83-714: The Chief was an American long-distance named passenger train of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway that ran between Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California . The Santa Fe initiated the Chief in 1926 to supplement the California Limited . In 1936 the Super Chief was introduced, after the Super Chief was relaunched in 1948 with daily departures from LA and Chicago it gradually eclipsed
166-619: 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
249-559: 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
332-419: 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
415-546: A crisis for all US railroads. Santa Fe recommended that all but its Super Chief, San Francisco Chief , Texas Chief and San Diegans be discontinued. In particular, Santa Fe informed the Interstate Commerce Commission that it could no longer afford to run four daily Chicago-California services. To Santa Fe's shock, the ICC ruled that the all-stops, common carrier Grand Canyon be continued rather than
498-528: 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
581-640: 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
664-815: 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
747-488: 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
830-623: A supplement to the California Limited between Chicago and Los Angeles. From 1948 to 1967 the Chief provided a connection at Chicago with the Pennsylvania Railroad 's all-Pullman overnight Broadway Limited to Philadelphia and New York as well as the New York Central 's 20th Century Limited / New England States to New York and Boston. The Chief left Chicago at 1.30pm from 1948 and at 10am from 1954 on an accelerated 37hr service with connecting sleepers from
913-652: 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
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#1732787817871996-538: A turbulent and dangerous crossing of the Grand Canyon. Ironically, fear of the Grand Canyon kept many stars on the Chief in the 1950s and early 1960s. However, the impact of jet aircraft; the exorbitant cost of train crew (who operated under old union rules of a day's pay for each 150 miles traveled while the Chief traveled 450 miles every 8 hours) and the loss in 1967 of most US rail companies' contracts for carriage of first class US mail Postal Department created
1079-401: 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
1162-403: Is a list of named trains . Lists of these have been organized into geographical regions. Trains with numeric names are spelled out. For example, the 20th Century Limited is listed under "Twentieth Century Limited". Named trains are sometimes identified through a train headboard , drumhead , lettering on the locomotive or passenger cars, or a combination of these methods. Cinema of
1245-606: The 20th Limited and Broadway Limited (carried on the evening Super Chief in 1954-58, as a one-hour transfer between the Century's arrival and the Chief's departure was too tight for a through-car transfer) for Los Angeles and also Kansas City, Denver and Phoenix. Reaching Los Angeles before midnight the following day, the Chief was the only US train offering one night transit Chicago-Los Angeles westbound from 1954 and two night, transcontinental travel from NY to Los Angeles. The Chief
1328-535: The Chief and Overland Limited schedules dropped to 58 hours each way, leaving Chicago at 11:15 AM/11:50 AM and Los Angeles/San Francisco at 9:45 PM/9:40 PM. The standard-fare schedule then became 63 hours westward and 61 1/4 hours eastward on seven routes from Chicago to the Coast (trains to Seattle now matching the standard-fare California trains). The Los Angeles Limited and Golden State Limited retained their 1928 schedules and so dropped their extra fares. In 1931
1411-556: The Chief as the standard bearer of the Santa Fe because of its timetable oriented to the Raton Pass transit. For some the Chief and San Francisco Chief ( which inherited the Chief, Turquoise lounge and other features in 1968) as deluxe integrated trains with both Pullman sleepers and fully reclining coach seating with all facilities; lounges and pleasure domes, available to all passengers were at least equal flagships better suited to
1494-488: The Chief for three months in the summer of 1972 as a second daily Chicago–Los Angeles train (numbers 19 & 20). It complemented the combined Super Chief/ El Capitan (numbers 3 & 4), running over the same route. Today, the Southwest Chief remains the only train serving the former route of the Chief . In 1926 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway inaugurated the all- Pullman , extra-fare Chief as
1577-416: The Chief 's patrons were middle class tourists or businessmen. In 1954, the Chief improved its schedule to 37 hours, equal to its cousins the Super Chief and El Capitan , and would ultimately drop the extra fare requirement as well. The quality of dining, drinking and sleeping car comfort The Chief offered at a substantial price was far superior to later Amtrak trains. The Chief , leaving Chicago in
1660-436: The Chief, which made its last run on May 15, 1968. The Grand Canyon was somewhat upgraded, leaving Chicago at 9 am on a 45-hour run to Los Angeles. The San Francisco Chief was rescheduled into the Chief 's 10 am departure slot out of Chicago, running on the different Amarillo/Belen Cutoff route but offering 44-hour transit to Los Angeles or 41.5 hours to a shuttle transfer from San Bernardino or Bakersfield. In summer 1926
1743-1107: 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,
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#17327878178711826-703: 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
1909-497: 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
1992-659: The Overland Limited dropped its extra fare and combined with the 63-hour train on its route; the Chief was the only extra fare trans-continental train thereafter, until the streamliners. In February 1936 it was scheduled at 53 hours 45 minutes to Los Angeles, compared to 61 hours for the Los Angeles Limited , Golden State Limited and California Limited . In May 1936 Union Pacific Railroad opened high speed Chicago - Los Angeles service with its City of Los Angeles Diesel streamliner. In December 1937
2075-637: 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;
2158-473: 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 the example for other national film industries. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated
2241-407: 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
2324-538: 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
2407-615: 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
2490-527: 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
2573-559: 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
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2656-688: 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
2739-523: 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
2822-466: 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
2905-498: 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
2988-512: 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
3071-578: 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, is still typical of most films made in America today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with
3154-419: 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
3237-471: 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 the national cinemas of the United Kingdom , Canada , Australia , and New Zealand also produce films in
3320-563: The business and executive market. From the mid 1960s the super Chief was only a small entirely separate section of the El Capitan seated vista train, the El Capitan passengers having no access to the Super Chiefs expensive eateries and bars which selling point was exclusion and service. The Chief was discontinued in 1968 due to high operating costs, competition from airlines, and the loss of Postal Office contracts. Amtrak revived
3403-399: 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
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3486-506: 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
3569-550: 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
3652-613: 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
3735-528: 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
3818-617: 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,
3901-569: The fastest schedules between Chicago and San Francisco/Los Angeles were 68 hours. That November four extra-fare ($ 10) all-Pullman trains started running on 63-hour schedules: the Chief , the Los Angeles Limited via Salt Lake, the Golden State Limited via El Paso, and the Overland Limited to San Francisco. In 1928 the four eastward trains dropped to 61 hours 15 minutes to improve connections at Chicago. In June 1929
3984-549: 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
4067-459: 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
4150-544: 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 "
4233-651: The late 1940s): Transcontinental Sleeping Car Service was inaugurated in Spring 1946, and the Chief began regularly carrying three such cars in its consist: two originating in New York City , and the other in Washington, D.C. (most often these were smooth-sided cars painted two-tone Pullman grey). By the following summer, the Chief had retired all of its steam-driven motive power and was usually pulled behind A-B-B-A sets of EMD FT locomotives or A-B-A sets of
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#17327878178714316-472: 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
4399-567: 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
4482-566: 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
4565-672: The morning, ran through to Los Angeles in just 1 night, arriving at San Bernardino by 9pm and LA around 11pm. The Westbound chief transited the Dodge City- Albuquerque section in darkness, missing the tourist vista of other Santa Fe trains. The Super Chief passed through Kansas and Missouri at night, leaving Chicago in the evening and running through two nights with the La Junta-Raton Pass Colorado section in daylight, arriving in Los Angeles in
4648-621: The morning. The last 60-mile run through the Los Angeles suburbs was slow, and many passengers concluded the trip unnoticed at San Bernardino or Pasadena. The Chief would have been the "crown jewel" of most railroads' passenger fleets. But it did not survive the national decline in passenger demand, due to the faster transport provided by the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 which overcame the airlines' previous inferior eight-hour Los Angeles-Chicago flights on propeller DC-6s, DC-7s and Constellations at 300 mph (480 km/h), only 3 miles high with
4731-516: 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
4814-533: 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
4897-417: The new ALCO PAs ). The following is a typical all- lightweight Chief consist as of late 1947: A typical Chief consist in the mid-1950s (note the absence of an observation car , which was eliminated as per Santa Fe policy): List of named passenger trains In the history of rail transport , dating back to the 19th century, there have been hundreds of named passenger trains . The following
4980-701: The original City of Los Angeles train was replaced by a full-sized 14 car train. The schedule was doubled to 10 times monthly in July 1938. In 1954, for a continuous East Coast to Los Angeles trip (and the reverse), on the New York Central, Pennsylvania Railroad or Baltimore and Ohio trains, this opportunity was shifted from the Chief to the Santa Fe's Super Chief . A typical heavyweight Chief consist in Winter, 1937: A typical "mixed" Chief consist as of January 31, 1938 (the Chief regularly included heavyweight head-end cars in its consist, even into
5063-511: 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
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#17327878178715146-437: 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
5229-477: 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
5312-403: 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 the films and stories they told became much longer. The United States produced
5395-629: 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
5478-449: 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
5561-510: The same day.) The Chief was a success, dubbed "Extra Fast-Extra Fine-Extra Fare" though it failed to relieve traffic on the California Limited . The Chief became famous as a "rolling boudoir" for film stars and Hollywood executives. In combination with the 20th Century Limited, the Chief was a favored mode of transcontinental travel for Hollywood. The stars and executives generally remained in their private room cars. Most of
5644-521: 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 the primary source of
5727-410: 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
5810-408: 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
5893-443: 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
5976-451: 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
6059-783: 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
6142-606: 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
6225-428: 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 the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles County, California . Director D. W. Griffith
6308-456: 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 a set of still cameras placed in
6391-511: 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
6474-608: Was inaugurated as an all- Pullman limited train to supplement the road's California Limited , with a surcharge of USD $ 10.00 for an end-to-end trip. The heavyweight began its first run from both ends of the line, simultaneously, on November 14, 1926, scheduled 63 hours each way between Chicago and Los Angeles, five hours faster than the California Limited. (The Overland Limited ( Union Pacific ), Los Angeles Limited ( Union Pacific ) and Golden State Limited ( Rock Island Railroad and Southern Pacific ) began their extra-fare 63-hour schedules between Chicago and California
6557-501: 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 ,
6640-464: 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
6723-608: 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
6806-499: 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
6889-649: 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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