Page:Truth About The Movies, The (1924).djvu/19



WENTY years ago Hollywood came into being as a regularly incorporated municipality. In that day the place was an obscure, country crossroad place in which ever crossroads were not prominent as features.

But it was a community of 4,999 folk who entertained just pride in their main street, Hollywood Boulevard, and that pride caused them to enact a city ordinance prohibiting the driving of more than 5000 sheep in one band at any single time down the boulevard.

That was about the first legal act of the initial city administration of Hollywood. And, by the same token, that was nearly the last enactment the council undertook for the municipality, for, soon after—but a few years—it was declared expedient that the city of Hollywood merge with Los Angeles in order that as a suburb it might enjoy the benefits of certain public utilities, principally the domestic water system, water being at that time a commodity need of which was the greatest problem confronting the local administration.

And so it came about that eight years after incorporation, Hollywood shook off the shackles of administration and let metropolitan Los Angeles do those things that Hollywood had found difficulty in doing for itself.

For some years Hollywood lived in peaceful, quiescent, passive existence, doing nothing to attract nation-wide attention, or even state-wide consideration, except that it was the larger suburb of growing Los Angeles.

Then came the motion picture industry, and Hollywood got on the map definitely and permanently.

That was in 1910, when Biograph, with David Wark Griffith as director, came here. With the company were Mack Sennett, Arthur Johnson, Owen Moore, Mary Pickford, Florence Lawrence, Marjorie Favor and Lee Dougherty. Immediately following Biograph came the Horsleys, Essanay, Kalem, Thomas Ricketts, Milton Fahrney and Al Christie.

That was the beginning of the motion picture industry, modest in a way, but primed with potential possibility. Today, built on the foundation laid by these pioneers, the motion picture