Hollywood and the movie industry of the 1930s are described in P. G. Wodehouse's novel Laughing Gas (1936) and in Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), and is parodied in Terry Pratchett's novel Moving Pictures (1990), which is a takeoff of Singin' in the Rain.
From about 1930, five major "Hollywood" movie studios from all over the Los Angeles area, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros., owned large, grand theaters throughout the country for the exhibition of their movies. The period between the years 1927 (the effective end of the silent era) to 1948 is considered the age of the "Hollywood studio system", or, in a more common term, the Golden Age of Hollywood. In a landmark 1948 court decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that movie studios could not own theaters and play only the movies produced by their studios and only with their movie stars. With that, an era of Hollywood history had unofficially ended. By the mid-1950s, when television proved a profitable enterprise that was here to stay, movie studios started to produce programming in that TV, which is still the norm today.
Modern Hollywood
On January 22, 1947, the first commercial TV station west of the Mississippi River, KTLA, began operating in Hollywood. In December of that year, the first Hollywood movie production was made for TV, The Public Prosecutor. And in the 1950s, music recording studios and offices began moving into Hollywood. Other businesses, however, continued to migrate to different parts of the Los Angeles area, primarily to Burbank. Much of the movie industry remained in Hollywood, although the district's outward appearance changed. In 1952, CBS built CBS Television City on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly Boulevard on the former site of Gilmore Stadium. CBS's expansion into the Fairfax District pushed the unofficial boundary of Hollywood further south than it had been. CBS's slogan for the shows taped there was "From Television City in Hollywood..." The famous Capitol Records building on Vine Street just north of Hollywood Boulevard was built in 1956. It is a recording studio not open to the public, but its unique circular design looks like a stack of old 45rpm vinyl records. The now derelect lot at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Serrano Avenue was once the site of the illustrious Hollywood Professional School whose alumni reads like a Hollywood who's who of household "names".The Hollywood Walk of Fame was created in 1958 and the first star was placed in 1960 as a tribute to artists working in the entertainment industry. Honorees receive a star based on career and lifetime achievements in motion pictures, live theatre, radio, television, and/or music, as well as their charitable and civic contributions.
In 1985, the Hollywood Boulevard commercial and entertainment district was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places protecting important buildings and ensuring that the significance of Hollywood's past would always be a part of its future. In June 1999, the long-awaited Hollywood extension of the Metro Red Line subway opened, running from Downtown Los Angeles to the Valley, with stops on Hollywood Boulevard at Western Avenue, at Vine Street and at Highland Avenue.
The Kodak Theatre, which opened in 2001 on Hollywood Boulevard at Highland Avenue, where the historic Hollywood Hotel once stood, has become the new home of the Oscars.
While motion picture production still occurs within the Hollywood district, most major studios are actually located elsewhere in the Los Angeles region. Paramount Studios is the only major studio still physically located within Hollywood. Other studios in the district include the aforementioned Jim Henson (formerly Chaplin) Studios, Sunset Gower Studios, and Raleigh Studios. Several local broadcasters such as KTLA also maintain studios there, while ABC still has a studio facility on Hollywood's east side; but most of that network's programming is now produced out of the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. The Los Angeles ABC affiliate, KABC also moved to a new studio in Glendale, California.
In 2002, a number of Hollywood citizens began a campaign for the district to secede from Los Angeles and become, as it had been a century earlier, its own incorporated municipality. Secession supporters argued that the needs of their community were being ignored by the leaders of Los Angeles. In June of that year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors placed secession referendums for both Hollywood and the Valley on the ballots for a "citywide election." To pass, they required the approval of a majority of voters in the proposed new municipality as well as a majority of voters in all of Los Angeles. In the November election, both referendums failed by wide margins in the citywide vote.
Runaways
A serious problem for Hollywood since the 1960s has been its attractiveness for desperate runaways. Every year, hundreds of runaway adolescents flee broken homes across North America and flock to Hollywood hoping to become movie stars, as portrayed by the lyrics of the 1960s Burt Bacharach song "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" whose lyrics include the words: "All the stars / That never were / Are parking cars / And pumping gas." Such individuals soon discover that they have extremely slim chances of competing against professionally trained actors. Many of them end up sinking into homelessness, which is a problem in Hollywood for adults as well as youth. Some return home, while others linger in Hollywood and join the prostitutes and panhandlers lining its boulevards; others go to Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles; and yet others end up in the large pornography industry in the San Fernando Valley. This side of Hollywood was portrayed in Jackson Browne's 1980 song, "Boulevard", whose lyrics include reference to a notorious hustler hangout of the 1970s, with the words: "Down at the Golden Cup / They set the young ones up / Under the neon lights / Selling day for night." This phenomenon is also portrayed in the books of Charles Bukowski and pop artist Katy Rose additionally references it in the song "Overdrive" with the words: "They all come here to find a scene / But end up girls on methedrine / Naked on a TV screen." This is also expressed in a song by the band System of a Down, titled "Lost in Hollywood" It deals with the fact that people run away to Hollywood looking for fame, but end up being tricked by someone trying to get them to do work in the porn industry. "They find you / Two time you / You should have never gone to Hollywood."Hollywood area neighborhoods
Beachwood Canyon
Cahuenga Pass
East Hollywood
Franklin Hills
Hollywood Hills
Laurel Canyon
Little Armenia
Melrose District
Mount Olympus
Sierra Vista
Spaulding Square
Thai Town
Yucca Corridor
