Hollywood

Hollywood.

1 Community within the city of Los Angeles, S Calif., on the slopes of the Santa Monica Mts.; inc. 1903, consolidated with Los Angeles 1910. Most major film and television studios and their executive offices, once located in Hollywood, have moved to nearby areas and suburbs. Although many films are shot on location in cities and countries throughout the world, Hollywood remains the symbolic center of the U.S. motion-picture industry. Since the first film was made there c.1911, the community has come to signify the film industry in general—its morals, manners, and characteristics. Hollywood attracts large numbers of tourists. Points of interest include Hollywood Blvd., Sunset Strip, Mann's (formerly Grauman's) Chinese Theatre, and the Kodak Theater (site of the Academy Awards). In surrounding hills are the Hollywood Bowl, Griffith Park (with an observatory and planetarium), and the homes of film celebrities. The iconic Hollywood sign overlooking the community was originally (1923) an advertisement for the Hollywoodland real estate firm but had it last four letters removed in 1949; it was redone in 1978. The Univ. of Judaism is in Hollywood.

2 City (1990 pop. 121,697), Broward co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic Ocean; inc. 1925. A popular retirement center and part of the Miami–Ft. Lauderdale metropolitan and resort area, Hollywood produces electronic equipment and building materials. Most of Port Everglades, the county's largest port with an extensive warehouse complex, is within the city limits. Gulf Stream Park race track and a U.S. navy ordnance laboratory are nearby.

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Hollywood

District of the city of Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. Its name is synonymous with the American movie industry. In 1887 it was laid out as a subdivision by Horace Wilcox, a prohibitionist who envisioned a community based on his religious principles. It was consolidated with Los Angeles in 1910 and became the centre of the movie industry by 1915. By the 1960s it also was the source of much American network television programming.

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Hollywood

City (pop., 2000: 139,357), southeastern Florida, U.S. Lying along the Atlantic coast, the site was a palmetto jungle when the developer Joseph W. Young laid out the town in 1921. It is now primarily a resort-residential city with some diversified industry. Nearby are Port Everglades (a docking and warehousing facility) and a Seminole reservation.

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Hollywood

1. a NW suburb of Los Angeles, California: centre of the American film industry. Pop.: 250 000 (latest est.)

2. 

a. the American film industry

b. (as modifier): a Hollywood star

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Hollywood 

until 1910 an independent city in the western USA, in the state of California; later part of Los Angeles.

Hollywood is situated 30 km from the Pacific Ocean. Its favorable natural conditions (a large number of sunny days, picturesque landscapes, and proximity to both mountains and water) led to its becoming the center of the US motion picture industry.

During World War I (1914–18) the basic features of American film-making developed here: the “star” system, the standardization of screenwriting, the conveyor production of films, and the policy of catering to popular tastes. In the 1920’s, Hollywood cornered the motion picture markets of other capitalist countries. American cinematography became the most powerful in the West with respect to its technical equipment and skilled technicians. The Hollywood tycoons, adhering to antirealistic principles that had nothing in common with art, hampered the work of such outstanding American directors as C. Chaplin, E. Stroheim, K. Vidor, and J. Cruze and produced standardized “Westerns” (the so-called cowboy movies), melodramas, and pseudo-historical and religious films.

On the eve of the 1930’s, with the advent of sound films, Hollywood was completely taken over by the monopolies. The motion picture industry of the USA was now in the hands of the so-called Big Eight (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th-century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, RKO, United Artists, Columbia, and Universal International), resulting in a still greater standardization of mass production, the fall of the artistic level of the films, and the debasement of most of the creative workers of the industry into professional hacks. Yet, in the 1930’s and the beginning of the 1940’s, Hollywood’s leading directors created a number of films devoted to urgent social problems: the plight of farmers (The Grapes of Wrath, 1940; director. J. Ford), the dissolution of the bourgeois family and morality (The Little Foxes, 1941; director, W. Wyler), and corruption in the “highest” spheres of American society (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 1936, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939; director, F. Capra).

In the 1940’s there were signs of an approaching crisis in Hollywood—in 1946, by decision of the Supreme Court, the Big Eight lost their monopoly on film distribution rights. The persecution of progressive workers in the American film industry in 1947, the reactionary character of the heads of motion picture firms, the preeminence of commercial interests over aesthetic demands, and competition by television spelled the doom of Hollywood. Isolated attempts to improve the situation by a partial change of leadership and the introduction of the wide screen were to no avail. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s most Hollywood companies were under the control of the television industry and were primarily producing films for television.

REFERENCES

Kartseva. E. Sdelano v Gollivude. Moscow, 1964.
Kukarkin, A. “Kino.” In the collection Kino, muzyka, zhivopis’ v SShA. Moscow, 1964.
Teplits, E. Kino i televidenie v SShA. Moscow, 1966. (Translated from Polish.)

V. M. GOKHMAN and V. A. UTILOV