Hollywood
History of Hollywood
Hollywood is a borough of Los Angeles ( L.A.) in California, one of 51 states of the United States of America. You find it on the west coast at the Pacific Ocean.
Hollywood is the Centre of the American film industry and its famous in the whole world.
The place Hollywood was founded in 1887 by the family Wilcox. Hollywood presented ideal conditions for movie industry. For example: the sunny climate and the ocean, the mountains and the desert are in neighbourhood.
David Horsley opened the first movie studio in the year 1911 and in 1912 the first movie was shot by Cecil B. De Mille. Other producers like Samuel Goldfish, William Fox or Carl Lämmle made Hollywood to the movie capital. Hollywood Boulevard and Vinestreet were at that time the centre of Hollywood and so made American history.
The Hollywood Sign Its more than just nine white letters spelling out a city s name. In 1923 the Hollywood Sign was built. First the inscription read Hollywoodland, but 1945 the letters were shortened to Hollywood. The Hollywood Sign was first a kind of publicity and it was only planed for one and a half year. The letters are 15 metres high and 137 metres long and cost 21.000 $. 4000 light bulbs shine every night on Mount Lee in the Griffith Park.
Famous Sights
Hollywood Boulevard
is a boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States, beginning at Sunset Boulevard in the east and running northwest to Vermont Avenue, where it straightens out and runs due west to Laurel Canyon Boulevard. West of Laurel Canyon it continues as a small residential street in the hills, finally ending at Sunset Plaza Drive. On the East side of Hollywood Boulevard it passes through the neighborhoods of Little Armenia, Los Angeles and Thai Town.
The famous street was named Prospect Avenue from 1887 to 1910, when the town of Hollywood was annexed to the City of Los Angeles. After annexation, the street numbers changed from 100 Prospect Avenue, at Vermont Avenue, to 6400 Hollywood Boulevard.
In 1958, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which runs from Gower Street to La Brea Avenue, was created. The first star was placed in 1960 as a tribute to artists working in the entertainment industry. (The walk was later extended onto Vine Street.)
The Hollywood extension of the Metro Red Line subway was opened in June 1999 . Running from Downtown to the Valley, it has stops on Hollywood Boulevard at Western Avenue, at Vine Street and at Highland Avenue.Metro Local 217 and Metro Rapid 780 serve most of Hollywood Boulevard.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame
is a sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California that serves as an entertainment hall of fame. It is embedded with more than 2,000 five-pointed stars featuring the names of not only human celebrities but fictional characters honored by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce for their contributions to the entertainment industry. The Walk of Fame is maintained by the self-financing Hollywood Historic Trust. The first star, awarded on February 9, 1960, went to Joanne Woodward.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
is an iconic movie theatre located at 6928 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922. Built over 18 months beginning in January 1926 by a partnership headed by Sid Grauman, the theatre opened May 18, 1927 with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings. It has since been home to many premieres, birthday parties, corporate junkets and two Academy Awards ceremonies. Among the theatre's most famous traits are the autographed cement blocks that reside in the forecourt, which bear the signatures and markings of many of Hollywood's most revered stars and starlets.
From 1973 through 2001, the theatre was known as Mann's Chinese Theatre, owing to its acquisition by Mann Theatres in 1973. In the wake of Mann's bankruptcy, the Chinese, along with the other Mann properties, was sold in 2000 to a partnership comprising Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, who also acquired the Mann brand name. In 2002 the original name was restored to the cinema palace, although the other theatres in the attached Hollywood and Highland mall retain and continue to operate under the name Mann's Chinese 6 Theatre.
Paramount Pictures Corporation
is a major American motion picture production and distribution company, based in Hollywood, California. Founded in 1912, it is the oldest running movie studio in Hollywood, beating Universal Studios by a month. Paramount is owned by media conglomerate Viacom.
The academy Awards (Oscars)
The Academy Awards,
popularly known as the Oscars, are presented every year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers.The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is among the most prominent and most watched film awards ceremonies in the world.
When the first Academy Awards were handed out on May 16, 1929, movies had just begun to get famous. That first ceremony took place during an Academy banquet in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. 270 guests were invited and tickets cost $5. Since the earliest years, interest in the Academy Awards has run high. The first presentation was the only one to escape a media audience; by the second year, enthusiasm for the Awards was such that a Los Angeles radio station actually did a live one-hour broadcast of the event. The ceremony has had broadcast coverage ever since.
The official name of the Oscar statuette is the Academy Award of Merit. Made of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers and Technicians. Approximately 40 Oscars are made each year in Chicago, Illinois by the manufacturer, R.S. Owens. If they fail to meet strict quality control standards, the statuettes are cut in half and melted down.
The Awards are given out at a live telvision ceremony, mostly in February or March six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. The invited guests walk up the red carpet in the crations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day.
The Awards show was first televised on NBC in 1953. NBC continued to show this event until 1960. After that ABC followed showing it.
Stars
Marilyn Monroe
Her mother was a film-cutter at RKO who, widowed and insane, abandoned her to sequence of foster homes. Marilyn Monroe was almost smothered to death at two, nearly raped at six. At nine the LA Orphans' Home paid her a nickel a month for kitchen work while taking back a penny every Sunday for church. At sixteen she worked in an aircraft plant and married a man she called Daddy; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 200 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948 Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie "Ladies of the Chorus" for which she sang two numbers. Joseph Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in "All About Eve", because of which 20th Century re-signed her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar. When she went to a supper honoring her The Seven Year Itch (1955) she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). The same year she married and divorced baseball great 'Joe Dimaggio' (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles CA). After "Itch" she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller. True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made "The Prince and the Showgirl" with Lawrence Olivier, fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So did an affair with Yves Montand. Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961), written for her by departing husband Miller) was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from "Something's Got to Give" due to chronic lateness and drug dependency. Four months later she was found dead in her Brentwood home of a drug overdose, adjudged suicide.
Audrey Hepburn,
actress and humanitarian, was born Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston in Brussels, Belgium. Her father, Joseph Hepburn-Ruston, was a banker, and her mother, Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch baroness. Her parents divorced when she was young after her father was suspected of embezzling some of her mother's wealth. Hepburn and her mother later suffered from malnutrition and oppression during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. Following the war, Hepburn moved with her mother to London and began studying dance there. When she was twenty-one, she was working as a model. She got her break into show business when she was noticed by the French novelist, Collette, who cast her in her new play, GIGI.
Hepburn's career as an actress had a tremendous start when she won an Academy Award for her film debut in the movie ROMAN HOLIDAY. Throughout her career she received four more Academy Award nominations for her roles in SABRINA, THE NUN'S STORY, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and WAIT UNTIL DARK. Hepburn had an illustrious film career and became known for her grace and beauty. She married twice and had a son, Luca. In 1988, she became a special ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and spent the rest of her life working to improve the conditions of needy children. She died of colon cancer at the age of 63. She was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award posthumously for her work with UNICEF.
Elvis Aaron Presley,
in the humblest of circumstances, was born to Vernon and Gladys Presley in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, leaving Elvis to grow up as an only child. He and his parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1948, and Elvis graduated from Humes High School there in 1953.
Elvis
Elvis' musical influences were the pop and country m
usic of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager. In 1954, he began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor. By 1956, he was an international sensation. With a sound and style that uniquely combined his diverse musical influences and blurred and challenged the social and racial barriers of the time, he ushered in a whole new era of American music and popular culture.
He starred in 33 successful films, made history with his television appearances and specials, and knew great acclaim through his many, often record-breaking, live concert performances on tour and in Las Vegas. Globally, he has sold over one billion records, more than any other artist. His American sales have earned him gold, platinum or multi-platinum awards for 150 different albums and singles, far more than any other artist. Among his many awards and accolades were 14 Grammy nominations (3 wins) from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, which he received at age 36, and his being named One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation for 1970 by the United States Jaycees. Without any of the special privileges his celebrity status might have afforded him, he honorably served his country in the U.S. Army.
His talent, good looks, sensuality, charisma, and good humor endeared him to millions, as did the humility and human kindness he demonstrated throughout his life. Known the world over by his first name, he is regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth century popular culture. Elvis died at his Memphis home, Graceland, on August 16, 1977.