...for about three months a year. And that was just one of the reasons that the independent film makers moved to California starting around 1910. The other reason was that Edison, via both legal means and muscle ,was trying to shut down the independents because he felt since he invented the motion picture camera, that the profits of anybody who made a motion picture belonged to him.
The title of this film "In The Beginning" may be confusing to people. It is not recounting the beginning of the film industry, but the beginning of the industry in Hollywood. Viola Dana said that almost everybody who came there at first believed they would eventually go back east when the coast cleared. They would stay at a hotel - there was only one in Hollywood at the time - then rent a house for six months then back to the hotel.
But things became permanent, and not to the like of the non film industry residents. It was the home to farming tee totaling folk and was very rural with little industry. Some early Hollywood films are shown to illustrate just how rural it was.
So this episode goes on to show just how much Hollywood changed over the next ten years. As the move became permanent more permanent movie studios were built there. The big stars built palatial homes there such as Pickfair and Keaton's Italian Villa.
This episode is good as are all of the episodes of Silent Hollywood, but this one was just a little less interesting to me since it deals more in real estate and less in the films and stories that the other episodes do. Still it is worthwhile viewing.