Hollywood is famous around the world for being the apex of the movie industry and it's been turning out cinema-filling blockbusters for more than a century. Today tourists flock to see attractions like the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the iconic Hollywood Sign (celebrating one hundred years in 2023), but there are a host of historical nuggets about LA's showbiz neighbourhood that you might not know. Here are 30 of the most fascinating facts about Tinseltown.
Long before Hollywood was suffused with studios and movie theatres, the Los Angeles Basin was home to the Indigenous Tongva people, alongside other tribal communities. Archaeologists believe that the Tongva have resided in the region for at least 10,000 years, and it’s known that there was once a large Tongva village in downtown LA. Pictured here in 1905 is a native Tongva woman, Mrs James Rosemyre, one of the last fluent speakers of the Tongva language.
Real estate heavyweight Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida moved from Topeka, Kansas to Southern California in the 1880s, and soon laid out plans for what would become Hollywood in the Cahuenga Valley. Wilcox sent an official map to the Los Angeles County Recorder’s office in 1887. In his blueprint the main street was 'Prospect Avenue', which became the precursor to the now-famous Hollywood Boulevard.
As prohibitionists and devout Christians, the Wilcoxes hoped that Hollywood would be a haven for religion and a place to escape the immoral trappings of the modern world. Mr. Wilcox took pleasure in planting pepper trees, so early Hollywood was a green oasis. Alcohol, pool halls and firearms were all banned too.
Love this? Follow us on Facebook for travel inspiration and more
More homes sprang up around Hollywood and most were grand manor houses with large, lush gardens. Around 500 people lived here at the turn of the century and the place was scattered with lemon and avocado groves, and fields ripe with tomatoes. By this time the sleepy settlement had markets, a hotel, a livery and a post office.
Harvey Wilcox may have founded Hollywood, but it was another real estate magnate – a man named Hobart Johnstone (HJ) Whitley – who began to turn the town into the buzzing urban hotspot it is today. Whitley is now nicknamed 'the Father of Hollywood' and was responsible for opening the Hollywood Hotel (pictured), which would quickly become a Tinseltown icon. Today the Dolby Theater, which has hosted the Oscars every year since 2001, occupies the site.
When it comes to the name 'Hollywood', there are two competing stories. Some say Daeida Wilcox dreamt up the name, simply because she liked the sound of it. Others attribute it to HJ Whitley. Whitley, the story goes, was honeymooning in the region when he and his wife met a working man on their travels. During a brief conversation, the man told Whitley that he was "hauling wood". Whitley misheard the phrase, and decided that 'Hollywood' was the perfect name for the bucolic surrounding land. This photo shows the then-unpaved Cahuenga Pass in 1905.
Hollywood eventually became a stomping ground for showbiz elite, but when it was still a quiet rural town, its first and biggest celebrity was a French watercolour painter named Paul de Longpre. De Longpre was attracted to Hollywood mainly for its beautiful flora, which was perfect fodder for his paintbrush. Daeida Wilcox reportedly gifted him some land near her own home, and it’s said that he paid his rent in paintings.
De Longpre set about creating a fragrant, technicolour rose garden to serve as a muse for his paintings. Eventually he opened his flower-filled grounds to the public and thousands of visitors poured in. He soon added concession stands and, by appointment, granted entry to his antique and artwork-filled mansion, a 1901 Mission Revival-style structure built for him by Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois.
By 1900 Los Angeles was mushrooming, but Hollywood remained a separate town, and was even incorporated as its own municipality in 1903. The peaceful settlement only merged with the City of Angels in 1910, apparently due to water supply issues. The intersection of Second Street and Spring Street in downtown LA is pictured here in 1905.
Hollywood’s movie career started small. The very first film shot in Tinseltown was named In Old California – a silent Western that lasted just 17 minutes. Pioneering director DW Griffith visited Hollywood on his travels and decided to shoot the film there thanks to its charming scenery and amiable populace. When the movie was released in 1910, he couldn't possibly have realised the movie-making juggernaut that Hollywood would go on to become.
Before Hollywood had any movie-making clout, New Jersey was the centre of the film world. This was partly thanks to infamous inventor Thomas Edison, who had produced a huge store of equipment related to motion pictures and sound recording. However, the patents he had on his inventions put a lot of red tape around the ideas of other movie-makers. Their solution? To escape legal battles by moving as far away as possible – to Hollywood where the dry, sunny climate also proved perfect for their projects.
The first dedicated film studio opened in Hollywood in 1911, the first step in the area's transition into a global entertainment superpower. It was owned by the Nestor Film Company (which would merge with Universal Pictures by 1917), and had a prime location on Sunset Boulevard. This photo from 1911 shows then-president William Howard Taft on a visit to the area, signalling Hollywood's rising importance.
More and more studios began to spring up through the 1910s, many of them transplants from the East Coast. Prohibition – which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the US from 1920 to 1933 – only bolstered the burgeoning business. Unable to frequent bars and saloons, punters flooded into movie theatres instead, while the exploits of gangsters and rum-runners offered ready-made plot lines for screenwriters. A bird's-eye view of an increasingly built-up Hollywood is captured here in the 1920s.
Now an icon not just of Tinseltown but LA as a whole, the Hollywood Sign was erected in 1923. It was originally intended to be temporary, installed to advertise a swanky new housing development in the Hollywood Hills. The estate was called 'Hollywoodland', and the original sign bore this longer name.
The sign became increasingly renowned, and the decision was taken to leave it up as a symbol of the city. As if it wasn’t already striking enough, it used to be lit up by some 4,000 bulbs, reportedly with its own caretaker who lived in a cabin nearby and replaced any blacked-out bulbs. The sign's lights were turned off for the final time in 1939.
The original Hollywood Sign isn’t the one we see today either. By the 1970s the sign had suffered significant wear and tear (only one and a half of the three 'o's remained intact, resulting in the word 'Hullywo d'), so the wooden original was replaced with a sleek steel iteration. Though the original instalment had letters a whopping 50 feet (15m) high, the new sign only reached 45 feet (14m).
Prior to the replacement the sign had faced the wrecking ball, and it was the late Playboy editor Hugh Hefner who ultimately saved the landmark. Determined to preserve the sign, Hefner rallied other celebrities through a lavish fundraiser, and famous faces including Gene Autry paid big money to sponsor new letters and see the attraction rebuilt.
Hollywood continued to build and buzz through the 1920s and its future as the nucleus of the movie industry was cemented in 1927. The Jazz Singer was the first 'talkie' – a feature-length film with synchronised dialogue – and it was a big success in its day. The film does not play well now, as it features actors in blackface, an offensive practice with origins in early minstrel shows.
In 1927, the first Oscars ceremony looked quite different to the glittering spectacle that unfolds today. But it was still a luxurious affair involving a banquet, lots of speeches and 270 carefully selected guests. The ticket price was just $5 (£4.12), and it was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The first Best Picture winner was the film Wings, the most expensive movie ever made at the time, which tells the story of two First World War fighter pilots that fall in love with the same woman.
When the Great Depression hit, many thought the film industry would be decimated. However, Hollywood heavyweights insisted that their industry was 'Depression-proof', and though many production companies did run into debt, the public didn’t stop going to the theatre. The movies – then a lesson in glamour and intrigue – offered an escape from the everyday, and the 1930s is considered by many to be the Golden Age of Hollywood. This photo shows an unidentified movie being filmed in the early 1930s.
Despite the Second World War, Hollywood remained a hive of activity during the late 1930s and 1940s, and the so-called Golden Age continued. The period produced notable war films such as Casablanca and Mrs Miniver, and stars such as Marilyn Monroe thrived.
The bold Capitol Records Tower opened in the 1950s and the striking circular building – tipped as the world’s first circular office tower – remains a beacon of Hollywood. The blinking light on the top of the building stands out even more – but you might not know that it communicates a secret message. Only those with the keenest eye (and knowledge of Morse code) would notice that the flashing light spells out the word 'Hollywood'.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame was conceived in the 1950s and the official groundbreaking ceremony took place in 1960. Now it’s one of Hollywood’s most famous landmarks, but did you know that the honour of having a star on the boulevard doesn’t come for free? It comes with a price tag of $55,000 (£45,000), which goes towards creation, installation and maintenance.
Stars ranging from Elton John and Dolly Parton to Halle Berry and Leonardo DiCaprio are represented on the Walk of Fame, but some celebrities have done things a little differently. Muhammad Ali requested that his star be placed on the wall instead of the ground as he didn’t like the idea of being walked on, while Neil Armstrong and the Apollo XI crew have moons instead of stars.
Cleopatra is widely considered a landmark movie in Hollywood history. Made in 1963, it was the most expensive movie of all time on release, and its spiralling budget nearly plunged studio 20th Century Fox into financial ruin. However, its runaway success at the box office balanced the books, and it gave audiences arguably one of the first true mega-budget blockbusters. Today the film is often criticised for its immeasurable historical inaccuracies.
No one’s quite sure where they came from, but Hollywood’s flock of feral chickens have become quite famous. Some say they were saved from a local school that could no longer keep its pet birds; others that they're descended from escapees from a wrecked poultry truck. Either way, the chicken population thrives just off the Hollywood Freeway.
The Hollywood Bowl is an iconic open-air music venue said to hold a special secret – beneath it, there supposedly lies buried treasure. The story goes that a Mexican shepherd stole a cache of gold, silver and gemstones from the Mexican government in the 1860s and then buried it where the Hollywood Bowl parking lot now stands. Would-be treasure hunters were given a permit to dig for the precious booty in the 1930s, but they found nothing.
Hollywood has plenty of high-profile sights, and the neighbourhood's Forever Cemetery often flies under the radar. It dates back to the 19th century and contains a very long list of famous names, including stars like Bugsy Siegel and Mel Blanc. Today it's a maze of elegant tombs and mausoleums, and there are regular cultural events.
Over the years, as studios closed and fascination with Hollywood stars began to fade, the district has undoubtedly lost some of its glitz. But the burgeoning Vinyl District is changing Hollywood's reputation once again. A slew of boutique hotels, trendy restaurants and up-and-coming art spaces – some in repurposed historic recording studios like Grandmaster Recorders – are giving the neighbourhood a makeover. The future of Hollywood looks very hip indeed.
Now explore California's most beautiful towns and small cities