Cambodian Civil War
The Cambodian Civil War was a military conflict that pitted the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and their allies the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Viet Cong against the government forces of the Kingdom of Cambodia and, after October 1970, the Khmer Republic, which were supported by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam. The struggle was complicated by the influence and actions of the allies of the two warring sides. North Vietnam's People's Army of Vietnam involvement was designed to protect its Base Areas and sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, without which the prosecution of its military effort in South Vietnam would have been more difficult; the Cambodian coup of 18 March 1970 put a pro-American, anti-North Vietnamese government in power and ended Cambodia's neutrality in the Vietnam War. The PAVN was now threatened by a newly unfriendly Cambodian government. Between March and June 1970, the North Vietnamese moved many of its military installations further inside Cambodia in response to the coup and the establishment of a pro-American government, capturing most of the northeastern third of the country in engagements with the Cambodian army.
The North Vietnamese turned over some of their conquests and provided other assistance to the Khmer Rouge, thus empowering what was at the time a small guerilla movement. The Cambodian government hastened to expand its army to combat the North Vietnamese and the growing power of the Khmer Rouge; the U. S. was motivated by the desire to buy time for its withdrawal from Southeast Asia, to protect its ally in South Vietnam, to prevent the spread of communism to Cambodia. American and both South and North Vietnamese forces directly participated in the fighting; the U. S. assisted the central government with massive U. S. aerial bombing campaigns and direct material and financial aid. After five years of savage fighting, the Republican government was defeated on 17 April 1975 when the victorious Khmer Rouge proclaimed the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea; the war caused a refugee crisis in Cambodia with two million people—more than 25 percent of the population—displaced from rural areas into the cities Phnom Penh which grew from about 600,000 in 1970 to an estimated population of nearly 2 million by 1975.
Children were used during and after the war being persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. The Cambodian government estimated that more than 20 percent of the property in the country had been destroyed during the war. In total, an estimated 275,000–310,000 people were killed as a result of the war; the conflict was part of the Second Indochina War which consumed the neighboring Kingdom of Laos, South Vietnam, North Vietnam individually referred to as the Laotian Civil War and the Vietnam War respectively. The Cambodian civil war led to one of the bloodiest in history. During the early-to-mid-1960s, Prince Norodom Sihanouk's policies had protected his nation from the turmoil that engulfed Laos and South Vietnam. Neither the People's Republic of China nor North Vietnam disputed Sihanouk's claim to represent "progressive" political policies and the leadership of the prince's domestic leftist opposition, the Pracheachon Party, had been integrated into the government. On 3 May 1965, Sihanouk broke diplomatic relations with the U.
S. ended the flow of American aid, turned to the PRC and the Soviet Union for economic and military assistance. By the late 1960s, Sihanouk's delicate domestic and foreign policy balancing act was beginning to go awry. In 1966, an agreement was struck between the prince and the Chinese, allowing the presence of large-scale PAVN and Viet Cong troop deployments and logistical bases in the eastern border regions, he had agreed to allow the use of the port of Sihanoukville by communist-flagged vessels delivering supplies and material to support the PAVN/Viet Cong military effort in South Vietnam. These concessions made questionable Cambodia's neutrality, guaranteed by the Geneva Conference of 1954. Sihanouk was convinced that the PRC, not the U. S. would control the Indochinese Peninsula and that "our interests are best served by dealing with the camp that one day will dominate the whole of Asia – and coming to terms before its victory – in order to obtain the best terms possible."During the same year, however, he allowed his pro-American minister of defense, General Lon Nol, to crack down on leftist activities, crushing the Pracheachon by accusing its members of subversion and subservience to Hanoi.
Sihanouk lost the support of Cambodia's conservatives as a result of his failure to come to grips with the deteriorating economic situation and with the growing communist military presence. On 11 September 1966, Cambodia held its first open election. Through manipulation and harassment the conservatives won 75 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. Lon Nol was chosen by the right as prime minister and, as his deputy, they named Prince Sirik Matak. In addition to these developments and the clash of interests among Phnom Penh's politicized elite, social tensions created a favorable environment for the growth of a domestic communist insurgency in the rural areas; the prince found himself in a political dilemma. To maintain the balance against the rising tide of the conservatives, he named the leaders of the group he had been oppressing as members of a "counter-government", meant to monitor and criticize Lon Nol's administ
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film. Known for his energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy, Taxi!, Angels with Dirty Faces, White Heat, finding himself typecast or limited by this reputation earlier in his career. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles said of Cagney, " maybe the greatest actor who appeared in front of a camera". Stanley Kubrick considered him to be one of the best actors in history. In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the chorus line of the revue Every Sailor, in 1919, he spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925. He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade.
After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role. Cagney's seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a famous scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against Mae Clarke's face, the film thrust him into the spotlight, he became one of Hollywood's leading stars and one of Warner Bros.' Biggest contracts. In 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces. In 1942, Cagney won the Oscar for his energetic portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, he was Leave Me. Cagney retired from dancing in 1961 to spend time on his farm with his family, he came out of retirement 20 years for a part in the movie Ragtime to aid his recovery from a stroke. Cagney walked out on Warner Bros. several times over the course of his career, each time returning on much improved personal and artistic terms.
In 1935, he won. This was one of the first times, he worked for an independent film company for a year while the suit was being settled, establishing his own production company, Cagney Productions, in 1942 before returning to Warner four years later. In reference to Cagney's refusal to be pushed around, Jack L. Warner called him "the Professional Againster". Cagney made numerous morale-boosting troop tours before and during World War II and served as president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years. James Francis "Jimmy" Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, his biographers disagree as to the actual location: either on the corner of Avenue D and 8th Street or in a top-floor apartment at 391 East 8th Street, the address that his birth certificate indicates. His father, James Francis Cagney Sr. was of Irish descent. At the time of his son's birth, he was a bartender and amateur boxer, though on Cagney's birth certificate, he is listed as a telegraphist, his mother was Carolyn Elizabeth.
Cagney was the second of seven children. He was sickly as a young child—so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized, he attributed his sickness to the poverty his family had to endure. The family moved twice while he was still young, first to East 79th Street, to East 96th Street, he was confirmed at St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan, where he would have his funeral service; the red-haired, blue-eyed Cagney graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City, in 1918, attended Columbia College of Columbia University, where he intended to major in Art. He took German and joined the Student Army Training Corps but dropped out after one semester, returning home upon the death of his father during the 1918 flu pandemic. Cagney held a variety of jobs early in his life, giving all his earnings to his family: junior architect, copy boy for the New York Sun, book custodian at the New York Public Library, bellhop and night doorkeeper. While Cagney was working for the New York Public Library, he met Florence James, who helped him into an acting career.
Cagney believed in hard work stating, "It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid, he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him."He started tap dancing as a boy and was nicknamed "Cellar-Door Cagney" after his habit of dancing on slanted cellar doors. He was a good street fighter, defending his older brother Harry, a medical student, when necessary, he engaged in amateur boxing, was a runner-up for the New York state lightweight title. His coaches encouraged him to turn professional, he played semiprofessional baseball for a local team, entertained dreams of playing in the Major Leagues. His introduction to films was unusual; when visiting an aunt who lived in Brooklyn opposite Vitagraph Studios, Cagney would climb over the fence to watch the filming of John Bunny movies. He became involved in amateur dramatics, starting as a scenery boy for a Chinese pantomime at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, one of the first settleme
Photojournalism
Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that employs images in order to tell a news story. It is now understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography by complying with a rigid ethical framework which demands that the work be both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in journalistic terms. Photojournalists create pictures that contribute to the news media, help communities connect with one other. Photojournalists must be well informed and knowledgeable about events happening right outside their door, they deliver news in a creative format, not only informative, but entertaining. Timeliness The images have meaning in the context of a published record of events. Objectivity The situation implied by the images is a fair and accurate representation of the events they depict in both content and tone. Narrative The images combine with other news elements to make facts relatable to audiences.
Like a writer, a photojournalist is a reporter, but he or she must make decisions and carry photographic equipment while exposed to significant obstacles. The practice of illustrating news stories with photographs was made possible by printing and photography innovations that occurred in the mid 19th century. Although early illustrations had appeared in newspapers, such as an illustration of the funeral of Lord Horatio Nelson in The Times, the first weekly illustrated newspaper was the Illustrated London News, first printed in 1842; the illustrations were printed with the use of engravings. The first photograph to be used in illustration of a newspaper story was a depiction of barricades in Paris during the June Days uprising taken on 25 June 1848. During the Crimean War, the ILN pioneered the birth of early photojournalism by printing pictures of the war, taken by Roger Fenton. Fenton was the first official war photographer and his work included documenting the effects of the war on the troops, panoramas of the landscapes where the battles took place, model representations of the action, portraits of commanders, which laid the groundwork for modern photojournalism.
Other photographers of the war included Carol Szathmari. The American Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady were engraved before publication in Harper's Weekly. Disaster, including train wrecks and city fires, was a popular subject for illustrated newspapers in the early days; the printing of images in newspapers remained an isolated occurrence in this period. Photos were used to enhance the text rather than to act as a medium of information in its own right; this began to change with the work of one of the pioneers of photojournalism, John Thomson, in the late 1870s. In collaboration with the radical journalist Adolphe Smith, he began publishing a monthly magazine, Street Life in London, from 1876 to 1877; the project documented in photographs and text, the lives of the street people of London and established social documentary photography as a form of photojournalism. Instead of the images acting as a supplement to the text, he pioneered the use of printed photographs as the predominant medium for the imparting of information combining photography with the printed word.
On March 4, 1880, The Daily Graphic published the first halftone reproduction of a news photograph. In March 1886, when General George Crook received word that the Apache leader Geronimo would negotiate surrender terms, photographer C. S. Fly attached himself to the military column. During the three days of negotiations, Fly took about 15 exposures on 8 by 10 inches glass negatives, his photos of Geronimo and the other free Apaches, taken on March 25 and 26, are the only known photographs taken of American Indians while still at war with the United States. Fly coolly posed his subjects, asking them to move and turn their heads and faces, to improve his composition; the popular publication Harper's Weekly published six of his images in their April 1886 issue. In 1887, flash powder was invented, enabling journalists such as Jacob Riis to photograph informal subjects indoors, which led to the landmark work How the Other Half Lives. By 1897, it became possible to reproduce halftone photographs on printing presses running at full speed.
In France, agencies such as Rol and Chusseau-Flaviens syndicated photographs from around the world to meet the need for timely new illustration. Despite these innovations, limitations remained, many of the sensational newspaper and magazine stories in the period from 1897 to 1927 were illustrated with engravings. In 1921, the wirephoto made it possible to transmit pictures as as news itself could travel; the "Golden Age of Photojournalism" is considered to be the 1930s through the 1950s. It was made possible by the development of the compact commercial 35mm Leica camera in 1925, the first flash bulbs between 1927 and 1930, which allowed the journalist true flexibility in taking pictures. A new style of magazine and newspaper appeared; the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung was the first to pioneer the format of the illustrated news magazine. Beginning in 1901, it began to print photographs inside a revolutionary innovation. In the su
The Cock-Eyed World
The Cock-Eyed World is a 1929 American pre-Code musical comedy feature film. One of the earliest "talkies", it was a sequel to What Price Glory?, it was directed and written by Raoul Walsh and based on the Flagg and Quirt story by Maxwell Anderson, Tom Barry, Wilson Mizner and Laurence Stallings. Fox Film Corporation released the film at the Roxy in New York on August 3, 1929; the film stars Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe, reprising their original roles, as well as Lili Damita. The picture was released in a silent version on October 5, 1929. Flagg and Quirt find themselves transferred from Russia to Brooklyn to South America, in each place squaring off over a local beauty; the film remains one of the earliest screen sequels to a critical and popular success with the two lead actors playing the same characters, as well as the original writers and director intact from the first picture. Victor McLaglen as Top Sergeant Flagg Edmund Lowe as Sergeant Harry Quirt Lili Damita as Mariana Elenita Leila Karnelly as Olga El Brendel as'Yump' Olson Joe Brown as Brownie Stuart Erwin as Buckley According to Variety, the film beat every known gross for any box office attraction throughout the world with a reported first week gross of $173,391 at the Roxy.
It grossed another record $173,667 in its second week. The Cock-Eyed World at the TCM Movie Database The Cock-Eyed World on IMDb The Cock-Eyed World at AllMovie
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra, shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique, but continued to be known more as the Opéra. Classical ballet as it is known today arose within the Paris Opera as the Paris Opera Ballet and has remained an integral and important part of the company. Called the Opéra National de Paris, it produces operas at its modern 2700-seat theatre Opéra Bastille which opened in 1989, ballets and some classical operas at the older 1970-seat Palais Garnier which opened in 1875. Small scale and contemporary works are staged in the 500-seat Amphitheatre under the Opéra Bastille; the company's annual budget is in the order of 200 million euros, of which 100 million come from the French state and 70 million from box office receipts. With this money, the company runs the two houses and supports a large permanent staff, which includes the orchestra of 170, a chorus of 110 and the corps de ballet of 150.
Each year, the Opéra presents about 380 performances of opera and other concerts, to a total audience of about 800,000 people, a good average seat occupancy rate of 94%. In the 2012/13 season, the Opéra presented 18 opera titles, 13 ballets, 5 symphonic concerts and two vocal recitals, plus 15 other programmes; the company's training bodies are active, with 7 concerts from the Atelier Lyrique and 4 programmes from the École de Danse. The poet Pierre Perrin began thinking and writing about the possibility of French opera in 1655, more than a decade before the official founding of the Paris Opera as an institution, he believed that the prevailing opinion of the time that the French language was fundamentally unmusical was incorrect. Seventeenth-century France offered Perrin two types of organization for realizing his vision: a royal academy or a public theater. In 1666 he proposed to the minister Colbert that "the king decree'the establishment of an Academy of Poetry and Music' whose goal would be to synthesize the French language and French music into an new lyric form."Even though Perrin's original concept was of an academy devoted to discussions of French opera, the king's intention was in fact a unique hybrid of royal academy and public theatre, with an emphasis on the latter as an institution for performance.
On 28 June 1669, Louis XIV signed the Privilège accordé au Sieur Perrin pour l'établissement d'une Académie d'Opéra en musique, & Vers François. The wording of the privilège, based in part on Perrin's own writings, gave him the exclusive right for 12 years to found anywhere in France academies of opera dedicated to the performance of opera in French, he was free to set the price of tickets. No one was to have the right of free entry including members of the royal court, no one else could set up a similar institution. Although it was to be a public theatre, it retained its status as royal academy in which the authority of the king as the primary stakeholder was decisive; the monopoly intended to protect the enterprise from competition during its formative phase, was renewed for subsequent recipients of the privilege up to the early French Revolution. As Victoria Johnson points out, "the Opera was an organization by nature so luxurious and expensive in its productions that its survival depended on financial protection and privilege."Perrin converted the Bouteille tennis court, located on the Rue des Fossés de Nesles, into a rectangular facility with provisions for stage machinery and scenery changes and a capacity of about 1200 spectators.
His first opera Pomone with music by Robert Cambert opened on 3 March 1671 and ran for 146 performances. A second work, Les peines et les plaisirs de l'amour, with a libretto by Gabriel Gilbert and music by Cambert, was performed in 1672. Despite this early success and two other associates did not hesitate to swindle Perrin, imprisoned for debt and forced to concede his privilege on 13 March 1672 to the surintendant of the king's music Jean-Baptiste Lully; the institution was renamed the Académie Royale de Musique and came to be known in France as the Opéra. Within one month Lully had convinced the king to expand the privilege by restricting the French and Italian comedians to using two singers rather than six, six instrumentalists, rather than twelve; because of legal difficulties Lully could not use the Salle de la Bouteille, a new theatre was built by Carlo Vigarani at the Bel-Air tennis court on the Rue de Vaugirard. Lully and his successors bitterly negotiated the concession of the privilege, in whole or in part, from the entrepreneurs in the provinces: in 1684 Pierre Gautier bought the authorisation to open a music academy in Marseille the towns of Lyon, Rouen and Bordeaux followed suit in the following years.
During Lully's tenure, the only works performed were his own. The first productions were the pastorale Les fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus and his first tragedie lyrique called Cadmus et Hermione. After Molière's death in 1673, his troupe merged with the players at the Théâtre du Marais to form the Théâtre Guénégaud, no longer needed the theatre built by Richelieu at his residence the Palais-Royal, near the Louvre. (In 1680 the troupe at the Guénégaud merged again with the players from the Hôtel de Bourgogne forming the Comédie-Fr
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer. He is best known for his signature songs, including his first American hit "Livin' In The Sunlight", "Valentine", "Louise", "Mimi", "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and for his films, including The Love Parade, The Big Pond and Love Me Tonight, his trademark attire was a boater hat. Chevalier was born in Paris, he made his name as a star of musical comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age before working in menial jobs as a teenager. In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in France at Fréhel. Although their relationship was brief, she secured him his first major engagement, as a mimic and a singer in l'Alcazar in Marseille, for which he received critical acclaim by French theatre critics. In 1917, he discovered jazz and ragtime and went to London, where he found new success at the Palace Theatre. After this, he toured the United States, where he met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and brought the operetta Dédé to Broadway in 1922.
He developed an interest in acting and had success in Dédé. When talkies arrived, he went to Hollywood in 1928, where he played his first American role in Innocents of Paris. In 1930, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in The Love Parade and The Big Pond, which secured his first big American hit, "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight". In 1957, he appeared in Love in the Afternoon, his first Hollywood film in more than 20 years. In 1958, he starred with Louis Jourdan in Gigi. In the early 1960s, he made eight films, including Fanny the following year. In 1970, he made his final contribution to the film industry where he sang the title song of the Disney film The Aristocats, he died in Paris, on January 1, 1972, aged 83. Chevalier was born on September 1888 in Paris, his father was a French house painter. His mother, Joséphine van den Bosch, was French of Belgian descent, he worked a number of jobs: a carpenter's apprentice, printer, as a doll painter. He started in show business in 1901.
He was singing, unpaid, at a café when a member of the theatre saw him and suggested he try for a local musical. He got the part. Chevalier made a name as a singer, his act in l'Alcazar in Marseille was so successful, he made a triumphant rearrival in Paris. In 1909, he became the partner of the biggest female star in Fréhel. However, due to her alcoholism and drug addiction, their liaison ended in 1911. Chevalier started a relationship with 36-year-old Mistinguett at the Folies Bergère, where he was her 23-year-old dance partner; when World War I broke out, Chevalier was in the middle of his national service in the front line, where he was wounded by shrapnel in the back in the first weeks of combat and was taken as a prisoner of war in Germany for two years. While imprisoned he learned English, but with a Leeds accent from his fellow British prisoners. In 1916, he was released through the secret intervention of Mistinguett's admirer, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the only king of a neutral country, related to both the British and German royal families.
In 1917, Chevalier became a star in le Casino de Paris and played before British soldiers and Americans. He started thinking about touring the United States. In the prison camp, he had an advantage over other French artists, he went to London, where he found new success at the Palace Theatre though he still sang in French. After the war, Chevalier went back to Paris and created several songs still known today, such as "Valentine", he played in a few pictures, including Chaplin's A Woman of Paris and made a huge impression in the operetta Dédé. He met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and brought Dédé to Broadway in 1922; the same year he met Yvonne Vallée, a young dancer, who became his wife in 1927. When Douglas Fairbanks was on honeymoon in Paris in 1920, he offered him star billing with his new wife Mary Pickford, but Chevalier doubted his own talent for silent movies; when sound arrived, he made his Hollywood debut in 1928. He signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and played his first American role in Innocents of Paris.
In 1930, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in The Love Parade and The Big Pond. The Big Pond gave Chevalier his first big American hit songs: "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight" with words and music by Al Lewis and Al Sherman, plus "A New Kind of Love", he collaborated with film director Ernst Lubitsch. He appeared in Paramount's all-star revue film Paramount on Parade. While Chevalier was under contract with Paramount, his name was so recognized that his passport was featured in the Marx Brothers film Monkey Business. In this sequence, each brother uses Chevalier's passport, tries to sneak off the ocean liner where they were stowaways by claiming to be the singer—with unique renditions of "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" with its line "If the nightingales could sing like you". In 1931, Chevalier starred in a musical called The Smiling Lieutenant with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. Despite the disdain audiences held for musicals in 1931, it proved a successful film.
In 1932, he starred with Jeanette MacDonald in Paramount's film musical One Hour With You which became a success and one of the films instrumental in making music
Hollywood
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its historic studios. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the people associated with it. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality in 1903, it was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910 and soon thereafter, a prominent film industry emerged becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world. In 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished; the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley known as the "Father of Hollywood", on his honeymoon in 1886 he stood at the top of the hill looking out over the valley. Along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood; the man bowed. The Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, "I holly-wood," meaning'hauling wood.'
H. J. Whitley decided to name his new town Hollywood. "Holly" would represent England and "wood" would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had started over 100 towns across the western United States. Whitley arranged to buy the 480 acres E. C. Hurd ranch, they shook hands on the deal. Whitley shared his plans for the new town with General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Ivar Weid, a prominent businessman in the area. Daeida Wilcox learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and a prominent investor and friend of Whitley's, she recommended the same name to Harvey. H. Wilcox, who had purchased 120 acres on February 1, 1887, it wasn't until August 1887 Wilcox decided to use that name and filed with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office on a deed and parcel map of the property. The early real-estate boom busted at the end of that year. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper and two markets. Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, citrus groves.
A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent and the trip took two hours. The old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood; the Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley, a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard and Development Company. Having acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, still a dusty, unpaved road, was graded and graveled; the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitley's company sold one of the early residential areas, the Ocean View Tract. Whitley did much to promote the area, he paid thousands of dollars for electric lighting, including bringing electricity and building a bank, as well as a road into the Cahuenga Pass.
The lighting ran for several blocks down Prospect Avenue. Whitley's land was centered on Highland Avenue, his 1918 development, Whitley Heights, was named for him. Hollywood was incorporated as a municipality on November 14, 1903, by a vote of 88 for and 77 against. On January 30, 1904, the voters in Hollywood decided, by a vote of 113 to 96, for the banishment of liquor in the city, except when it was being sold for medicinal purposes. Neither hotels nor restaurants were allowed to serve liquor before or after meals. In 1910, the city voted for merger with Los Angeles in order to secure an adequate water supply and to gain access to the L. A. sewer system. With annexation, the name of Prospect Avenue changed to Hollywood Boulevard and all the street numbers were changed. By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production in Los Angeles. In the early 1900s, most motion picture patents were held by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey, filmmakers were sued to stop their productions.
To escape this, filmmakers began moving out west to Los Angeles, where attempts to enforce Edison's patents were easier to evade. The weather was ideal and there was quick access to various settings. Los Angeles became the capital of the film industry in the United States; the mountains and low land prices made Hollywood a good place to establish film studios. Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood, his 17-minute short film In Old California was filmed for the Biograph Company. Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction; the first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911. The H. J. Whitley home was used as its set, the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves at the corner of Whitley Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard; the first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard, in October 1911.
Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros. RKO, Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. In the 1920s, Hollywood was the fifth-largest industry in the nation. By the 1930s, Hollywood studios became vertically integrated, as production and exhibition was controlled by these companies, enabling Hollywood to produce 600 films per year. H
