HOLLYWOOD OLD AND NEW.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17182, 27 October 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD OLD AND NEW.

FAMOUS FILM TOWN. " My, I'd like to go to Hollywood.” Hoiv many times has this expression been uttered by wistful young girls, ambitious youths, and even older men and women, to whom the magic name of "Hollywood” spells romance and riches, adventure and thrills.

The world thinks it knows its Hollywood —just as a lot of people think they know Rome or A enice or the Riveira—from reading. Even to the superficial eye, the town of Hollywood presents a beautiful aspect. It nestles against the hills —in some places they would be called mountains—and below is the wide vallev which contains Los Angeles proper, of which Hollywood is a suburb. But the town has grown from seven to seventy thousand population within a decade.' In early da vs the land sold for the equivalent of five shillings an acre. To-day real estate even in the outlying sections of the city brings topnotch prices. . Hollywood was founded in oy Horace and Daeida Wilcox. They purchased a fig and apricot orchard at Cahuengua Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard (as they are now called U and when Mrs Wilcox returned Last shortly afterwards, she heard a wealthy woman on the train talking of a country estate called Hollywood. This name pleased Mrs \\ ilcox, and when she returned to Los Angeles she so named their own country place, this is now the very centre and heart ot Hollywood's business section. Mr Wilcox divided up bis 160-acre ranch, Hollvwood, and tried to start a town site. Those however, were lean years, and the town only a fair suc-

cess. Its founder died, land poor, in 1592. The -water problem was the ‘ greatest to meet, but later was met, 1 and after some “ hard sledding ” the town developed and grew, i The years 1910 and 1911 saw a new Hollywood ushered in, the Hollywood i of to-day. The town was annexed in 1910 to Los Angeles, and then, the following year, the biggest factor that : ever entered the life of the community sprung into being—the motion picture i industry. i Already there were studios in Los [ Angeles proper, but the brothers Horst ley were the first to start in Holly- : wood, leasing the Old Blondeau tavern at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street for their plant. Then come other companies. and in the month of December, 1913. Jesse L. Lasky and Cecil B. Do - Mille established the Jesse L. Lasky I Feature Play Company at Selma Avenue and Vine Street, with a barn as the only structure. The present Famous Players-Laskjr Studio, covering two square blocks, is the growth of this original plant in less than a decade. “ Above everything else,” says Laurance L. Hill, in a brochure on Hollywood. “ the picture industry has brought to Hollywood highly skilled and cultured people, and community; advertising of limitless possibilities.” This is the Hollywood—the Hollywood of to-day.