Motion picture industry

Motion picture industry

Main article: Cinema of the United States

Nestor Studio, Hollywood's first movie studio, 1912

By 1912, major motion-picture companies had set up production near or in Los Angeles.^[16]
Director D. W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood. His 17-minute short film In Old California, was filmed for the Biograph Company.^[17][18][19] Although Hollywood banned movie theaters—of which it had none—before annexation that year, Los Angeles had no such restriction.^[20] The first film by a Hollywood Studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company, was shot on October 26, 1911.^[21] The Whitley home was used as its set, and the unnamed movie was filmed in the middle of their groves on the corner of Whitley Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.^[22]
The first studio in Hollywood, the Nestor Company, was established by the New Jersey–based Centaur Company in a roadhouse at 6121 Sunset Boulevard at the corner of Gower, in October 1911.^[23]

Hollywood movie studios, 1922

Four major film companies – Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO and Columbia – had studios in Hollywood, as did several minor companies and rental studios. A new commercial and retail sector opened up.