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According to Steven Bach in his book, Final Cut, the MPPC even went to the extreme “solution” of hiring mob-affiliated thugs to enforce the patents extra-judiciously. The Company took to the courts to prevent the unauthorized use of everything from cameras to projectors - and in many cases, the films themselves. And Edison (via the MPPC) was not one to back down. In short, if you wanted to be in the movie business, you did so at the pleasure of Thomas Edison. They sued those who didn’t comply with their dictates for patent infringement, refused to sell them equipment and film, and, occasionally, sent hired hooligans to wreck up movie sets or show houses. With the control of the patents he himself owned combined with the collective clout of the other members, the MPPC ruled the movie-making industry with an iron fist. It was comprised of the holders of all the significant patents related to the production and screening of motion pictures, including Biograph, Vitagraph, American Mutoscope, Kodak, and others.Įdison was widely known for having strong opinions about what kinds of movies should be made, how long they should be, who should be credited in them, and what it should cost to show them. That’s when Edison spearheaded the creation of the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), generally referred to as the Edison Trust. One could make a very good living running a show house or nickelodeon in any big city. At the time, though, they were cutting-edge and incredibly popular. Films were short, silent, and lacked much of the subtlety and nuance that modern moviegoers have come to expect from cinema. After WWI broke out, Los Angeles became the movie-making hot-spot to replace the movies that were no longer being made in war-torn Europe.įilms at the tail-end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in America were made almost exclusively on the East Coast-New Jersey, mostly. That’s probably a fair assessment, especially when it comes to early film-making technology. History remembers Edison as an important inventor but not so much as a nice guy. Let’s back up for a minute and look at how Hollywood (the term used to describe the mainstream film industry because, yes, you’re correct, Hollywood, originally Hollywoodland, came from the name of a specific neighborhood in Los Angeles) came to be in Los Angeles to begin with.īack at the end of the 19th century, motion pictures were a very new technology, and a handful of people held almost all of the patents related to the filming and screening of said films. Why is the film industry abandoning its Mount Olympus? A Hollywood Origin Story ![]() It’s no secret that the entire state of California is experiencing a large and sustained out-flow of residents, but Los Angeles County, in particular, is showing the biggest losses. In fact, in 2017, only ten of the top 100 movies produced that year were made mostly in California. But today, Hollywood-the way we generally think of it-is fading away and going elsewhere. Everyone knows this.Īnd for close to a century, it was true. Thousands of would-be actors, screenwriters, and directors flock to Los Angeles, California to fulfill their dreams of becoming a star because, after all, that’s where movie-making happens.
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