Hollywood and Vine: The Intersection That Became a Sentence
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Transcript
Hollywood and Vine became famous enough that two street names turned into shorthand for an industry.
That happened gradually.
Hollywood began as a separate community west of central Los Angeles and was annexed by the city in 1910, partly to gain access to Los Angeles's water system.
Film companies were already moving into Southern California, attracted by varied scenery, sunlight, available land and distance from East Coast patent disputes.
By the 1920s and 1930s, offices, radio studios, theaters, restaurants and entertainment businesses clustered around Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street.
The intersection became a place where a young performer could plausibly imagine being discovered.
That fantasy mattered almost as much as any documented discovery.
Cities create industries partly through geography and partly through myth.
Hollywood was never one studio district.
Major production facilities spread across Hollywood, Culver City, Burbank, Studio City and other parts of Los Angeles.
The name “Hollywood” became larger than the actual neighborhood.
It described an industrial system of production, distribution, publicity and celebrity.
For tourists, that can make the boulevard disappointing.
Where is the factory that made all the movies?
There was never one.
The industry operated through networks of studios, theaters, offices, agencies and media.
Hollywood and Vine worked as symbolic center because people needed an address for an idea.
For locals, the intersection is ordinary traffic.
Historically, ordinary traffic is the point.
A global cultural industry took its name from a neighborhood and turned a crossroads into a promise:
arrive here, and maybe your life changes.