4. Where is Hollywood? (Chapter3: The Big Five)

In 1916, he helped form a New York talent agency called Metro Pictures Corporation. (p. 36)


    This book has ten chapters covering how Hollywood was founded and some fun facts about the best known film industry.

    Louis B. Mayer owned a large number of movie theaters in New England. He also owned a company which rented films to movie theatres. To make a buck, firstly, he bought the rights to rent out The Birth of a Nation, which he had not seen although he was certain it would be a moneymaker. Secondly, he helped establish a NY talent agency named Metro Pictures Corporation. Secondly, he signed up writers, directors, and actors to deal with new films which he would produce. Thirdly, he moved his company, renamed MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) to Southern California, where he was able to set up a complete studio. On the back lot by the studio were big sets for filming scenes outdoors. As a result of his dedicated efforts at filmmaking, MGM began churning out award-winning films with the movie stars Mayer had signed up.

    Adolph Zukor was an New Yorker who realized that it was time movies would change America. In 1916, he founded a film company, Paramount Pictures in Hollywood. In addition to live-action films, it produced cartoons with characters such as Betty Boop and Popeye. Also, he was keen to nurture young talents, thus had young actors sign seven-year contracts. During that time, they could work for other movie studios only if Zukor agreed to loan them out. They were satisfied with the contracts, and their careers got advanced. Although actors changed their minds about the contracts, he did not let them appear in films made by other agents where those actors could get paid better. Zukor was obsessed with making a fortune and having control over everything, and he even took bold, shameless action. Movies with "star power" such as Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, were called A movies. Zukor would not allow theatres to rent A movies unless they rented a cartoon, newsreel, short film, and low-budget B movie, which were made by Paramount Pictures and had no well-known stars in. By the end of the twenties, there were five important studios in Hollywood, "the Big Five.": MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox, and RKO. Astoundingly, these studios were each producing sixty to seventy movies a year.


Anastasio, Dina. (2019). Where is Hollywood?. New York, NY: Penguin Workshop.

(Illustrated by Tim Foley)



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