faulkner and Chandler.

Who opened the original hat-shaped Brown Derby restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in 1926?

Playwright and gambler Wilson Mizner opened the hat-shaped Wilshire Brown Derby with Herbert Somborn in February 1926; Bob Cobb, a later owner, devised the Cobb salad at the chain's Hollywood branch in 1937.

Schwab's Pharmacy, the legendary Sunset Boulevard hangout for actors, closed in which year?

Schwab's closed in October 1983 after 51 years on Sunset and was demolished in 1988; the tale that Lana Turner was discovered at its soda fountain is a myth — it was the Top Hat Café.

The Chateau Marmont was loosely modeled on a former royal castle in which French valley?

The 1929 building was loosely modeled on the Château d'Amboise, a royal castle in the Loire Valley; attorney Fred Horowitz had chosen the Sunset Boulevard site in 1926 for luxury apartments.

From 1939 to 1998 Hollywood Forever Cemetery was known as 'Hollywood Memorial' what?

It became Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 and was renamed Hollywood Forever in 1998; Paramount's lot sits on 40 acres carved from it.

The Hollywood Canteen, which entertained servicemen 1942-45, was co-founded by John Garfield and which actress?

Bette Davis and John Garfield founded the Canteen on Cahuenga Boulevard in October 1942; a uniform was the only ticket needed, and stars waited tables and danced with the troops.

The Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, opened in November 1963, was based on whose geodesic dome design?

The dome was the first concrete geodesic dome, built on R. Buckminster Fuller's patented design by Welton Becket's firm in 16 weeks to open with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in November 1963.

Griffith Observatory's 12-inch Zeiss refractor is claimed to be what?

Admission has been free since 1935 under the terms of Griffith J. Griffith's will.

Which rock singer paid for an O in the 1978 Hollywood Sign rebuild, in memory of Groucho Marx?

Donors sponsored individual letters in 1978: Alice Cooper paid for an O in memory of Groucho Marx, Andy Williams the W, Gene Autry an L, and Hugh Hefner the Y.

Which category was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023 as its sixth?

Sports Entertainment joined motion pictures, television, recording, radio and live theatre, which had been added in 1984.