120-452: Borehamwood ( / ˌ b ɔːr əm ˈ w ʊ d / , historically also Boreham Wood ) is a town in southern Hertfordshire , England, 12 miles (19 km) from Charing Cross . Borehamwood has a population of 36,322, and is within the London commuter belt . The town's film and TV studios are commonly known as Elstree Studios . One of the earliest mentions of Bosci de Boreham (Wood of Boreham),
240-610: A zeppelin over Great Britain during WW1 happened in Cuffley. From the 1920s until the late 1980s , the town of Borehamwood was home to one of the major British film studio complexes, including the MGM-British Studios . Many well-known films were made here including the first three Star Wars movies ( IV , V , & VI ). The studios generally used the name of Elstree . American director Stanley Kubrick not only used to shoot in those studios but also lived in
360-543: A Romano-British soldier, took the place of a Christian priest and was beheaded on Holywell Hill. His martyr's cross of a yellow saltire on a blue field is reflected in the flag and coat of arms of Hertfordshire as the yellow field to the stag or Hart representing the county. He is the Patron Saint of Hertfordshire. With the departure of the Roman Legions in the early 5th century , the now-unprotected territory
480-619: A Wonderful Life , It Happened One Night , the original King Kong , Mutiny on the Bounty , Top Hat , City Lights , Red River , The Lady from Shanghai , Rear Window , On the Waterfront , Rebel Without a Cause , Some Like It Hot , and The Manchurian Candidate . The studio system and the Golden Age of Hollywood succumbed to two forces that developed in the late 1940s: In 1938, Walt Disney's Snow White and
600-460: A bus service that stops at Borehamwood (route 601) going to Welwyn Garden City via St Albans and back. The 644 service also runs from Hatfield to Queensbury via Borehamwood. Intalink operate a bus service to other parts of Hertfordshire . The A1 road passes just to the east of the town, and the M25 motorway passes about two miles (three kilometres) north of it. In the 2011 census, the population
720-559: A compromise with Arnold in October 1940 and signing a consent decree agreeing to, within three years: The "Little Three" ( Universal Studios , United Artists , and Columbia Pictures ), who did not own any theaters, refused to participate in the consent decree. A number of independent film producers were also unhappy with the compromise and formed a union known as the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and sued Paramount for
840-419: A computer and manipulate them digitally. The possibilities became apparent in director James Cameron 's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), in images of the shape-changing character T-1000 . Computer graphics or CG advanced to a point where Jurassic Park (1993) was able to use the techniques to create realistic looking animals. Jackpot (2001) became the first film that was shot entirely in digital. In
960-425: A historic centre, with many Tudor and Stuart era buildings interspersed amongst more contemporary structures. Hertfordshire's eastern regions are predominantly rural and arable, intermixed with villages and small to medium-sized towns. Royston, Buntingford and Bishop's Stortford , along with Ware and the county town of Hertford are major settlements in this regard. The physical geography of eastern Hertfordshire
1080-528: A homegrown supply of actors—lured west from the New York City stage after the introduction of sound films—to form one of the 20th century's most remarkable growth industries. At motion pictures' height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week. Sound also became widely used in Hollywood in
1200-450: A lake. Meadow Park includes a large playing field, tennis courts and basketball courts. Borehamwood has a large shopping area called Borehamwood Shopping Park, featuring large retail stores. The hamlet of Well End has a notable pub, the Mops and Brooms , reputedly the site of a battle between travellers and village folk. Adjacent to the pub is a much older building: Nelson Cottage (c.1600)
1320-640: A major film production center. In Colorado , Denver was home to the Art-O-Graf Film Company, and Walt Disney 's early Laugh-O-Gram Studio was based in Kansas City , Missouri . From 1908, Jacksonville, Florida's motion picture industry saw more than 30 silent film companies establish studios in town, including Kalem Studios , Metro Pictures (later MGM ), Edison Studios , Majestic Films, King-Bee Films Corporation , Vim Comedy Company , Norman Studios , Gaumont Film Company and
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#17327724468601440-681: A mix of post-WWII new towns and older/more historical locales. The City of St. Albans is an example of a historical settlement, as its cathedral and abbey date to the Norman period, and there are ruins from the Roman settlement of Verulamium nearby the current city centre. Stevenage is a mix of post-WWII new town planning amidst its prior incarnation as a smaller town. The Old Town in Stevenage represents this historic core and has many shops and buildings reflecting its pre-WWII heritage. Hitchin also has
1560-815: A number of theaters in the late 1920s, and would hold a monopoly on theaters in Detroit, Michigan . By the 1930s, almost all of the first-run metropolitan theaters in the United States were owned by the Big Five studios— MGM , Paramount Pictures , RKO , Warner Bros. , and 20th Century Fox . Motion picture companies operated under the studio system . The major studios kept thousands of people on salary—actors, producers, directors, writers, stunt men, crafts persons, and technicians. They owned or leased Movie Ranches in rural Southern California for location shooting of westerns and other large-scale genre films, and
1680-521: A set of still cameras placed in a row. Muybridge's accomplishment led inventors everywhere to attempt to make similar devices. In the United States , Thomas Edison was among the first to produce such a device, the kinetoscope and kinetograph . The history of cinema in the United States can trace its roots to the East Coast , where, at one time, Fort Lee, New Jersey , was the motion-picture capital of America. The American film industry began at
1800-701: A site in Borehamwood, where it offers a small range of full and part-time courses. The TV series Grange Hill was filmed at Hillside School in Borehamwood (as well as BBC Elstree Centre ) from 1985 to 1990. Borehamwood is twinned with: Borehamwood experiences an oceanic climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfb ) similar to almost all of the rest of the United Kingdom. Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( / ˈ h ɑːr t f ər d ʃ ɪər / HART -fərd-sheer or /- ʃ ər / -shər ; often abbreviated Herts )
1920-652: A time to theaters and use the lock-in to cover for releases of mediocre quality. Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold —a noted " trust buster " of the Roosevelt administration—took this opportunity to initiate proceedings against the eight largest Hollywood studios in July 1938 for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act . The federal suit resulted in five of the eight studios (the "Big Five": Warner Bros. , MGM , Fox , RKO and Paramount ) reaching
2040-401: A vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood: a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old California , a Biograph melodrama about California in the 19th century, when the state
2160-469: Is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties . It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south and Buckinghamshire to the west. The largest settlement is Watford , and the county town is Hertford . The county has an area of 634 square miles (1,640 km ) and had a population of 1,198,800 at
2280-510: Is also the UK base of multi-nationals Hilton Worldwide , TotalEnergies , TK Maxx , Costco , JJ Kavanagh and Sons , Vinci and Beko . The 2006 World Golf Championship and the 2013 Bilderberg Conference , took place at The Grove hotel . Warner Bros. owns and runs its main UK base since the 2000s, Warner Studios, in Leavesden, Watford. Rickmansworth hosts Skanska . Most of the county
2400-460: Is based in the town, the head office of the delivery portion having moved to nearby St Albans in 2015; and, until 2003, so were the headquarters of the United Kingdom subsidiary of T-Mobile , with both being based in the office blocks standing on part of what used to be the old Elstree Studios. Regent Inns has its head office on Elstree Way. George Wimpey also has offices within the town. The takeaway delivery company Just Eat also has an office in
2520-521: Is in 1188: In 1776, the House of Lords granted: Borehamwood was historically part of the parish of Elstree . A separate ecclesiastical parish of "All Saints, Boreham Wood" was created on 26 February 1909, covering the part of Elstree parish east of the Midland Railway . Despite this change to the ecclesiastical boundaries, Borehamwood remained part of the civil parish of Elstree. The name of
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#17327724468602640-656: Is less elevated than the far west, but with lower rising hills and prominent rivers such as the Stort . This river rises in Essex and terminates via a confluence with the Lea near to Ware. Apart from the Lea and Stort, the River Colne is the major watercourse in the county's west. This runs near Watford and Radlett, and has a complex system/drainage area running south into both Greater London and Buckinghamshire. An unofficial status,
2760-713: Is now a private residence but was the original Mops and Brooms alehouse. It was renamed the Lord Nelson c.1840–50 and traded under that name until its closure in 1932 and replacement by the current pub, which eventually reverted to the older name. Borehamwood is within the BBC London and ITV London region. Television signals are received from the Crystal Palace TV transmitter and the local relay transmitter situated in Hemel Hempstead . The town
2880-560: Is served by BBC London & ITV London , however Stevenage and North Hertfordshire is served by BBC East & ITV Anglia . Some northwestern parts of the county around Tring can also receive BBC South and ITV Meridian . Local radio for the county is provided by BBC Three Counties Radio , BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (covering Royston ), Heart Hertfordshire , Greatest Hits Radio Bucks, Beds and Herts (formerly Mix 96), Mix 92.6 (formerly Radio Verulam St. Albans) and Community Radio Dacorum (Hemel Hempstead). Local newspapers in
3000-782: Is served by both BBC Radio London and BBC Three Counties Radio . Other radio stations including Heart Hertfordshire and Radio Verulam . The Borehamwood & Elstree Times is a privately owned, online-only local newspaper covering the local and adjacent area. The Town Crier is a quarterly, council-run community publication for Elstree & Borehamwood residents. Borehamwood has a number of primary schools, including Cowley Hill Primary School, Woodlands Primary School, Parkside Primary School, Yavneh Primary School and Meryfield Primary School. Secondary schools include Hertswood Academy , Elstree Screen Arts Academy and Yavneh College . Independent schools include Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' , Girls' and Aldenham schools. Oaklands College has
3120-488: Is still typical of most films made in America today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. With more than 600 English-language films released annually as of 2017 , it has produced the fourth-largest number of films of any national cinema , after India , Japan , and China . While
3240-644: Is supplied to London from Ware , using the New River built by Hugh Myddleton and opened in 1613. Local rivers, although small, supported developing industries such as paper production at Nash Mills . Hertfordshire affords habitat for a variety of flora and fauna. A bird once common in the shire is the hooded crow , the old name of which is the eponymous name of the regional newspaper, the Royston Crow published in Royston . A product, now largely defunct,
3360-468: Is the bedrock of much of the county provides an aquifer that feeds streams and is also exploited to provide water supplies for much of the county and beyond. Chalk has also been used as a building material and, once fired, the resultant lime was spread on agricultural land to improve fertility. The mining of chalk since the early 18th century has left unrecorded underground galleries that occasionally collapse unexpectedly and endanger buildings. Fresh water
3480-469: The Indiana Jones films. The facility was partly demolished in the 1980s to make way for a Tesco Extra supermarket on one side and an office block complex on the other. The area between the supermarket and the office blocks is all that remains of the original studio, which has been much reduced in size and usefulness to production companies as a result. The Shenley Road Studios were later used for
3600-495: The 2021 census . After Watford (131,325), the largest settlements are Hemel Hempstead (95,985), Stevenage (94,470) and the city of St Albans (75,540). For local government purposes Hertfordshire is a non-metropolitan county with ten districts beneath Hertfordshire County Council . Elevations are higher in the north and west, reaching more than 800 feet (240 m) in the Chilterns near Tring . The county centres on
3720-566: The BBC Elstree Centre . The studios have, over the years, been home to Alfred Hitchcock 's film Blackmail , Jim Henson 's TV series The Muppet Show was also produced there, and now BBC's popular soap, EastEnders and their medical drama Holby City . An episode of Judge John Deed included scenes of the Tesco Extra , but with Borehamwood crossed out and Lewes written in its place. Several other studios including
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3840-693: The Chiltern Hills surrounding Tring , Berkhamsted and the Ashridge estate. This Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty runs from near Hitchin in the north to Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Many of the county's major settlements are in the central, northern and southern areas, such as Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Kings Langley , Rickmansworth , St. Albans , Harpenden , Redbourn , Radlett , Borehamwood , Potters Bar , Stevenage, Hatfield , Welwyn and Welwyn Garden City, Hitchin , Letchworth and Baldock. These are all small to medium-sized locations, featuring
3960-611: The Chilterns , clayland buffer zone countryside of Braughing and the Hadhams across to ancient hornbeam coppices west of the upper Lea valley. The county has sweeping panoramas of chalklands near Royston , Baldock , Hexton and Tring . Large parts of the county are used for agriculture. Some quarrying of sand and gravel occurs around St Albans. In the past, clay has supplied local brick-making and still does in Bovingdon , just south-west of Hemel Hempstead. The chalk that
4080-605: The Counties (Detached Parts) Act 1844 which eliminated exclaves ; amended when, in 1965 under the London Government Act 1963 , East Barnet Urban District and Barnet Urban District were abolished, their area was transferred to form part of the present-day London Borough of Barnet and the Potters Bar Urban District of Middlesex was transferred to Hertfordshire. The highest point in
4200-629: The Gate Studios and the Danziger Studios at nearby Elstree have been demolished. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios complex (demolished in the early 1970s) saw the production of many films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), as well as ITV television series such as The Prisoner (1967–68). The newer Millennium Studios were situated on Elstree Way, Borehamwood. The UK headquarters of Pizza Hut restaurants
4320-571: The Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles County, California . Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of a film grammar . Orson Welles 's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time . The first recorded instance of photographs capturing and reproducing motion was a series of photographs of a running horse by Eadweard Muybridge , which he took in Palo Alto, California , using
4440-647: The ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships twice. First in 2015 , and most recently in 2023 , where Britain topped the medal table with 5 golds. Cinema of the United States The cinema of the United States , consisting mainly of major film studios (also known metonymically as Hollywood ), has remained a significant influence on the global film industry beginning in the early 20th century . Classical Hollywood cinema , which developed from 1910 to 1962,
4560-1107: The Kalem Company began using Fort Lee as a location for filming in the area, other filmmakers quickly followed. In 1909, a forerunner of Universal Studios , the Champion Film Company , built the first studio. Others quickly followed and either built new studios or leased facilities in Fort Lee. In the 1910s and 1920s , film companies such as the Independent Moving Pictures Company, Peerless Pictures Studios , Solax Studios , Eclair , Goldwyn Pictures Corporation , Star Film ( Georges Méliès ), World Film Company , Biograph Studios , Fox Film Corporation , Société Pathé Frères , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. , Victor Film Company , and Selznick International Pictures were all making pictures in Fort Lee. Such notables as Mary Pickford got their start at Biograph Studios. In New York,
4680-703: The Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens , which was built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields . The Edison Studios were located in the Bronx . Chelsea, Manhattan , was also frequently used. Other Eastern cities, most notably Chicago and Cleveland , also served as early centers for film production. In the West, California was already quickly emerging as
4800-497: The Lubin Manufacturing Company . Picture City, Florida was a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane , the idea collapsed and Picture City, Florida returned to its original name of Hobe Sound . An attempt to establish a film production center in Detroit also proved unsuccessful. The film patents wars of the early 20th century helped
4920-637: The antagonist and protagonist may be blurred. The roots of post-classical storytelling may be seen in film noir , in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and in Hitchcock's storyline-shattering Psycho . The New Hollywood is the emergence of a new generation of film school-trained directors who had absorbed the techniques developed in Europe in the 1960s as a result of the French New Wave;
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5040-407: The studios and Hollywood grew. Before World War I , films were made in several American cities, but filmmakers tended to gravitate towards southern California as the industry developed. They were attracted by the warm, predictable climate with reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film their films outdoors year-round alongside the varied scenery that was available. War damage contributed to
5160-538: The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde marked the beginning of American cinema rebounding as well, as a new generation of films would afterwards gain success at the box offices as well. Filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola , Steven Spielberg , George Lucas , Brian De Palma , Stanley Kubrick , Martin Scorsese , Roman Polanski , and William Friedkin came to produce fare that paid homage to the history of film and developed upon existing genres and techniques. Inaugurated by
5280-615: The 1969 release of Andy Warhol 's Blue Movie , the phenomenon of adult erotic films being publicly discussed by celebrities (like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope ), and taken seriously by critics (like Roger Ebert ), a development referred to, by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times , as " porno chic ", and later known as the Golden Age of Porn , began, for the first time, in modern American culture. According to award-winning author Toni Bentley , Radley Metzger 's 1976 film The Opening of Misty Beethoven , based on
5400-527: The 1990s had access to technological, political and economic innovations that had not been available in previous decades. Dick Tracy (1990) became the first 35 mm feature film with a digital soundtrack. Batman Returns (1992) was the first film to make use of the Dolby Digital six-channel stereo sound that has since become the industry standard. Computer-generated imagery was greatly facilitated when it became possible to transfer film images into
5520-652: The Anglo-Saxons: "ford", "ton", "den", "bourn", "ley", "stead", "ing", "lett", "wood", and "worth", are represented in this county by Hertford, Royston, Harpenden, Redbourn, Cuffley, Wheathampstead, Tring, Radlett, Borehamwood and Rickmansworth. There is evidence of human life in Hertfordshire from the Mesolithic period . It was first farmed during the Neolithic period and permanent habitation appeared at
5640-559: The Catholic watchdog organization The Legion of Decency —appalled by some of the provocative films and lurid advertising of the era later classified Pre-Code Hollywood —threatened a boycott of motion pictures if it did not go into effect. The films that did not obtain a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration had to pay a $ 25,000 fine (equivalent to $ 455,976 in 2023) and could not profit in
5760-688: The Fox Film Corporation owned the Fox Theatre . RKO (a 1928 merger between Keith-Orpheum Theaters and the Radio Corporation of America ) also responded to the Western Electric/ERPI monopoly over sound in films, and developed their own method, known as Photophone , to put sound in films. Paramount, which acquired Balaban and Katz in 1926, would answer to the success of Warner Bros. and RKO by purchasing
5880-523: The Hollywood antitrust case, as did the Little Three studios. The United States Supreme Court eventually ruled in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. that the major studios ownership of theaters and film distribution was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act . As a result, the studios began to release actors and technical staff from their contracts with the studios. This changed
6000-466: The Hollywood studios. The Classical style began to emerge in 1913, was accelerated in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I , and finally solidified when the film The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the silent film era and increasing box-office profits for the film industry by introducing sound to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a formula— Western , slapstick comedy , musical , animated cartoon , biographical —and
6120-642: The Roses, St. Albans was the scene of two major battles between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. In Tudor times, Hatfield House was often frequented by Queen Elizabeth I. Stuart King James I used the locale for hunting and facilitated the construction of a waterway, the New River , supplying drinking water to London. As London grew, Hertfordshire became conveniently close to the English capital; much of
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#17327724468606240-498: The Seven Dwarfs was released during a run of lackluster films from the major studios, and quickly became the highest grossing film released to that point. Embarrassingly for the studios, it was an independently produced animated film that did not feature any studio-employed stars. This stoked already widespread frustration at the practice of block-booking , in which studios would only sell an entire year's schedule of films at
6360-653: The TV series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Big Brother , as well as several major feature films. The Inspector Morse TV series' production offices were based in the studios and, although the series was set in Oxford , several exterior locations (banks, shops etc.) were filmed in the streets of Borehamwood. The former British National Studios off Clarendon Road, referred to locally as "The Douglas Fairbanks studios" (which were bought by Lew Grade 's ATV in May 1958), are now
6480-823: The UK Cereal Partners factory and in pharmaceuticals it hosts Roche UK's headquarters (subsidiary of the Swiss Hoffman-La Roche ). GlaxoSmithKline has plants in Ware and Stevenage . Hemel Hempstead has large premises of Dixons Carphone . The National Pharmacy Association (NPA), the trade association for UK pharmacies, is based in St Albans . Kings Langley has the plant-office of Pure , making DAB digital radios . Watford hosts national companies such as J D Wetherspoon , Camelot Group , Bathstore , and Caversham Finance (BrightHouse). It
6600-400: The US film industry. They were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of short films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons , after their admission price of a nickel (five cents). Within a few years, men like Samuel Goldwyn , William Fox , Carl Laemmle , Adolph Zukor , Louis B. Mayer , and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to
6720-415: The Unready . A century later, William of Normandy received the surrender of some senior English Lords and Clergy at Berkhamsted , before entering London unopposed and being crowned at Westminster . Hertfordshire was used for some of the new Norman castles at Bishop's Stortford , and at King's Langley , a staging post between London and the royal residence of Berkhamsted . The Domesday Book recorded
6840-419: The actors who appeared in it; MGM , for example, claimed it had contracted "more stars than there are in heaven." Each studio had its own style and characteristic touches which made it possible to know this—a trait that rarely exists today. For example, To Have and Have Not (1944) is notable not only for the first pairing of actors Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) and Lauren Bacall (1924–2014), but because it
6960-414: The area until his death. Big Brother UK and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? have been filmed there. EastEnders is filmed at Elstree. Hertfordshire has seen development at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden ; the Harry Potter series was filmed here and the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye . On 17 October 2000, the Hatfield rail crash killed four people with over 70 injured. The crash exposed
7080-441: The area was owned by the nobility and aristocracy , this patronage helped to boost the local economy. However, the greatest boost to Hertfordshire came during the Industrial Revolution , after which the population rose dramatically. In 1903, Letchworth became the world's first garden city and Stevenage became the first town to redevelop under the New Towns Act 1946 ( 9 & 10 Geo. 6 . c. 68). The first shooting-down of
7200-444: The beginning of the Bronze Age . This was followed by tribes settling in the area during the Iron Age . Following the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43 , the Catuvellauni tribe accepted peace and adapted to the Roman life; resulting in the development of several new towns, including Verulamium (St Albans) where in c. 293 the first recorded British martyrdom is traditionally believed to have taken place. Saint Alban ,
7320-414: The civil parish was changed to Elstree and Borehamwood on 24 February 1982. The ecclesiastical parishes of Borehamwood and Elstree were reunited on 1 April 2005, also under the name "Elstree and Borehamwood". From the 1920s onwards, the town became known as one of the main centres of the UK film, and later television, industries due to the presence of production studios. Following the Second World War ,
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#17327724468607440-409: The county are: Waltham Cross , Broxbourne , is the location of the Lee Valley White Water Centre , a purpose-built venue opened in 2010 for the 2012 Summer Olympics . The site consists of two white water courses; one 300m Grade IV "Olympic" run; and one 160m Grade III "legacy" run. During the games the center was the venue for the canoe and kayak slalom events . Lee Valley has since hosted
7560-407: The county as having nine hundreds . Tring and Danais became one— Dacorum —from Danis Corum or Danish rule harking back to a Viking not Saxon past. The other seven were Braughing , Stevenage , Cashio , Buntingford , Hertford , Hitchin and Odsey . In the later Plantagenet period, St. Albans Abbey was an initial drafting place of what was to become Magna Carta . And in the later Wars of
7680-459: The county is at 244 m (801 ft) ( AOD ) on the Ridgeway long distance national path, on the border of Hastoe near Tring with Drayton Beauchamp , Buckinghamshire. At the 2011 census, among the county's ten districts, East Hertfordshire had the lowest population density (290 people per km ) and Watford the highest (4210 per km ). Compared with neighbouring Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire lacks large towns or cities on
7800-399: The decline of the then-dominant European film industry, in favor of the United States , where infrastructure was still intact. The stronger early public health response to the 1918 flu epidemic by Los Angeles compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in a faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. During
7920-506: The early New Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider had been relatively low-budget affairs with amoral heroes and increased sexuality and violence, the enormous success enjoyed by Friedkin with The Exorcist , Spielberg with Jaws , Coppola with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now , Scorsese with Taxi Driver , Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey , Polanski with Chinatown , and Lucas with American Graffiti and Star Wars , respectively helped to give rise to
8040-427: The early times of talkies, American studios found that their sound productions were rejected in foreign-language markets and even among speakers of other dialects of English. The synchronization technology was still too primitive for dubbing . One of the solutions was creating parallel foreign-language versions of Hollywood films. Around 1930, the American companies opened a studio in Joinville-le-Pont , France, where
8160-483: The edge of Hemel Hempstead. Hertfordshire is located in the south-eastern part of England and is the county immediately north of London. It is officially part of the East of England region, a mainly statistical unit . To the east is Essex , to the west is Buckinghamshire and to the north are Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire . A significant minority of the population across all districts commute to Central London . The county's boundaries were roughly fixed by
8280-494: The end of the 19th century, with the construction of Thomas Edison's " Black Maria ", the first motion-picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey . The cities and towns on the Hudson River and Hudson Palisades offered land at costs considerably less than New York City across the river, and benefited greatly as a result of the phenomenal growth of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century. The industry began attracting both capital and innovative work forces. In 1907, when
8400-465: The end of their careers or used the same creative teams on their films so that a DeMille film still looked like one whether it was made in 1932 or 1956. Post-classical cinema is the changing methods of storytelling in the New Hollywood. It has been argued that new approaches to drama and characterization played upon audience expectations acquired in the classical period: chronology may be scrambled, storylines may feature " twist endings ", and lines between
8520-441: The eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the West Coast by the 1930s. At the time, Thomas Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and movie producers on the East Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control. In Los Angeles,
8640-477: The example for other national film industries. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated the power of photography to capture motion. In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was given in New York City , using Thomas Edison 's kinetoscope and kinetograph. In the following decades, the production of silent films greatly expanded, studios formed and migrated to California , and
8760-549: The film Titanic , Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology which the director pioneered while working on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day . Many previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion , which did not look wholly convincing. Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their 45-foot-long (14 m) miniature of
8880-418: The films and stories they told became much longer. The United States produced the world's first sync-sound musical film , The Jazz Singer , in 1927, and was at the forefront of sound-film development in the following decades. It was fully released to the public on October 6, 1927. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has primarily been based in and around the thirty-mile zone centered in
9000-459: The foreign language. The Spanish-language crews included people like Luis Buñuel , Enrique Jardiel Poncela , Xavier Cugat , and Edgar Neville . The productions were not very successful in their intended markets, due to the following reasons: Classical Hollywood cinema , or the Golden Age of Hollywood, is defined as a technical and narrative style characteristic of American cinema from 1913 to 1962, during which thousands of movies were issued from
9120-576: The headwaters and upper valleys of the rivers Lea and the Colne ; both flow south and each is accompanied by a canal. Hertfordshire's undeveloped land is mainly agricultural and much of the county is covered by the Metropolitan green belt . Since 1903, Letchworth has served as the prototype garden city while Stevenage became the first town to expand under post-war Britain 's New Towns Act 1946 ( 9 & 10 Geo. 6 . c. 68). Services have become
9240-608: The largest sector of the county's economy. The county's landmarks span many centuries, ranging from the Six Hills in Stevenage built by local inhabitants during the Roman period, to Leavesden Film Studios . The volume of intact medieval and Tudor buildings surpasses London, in places in well-preserved conservation areas , especially in St Albans , which includes remains of the Roman town of Verulamium . In 913, Hertfordshire
9360-544: The late 1920s. After The Jazz Singer , the first film with synchronized voices was successfully released as a Vitaphone talkie in 1927, Hollywood film companies would respond to Warner Bros. and begin to use Vitaphone sound—which Warner Bros. owned until 1928—in future films. By May 1928, Electrical Research Product Incorporated (ERPI), a subsidiary of the Western Electric company, gained a monopoly over film sound distribution. A side effect of these " talkies "
9480-472: The major studios owned hundreds of theaters in cities and towns across the nation in 1920 film theaters that showed their films and that were always in need of fresh material. In 1930, MPPDA President Will Hays created the Hays (Production) Code , which followed censorship guidelines and went into effect after government threats of censorship expanded by 1930. However, the code was never enforced until 1934, after
9600-692: The midst of the Norse invasions, Hertfordshire was on the front lines of much of the fighting. King Edward the Elder , in his reconquest of Norse-held lands in what was to become England , established a " burh " or fort in Hertford, which was to curb Norse activities in the area. His father, King Alfred the Great , established the River Lea as a boundary between his kingdom and that of the Norse lord Guthrum , with
9720-615: The modern " blockbuster ", and induced studios to focus ever more heavily on trying to produce enormous hits. In the US, the PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 to accommodate films that straddled the line between PG and R, which was mainly due to the controversies surrounding the violent content of the PG films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins (both 1984). Film makers in
9840-566: The monopoly they still had over the Detroit Theaters—as Paramount was also gaining dominance through actors like Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, Betty Hutton, crooner Bing Crosby, Alan Ladd, and longtime actor for studio Gary Cooper too- by 1942. The Big Five studios did not meet the requirements of the Consent of Decree during WWII, without major consequence, but after the war ended they joined Paramount as defendants in
9960-516: The most successful film of its time, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . This distinction was promptly topped in 1939 when Selznick International created what is still, when adjusted for inflation, the most successful film of all time in Gone with the Wind . Many film historians have remarked upon the many great works of cinema that emerged from this period of highly regimented filmmaking. One reason this
10080-533: The movie-making process. Nestor Studios of Bayonne, New Jersey , built the first studio in the Hollywood neighborhood in 1911. Nestor Studios, owned by David and William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, presently called the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. California 's more hospitable and cost-effective climate led to
10200-607: The national cinemas of the United Kingdom , Canada , Australia , and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. Because of this, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema , and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are
10320-414: The nickname of the "British Hollywood ". Whilst most of these studios, collectively known as "Elstree Studios", have now closed, two still remain. Many films were shot at the studios on Shenley Road including The Dam Busters (1955), Star Wars (1977, and subsequent films in the franchise), Moby Dick (1956), Summer Holiday (1963), and The Shining (1980) starring Jack Nicholson , some of
10440-644: The north and eastern parts of the county being within the Danelaw . There is little evidence however of Norse placenames within this region, and many of the Anglo-Saxon features remained intact to this day. The county however suffered from renewed Norse raids in the late 10th to early 11th centuries, as armies led by Danish kings Swein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great harried the country as part of their attempts to undermine and overthrow English king Athelred
10560-490: The north and west of the county, forming the Chiltern Hills and the younger Palaeocene , Reading Beds and Eocene , London Clay which occupy the remaining southern part. The eastern half of the county was covered by glaciers during the Ice Age and has a superficial layer of glacial boulder clays . Much of the west – and much more in the east – have richly diverse countryside. These range from beech woods of
10680-511: The pandemic, public health officials temporarily closed movie theaters in some jurisdictions, large studios suspended production for weeks at a time, and some actors came down with the flu. This caused major financial losses and severe difficulties for small studios, but the industry as a whole more than recovered during the Roaring Twenties . In the early 20th century, when the medium was new, many Jewish immigrants found employment in
10800-437: The paradigm of film making by the major Hollywood studios, as each could have an entirely different cast and creative team. The decision resulted in the gradual loss of the characteristics which made Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox films immediately identifiable. Certain movie people, such as Cecil B. DeMille , either remained contract artists until
10920-477: The play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (and its derivative, My Fair Lady ), and due to attaining a mainstream level in storyline and sets, is considered the "crown jewel" of this ' Golden Age '. At the height of his fame in the early 1970s, Charles Bronson was the world's No. 1 box office attraction, commanding $ 1 million per film. In the 1970s, the films of New Hollywood filmmakers were often both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. While
11040-402: The primary source of the most commercially successful and most commercially successful movies in the world. Hollywood is considered to be the oldest film industry, where the earliest film studios and production companies emerged. It is the birthplace of various genres of cinema —among them comedy , drama , action , musical , romance , horror , science fiction , and epic —and has set
11160-629: The production side of the business. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the movie studio . The US had at least two female directors, producers and studio heads in these early years: Lois Weber and French-born Alice Guy-Blaché . They also set the stage for the industry's internationalism; the industry is often accused of Amero centric provincialism . Other movie makers arrived from Europe after World War I: directors like Ernst Lubitsch , Alfred Hitchcock , Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir ; and actors like Rudolph Valentino , Marlene Dietrich , Ronald Colman , and Charles Boyer . They joined
11280-651: The purple star-shaped flower with yellow stamens, the Pasqueflower is among endemic county flowers . The rocks of Hertfordshire belong to the great shallow syncline known as the London Basin . The beds dip in a south-easterly direction towards the syncline's lowest point roughly under the River Thames . The most important formations are the Cretaceous Chalk , exposed as the high ground in
11400-409: The purpose of real-time gunnery control, and later for surface-to-air guided weapons and missiles, and for specialist cryptography and code-breaking computers for GCHQ . Borehamwood is currently undergoing a substantial housing transformation which has seen hundreds of new homes built over the last five years. Two further developments are being built and more are expected. In addition to the studios,
11520-449: The same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For example, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. De Mille 's films were almost all made at Paramount , and director Henry King 's films were mostly made for 20th Century Fox . At the same time, one could usually guess which studio made which film, largely because of
11640-477: The same sets and wardrobe and even mass scenes were used for different time-sharing crews. Also, foreign unemployed actors, playwrights, and winners of photogenic contests were chosen and brought to Hollywood, where they shot parallel versions of the English-language films. These parallel versions had a lower budget, were shot at night and were directed by second-line American directors who did not speak
11760-528: The same town, Airbus (Defence & Space Division) produces satellites. Hatfield was where de Havilland developed the first commercial jet liner, the Comet . Now the site is a business park and new campus for the University of Hertfordshire . This major employment site notably hosts EE , Computacenter and Ocado groceries and other goods e-commerce. Welwyn Garden City hosts Tesco 's UK base, hosts
11880-470: The scale of Luton or Milton Keynes , whose populations exceed 200,000, but its overall population (1.2 million in 2021) is greater than those of the two aforementioned counties. The River Lea near Harpenden runs through Wheathampstead , Welwyn Garden City, Hertford, Ware, and Broxbourne before reaching Cheshunt and ultimately the River Thames. The far west of the county is the most hilly, with
12000-473: The ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Even The Blair Witch Project (1999), a low-budget indie horror film by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick , was a huge financial success. Filmed on a budget of just $ 35,000, without any big stars or special effects, the film grossed $ 248 million with the use of modern marketing techniques and online promotion. Though not on
12120-595: The shortcomings of Railtrack , and resulted in speed restrictions and major track replacement. On 10 May 2002, seven people died in the fourth of the Potters Bar rail accidents ; the train was travelling at high speed when it derailed and flipped into the air when one of the carriages slid along the platform where it came to rest. In early December 2005, there were explosions at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal at Buncefield on
12240-499: The spread of film companies to other parts of the US, outside New York. Many filmmakers worked with equipment for which they did not own the rights to use. Therefore, filming in New York could be dangerous, as it was close to Edison's company headquarters, and close to the agents the company sent out to seize cameras. An alternative was Los Angeles , which had mild winters, a large selection of places to film, and, most importantly, it
12360-451: The studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz , Gone with the Wind , Stagecoach , Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Wuthering Heights , Only Angels Have Wings , Ninotchka and Midnight . Among the other films from the Golden Age period that are now considered to be classics: Casablanca , It's
12480-727: The theaters, as the MPPDA controlled every theater in the country through the Big Five studios. Throughout the 1930s, as well as most of the golden age, MGM dominated the film screen and had the top stars in Hollywood, and they were also credited for creating the Hollywood star system altogether. Some MGM stars included "King of Hollywood" Clark Gable , Lionel Barrymore , Jean Harlow , Norma Shearer , Greta Garbo , Joan Crawford , Jeanette MacDonald , Gene Raymond , Spencer Tracy , Judy Garland , and Gene Kelly . Another great achievement of American cinema during this era came through Walt Disney's animation company . In 1937, Disney created
12600-725: The time was an independent city. In the Sultan's Power, directed by Boggs for Selig Polyscope Company, also starring Bosworth, is considered the first film shot entirely in Los Angeles, with shooting at 7th and Olive Streets, in 1909. In early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the West Coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors: Blanche Sweet , Lillian Gish , Mary Pickford , Lionel Barrymore and others. They started filming on
12720-615: The town in the same complex as Pizza Hut. Since 2015, Borehamwood has also been home to the UK subsidiary of the olive oil brand, Filippo Berio . The first third of the Watling Chase Timberland Trail stretches from Elstree & Borehamwood railway station up to Shenley . South of the town is a large area of grassland and trees called Woodcock Hill Village Green . Section 16 of the London Outer Orbital Path (London Loop) runs adjacent to
12840-527: The town is home to many retail shops, hotels, restaurants, offices and light industry. The hotels cater mainly to tourists visiting the Elstree Studios, attendees of the television shows being recorded in the Elstree Studios, and London visitors due to the proximity to London and the considerable lower accommodation rates. There is one weekly newspaper, the Borehamwood & Elstree Times . On
12960-476: The town's population greatly increased, with large areas of council housing set up for displaced Londoners, many of which are now in private ownership. Fast train connections to central London have resulted in the town becoming a primarily residential suburb. In 1946, the Admiralty started to build highly secret high-performance electronic digital computers at Borehamwood in a redundant wartime factory, firstly for
13080-552: The town, starting in Elstree and through Scratchwood towards the London Borough of Barnet . Borehamwood is home to Boreham Wood FC and Watford FC Reserves who play their home games at Meadow Park . Arsenal previously played at Meadow Park before moving to Emirates Stadium in 2024. There are several parks in the area. Aberford Park is featured with the source of the brook which has been artificially made to look like
13200-479: The west side of Borehamwood is Elstree & Borehamwood railway station (TfL Zone 6) served by trains operated by Govia Thameslink Railway on the Thameslink route . Metroline for London buses runs its number 107 service through the town from New Barnet to Edgware and back. Metroline for London buses also operate Number 292 which goes to Colindale and Rossington Avenue. Uno (Bus Company) run
13320-491: Was watercress , based in Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted supported by reliable, clean chalk rivers. This is a table of trends of regional gross value added of Hertfordshire at current basic prices with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling. Hertfordshire has the main operational and/or headquarters UK site of some very large employers. Clockwise from north: In Stevenage (a subsidiary of: BAE Systems , Airbus and Finmeccanica ) MBDA , develops missiles . In
13440-520: Was 31,955; this rose to 36,322 in 2021, an increase of 13.67%. Borehamwood is the most populated town in Hertsmere, ahead of Bushey. The Jewish community numbers in excess of 6,100, up from just 3,900 in 2011; combined with neighbouring Elstree, the community counts around 8,000 individuals. Since the 1914, the town has been home to several film studios and many shots of its streets are included in final cuts of 20th century British films. This earned it
13560-511: Was claimed as the first to have been filmed in Los Angeles , in 1907. A plaque was unveiled by the city, in 1957, at Dearden's flagship store on the corner of Main Street and 7th Street, to mark the filming on the site when it had been a Chinese laundry. Bosworth's widow suggested the city had got the date and location wrong, and that the film was actually shot in nearby Venice , which at
13680-656: Was invaded and colonised by the Anglo-Saxons . By the 6th century, the majority of the modern county was part of the East Saxon kingdom. This relatively short-lived kingdom collapsed in the 9th century, ceding the territory of Hertfordshire to the control of the West Anglians of Mercia . The region finally became an English shire in the 10th century, on the merger of the West Saxon and Mercian kingdoms. In
13800-501: Was only 90 miles to the border of Mexico , in case they needed to run if Edison's enforcement agents found them. By 1912, most major film companies had set up production facilities in Southern California , near or in Los Angeles , because of the region's favorable year-round weather. The 1908 Selig Polyscope Company production of The Count of Monte Cristo , directed by Francis Boggs and starring Hobart Bosworth ,
13920-464: Was possible is that, with so many movies being made, not everyone had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors: Citizen Kane , directed by Orson Welles (1915–1985) and often regarded as the greatest film of all time , fits this description. In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks (1896–1977), Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), and Frank Capra (1897–1991) battled
14040-608: Was that many actors who had made their careers in silent films suddenly found themselves out of work, as they often had bad voices or could not remember their lines. Meanwhile, in 1922, US politician Will H. Hays left politics and formed the movie studio boss organization known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The organization became the Motion Picture Association of America after Hays retired in 1945. In
14160-595: Was the area assigned to a fortress constructed at Hertford under the rule of Edward the Elder . Hertford is derived from the Anglo-Saxon heort ford, meaning deer crossing (of a watercourse). The name Hertfordshire is first recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1011. Deer feature in many county emblems. Many of the names of the current settlements date back to the Anglo-Saxon period, with many featuring standard placename suffixes attributed to
14280-499: Was under Mexican rule . Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. Also in 1910, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago established the first film studio in the Los Angeles area in Edendale , and the first studio in Hollywood opened in 1912. After hearing about Griffith's success in Hollywood, in 1913, many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison , who owned patents on
14400-649: Was written by two future winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature : Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), the author of the novel on which the script was nominally based, and William Faulkner (1897–1962), who worked on the screen adaptation. After The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, Warner Bros. gained huge success and were able to acquire their own string of movie theaters after purchasing Stanley Theaters and First National Productions in 1928. In contrast, Loews theaters owned MGM since forming in 1924, while
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