: Kieron Connolly
: Dark History of Hollywood A century of greed, corruption and scandal behind the movies
: Amber Books Ltd
: 9781782741770
: 1
: CHF 8.10
:
: Biographien, Autobiographien
: English
: 224
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

'Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.' -Marilyn Monroe

It is now over 100 years since Hollywood became the centre of American cinema and, while it has always presented itself as a place of glamour and home to the beautiful and talented, from its very creation there was a darker side to Tinseltown. Film-makers didn't just move to southern California for its sunny weather, they went West to evade the patent laws restricting the use of movie cameras.
From its earliest days, Hollywood, the home of fantasy, created a hothouse of excess - too much money, too much adulation, too much expectation and too much ego. Some actors would trade sex in the, often vain, hope of career advancement, mobsters muscled in on the unions and extorted the studios, while the accountants appear to be among Hollywood's most creative people, managing to ensure that even the Star Wars films haven't yet shown a profit. But while stars have always been indulged, once their moment in the limelight has passed, their fall can be cruel.
From the setting up of the studios by the movie moguls to the corporations that run them today, from drug addictions to McCarthy-era witch-hunts to the Mob,Dark History of Hollywoodis the story of sex and excess, murder and suicide, ambition and betrayal, and how money can make almost everyone compromise.
Intensively researched and superbly entertaining,Dark History of Hollywood reveals that the stories behind the silver screen are at least as gripping as many of those on it.

Part of the appeal of early silent cinema was that the audience didn’t need to be literate or even be able to speak English. They spoke the universal language of visual images, ‘the Esperanto of the Eye’, as one writer called it.

I


HOLLYWOOD


FOUNDING FATHERS


In 1908, America’s cultural life, including its film-making, was led from New York, and France had the world’s largest film industry. So how was it that by 1919 Hollywood had become not only the centre of film-making in the United States but also the largest force for movies around the world? As well as hard work and good luck, it’s a story that involves bootlegging, theft, piracy, cartels and violence.

‘Cinema has no commercial value. At most, it’ll last a year.’

Cinema wasn’t conceived in Hollywood, but some would argue that it was born in America. In 1896, the cinématographe, invented by Antoine Lumière and his sons Louis and Auguste, was presented in New York. While earlier inventions had been more like slot machines where a single viewer looked through a peep hole, the cinématographe was the first projector to throw light and shadows on a wall and offer moving images to a mass audience. Quickly the cinématographe, which gives us the word ‘cinema’, proved a success around the world – so much so that within a year it had been studied and improved upon by other moving-picture inventors.

But, as the movie business now knows well, where there’s a hit, there’s a writ. No sooner had the Lumières demonstrated their invention than Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, the phonograph and the ticker-tape machine, as well as being a busy litigator, stepped in. Claiming that he’d created a device for viewing moving pictures five years earlier, he went to court, alleging thatall other machines were infringing his patent – this despite the more recent inventions being far more sophisticated and the fact that Edison’s machine itself owed a great deal to the earlier work of Étienne Jules Marey. The battle for who owned cinema had begun, and it wasn’t a battle fought only in the courts – Edison’s lawsuit against American Mutoscope (later the Biograph Company) lasted for ten years and even lead to street fights. But while the lawsuits were making their way through the legal process, cameras could be rented, bought or stolen – the bootlegging of equipment and even finished films being common.

SEATS FOR THE FUNERAL

WHEN SAM, HARRY and Albert Warner – the three elder Warner Brothers – opened their first nickelodeon in Pennsylvania in 1905, they used chairs from the funeral parlour next door. If they had a very popular film showing, a funeral service would have to be postponed while they borrowed the chairs. And if the undertaker had a large service, they’d delay the start of their film until the chairs were available.

Harry Warner (centre), with Albert (right) and fourth brother Jack (left) in 1965.

While the lawsuits were making their way through the legal process, cameras could be rented, bought or stolen …

With films proving relatively inexpensive to make, offering returns that could be very high, one early commentator said: ‘All you needed was fifty dollars, a broad and a camera.’ With that, a short, silent vaudeville act could be put on film.

As movies were at first basically a fairground attraction, another observer correctly described th