The film industry of the United States, primarily associated with major film studios collectively referred to as "Hollywood", has significantly influenced the global film industry since the early 20th century.
Classical Hollywood cinema, a filmmaking style developed in the 1910s, continues to shape many American films today. While French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière are often credited with modern cinema's origins, American filmmaking quickly rose to global dominance. As of 2024, the United States produced 544 national feature films, making it the world's fourth-largest film producer after India, Japan and China. Although the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce English-language films, they are not directly part of the Hollywood system. Due to this global reach, Hollywood is frequently regarded as a transnational cinemaHudson, Dale. Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Website with some films released in multiple language versions, such as Spanish and French.
Contemporary Hollywood frequently outsources production to countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The four major film studios—Universal Pictures, Skydance Motion Picture Group, Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures—are media conglomerates that dominate American box office revenue and have produced some of the most commercially successful film and television programs worldwide. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind (1939) is the highest-grossing film of all time.
In 1894, the world's first commercial motion-picture exhibition was held in New York City using Thomas Edison's kinetoscopeKinetoscope Encyclopædia Britannica and kinetograph. In the following decades, the production of silent films greatly expanded. New studios formed, migrated to California, and began to create longer films. The United States produced the world's first sync-sound musical film, The Jazz Singer in 1927, and was at the forefront of sound-film development in the following decades.
Since the early 20th century, the American film industry has primarily been based in and around the thirty-mile zone, centered in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles County, California. The director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of a film grammar. Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited in critics' polls as the greatest film of all time.Village Voice: 100 Best Films of the 20th century (2001) . Filmsite.org; Hollywood is widely regarded as the oldest hub of the film industry, where most of the earliest studios and production companies originated, and is the birthplace of numerous cinematic genres.
History
Origins and Fort Lee
The earliest recorded instance of motion capture was Eadweard Muybridge’s series of photographs depicting a running horse, which he took in Palo Alto, California using a set of still cameras placed in a row. Muybridge's accomplishment led inventors everywhere to attempt to make similar devices. In the United States, Thomas Edison was among the first to produce such a device, the kinetoscope and kinetograph.
The history of cinema in the United States can trace its roots to the East Coast, where, at one time, Fort Lee, New Jersey, was the motion-picture capital of America. The American film industry began at the end of the 19th century, with the construction of Thomas Edison's "Black Maria", the first motion-picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey. The cities and towns on the Hudson River and Hudson Palisades offered land at costs considerably less than New York City across the river and benefited greatly as a result of the phenomenal growth of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century.
The industry began attracting both capital and innovative work forces. In 1907, when the Kalem Company began using Fort Lee as a location for filming in the area, other filmmakers quickly followed. In 1909, a forerunner of Universal Studios, the Champion Film Company, built the first studio.Before Hollywood, There Was Fort Lee , Fort Lee Film Commission. Accessed April 16, 2011. Others quickly followed and either built new studios or leased facilities in Fort Lee. In the 1910s and 1920s, film companies such as the Independent Moving Pictures Company, Peerless Pictures Studios, Solax Studios, Eclair, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, Star Film (Georges Méliès), World Film Company, Biograph Studios, Fox Film Corporation, Société Pathé Frères, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Victor Film Company, and Selznick International Pictures were all making pictures in Fort Lee. Many notable actors, such as Mary Pickford, got their start at Biograph Studios.Koszarski, Richard. Fort Lee: The Film Town, Indiana University Press, 2004. . Accessed May 27, 2015.Studios and Films , Fort Lee Film Commission. Accessed December 7, 2013.
In New York, the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, which was built during the silent film era, was used by the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields. The Edison Studios were located in the Bronx. Chelsea, Manhattan, was also frequently used.
Other Eastern cities, most notably Chicago and Cleveland, also served as early centers for film production.
In the West, California was already quickly emerging as a major film production center. In Colorado, Denver was home to the Art-O-Graf Film Company, and Walt Disney's early Laugh-O-Gram Studio was based in Kansas City, Missouri.
From 1908, Jacksonville, Florida's motion picture industry saw more than 30 silent film companies establish studios in town, including Kalem Studios, Metro Pictures (later MGM), Edison Studios, Majestic Films, https://app.crb.gov/document/download/22398 http://archive.org/download/picturestoriesma03lond/picturestoriesma03lond.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/The_Billboard_1912-02-03-_Vol_24_Iss_5_%28IA_sim_billboard_1912-02-03_24_5%29.pdf https://filminflorida.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Analysis-of-the-Florida-Film-and-Entertainment-Industry.pdf King-Bee Films Corporation, Vim Comedy Company, Norman Studios, Gaumont and the Lubin Manufacturing Company.
Picture City, Florida was a planned site for a movie picture production center in the 1920s, but due to the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, the idea collapsed and Picture City, Florida returned to its original name of Hobe Sound. An attempt to establish a film production center in Detroit also proved unsuccessful.
The film patent wars of the early 20th century helped the spread of film companies to other parts of the US, outside New York. Many filmmakers worked with equipment for which they did not own the rights to use. Therefore, filming in New York could be dangerous, as it was close to Edison's company headquarters and close to the agents the company sent out to seize cameras.
An alternative was Los Angeles, which had mild winters, a large selection of places to film, and, most importantly, it was only 90 miles to the border of Mexico, in case they needed to flee from Edison's enforcement agents. By 1912, most major film companies had set up production facilities in Southern California, near or in Los Angeles, because of the region's favorable year-round weather.Jacobs, Lewis; Rise of the American film, The; Harcourt Brace, New York, 1930; p. 85
Rise of Hollywood
The 1908 Selig Polyscope Company production of The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Francis Boggs and starring Hobart Bosworth, was claimed as the first to have been filmed in Los Angeles, in 1907. A plaque was unveiled by the city, in 1957, at Dearden's flagship store on the corner of Main Street and 7th Street, to mark the filming on the site when it had been a Chinese laundry. Bosworth's widow suggested the city had got the date and location wrong, and that the film was actually shot in nearby Venice, which at the time was an independent city. In the Sultan's Power, directed by Boggs for Selig Polyscope Company, also starring Bosworth, is considered the first film shot entirely in Los Angeles, with shooting at 7th and Olive Streets, in 1909.
In early 1910, director D. W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the West Coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and others. They started filming on a vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood: a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old California, a Biograph melodrama about California in the 19th century, when the state was under Mexican rule. Griffith stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. Also in 1910, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago established the first film studio in the Los Angeles area in Edendale, and the first studio in Hollywood opened in 1912. After hearing about Griffith's success in Hollywood, in 1913, many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison, who owned patents on the movie-making process. Nestor Studios of Bayonne, New Jersey, built the first studio in the Hollywood neighborhood in 1911. Nestor Studios, owned by David and William Horsley, later merged with Universal Studios; and William Horsley's other company, Hollywood Film Laboratory, is now the oldest existing company in Hollywood, presently called the Hollywood Digital Laboratory. California's more hospitable and cost-effective climate led to the eventual shift of virtually all filmmaking to the West Coast by the 1930s. At the time, Thomas Edison owned almost all the patents relevant to motion picture production and movie producers on the East Coast acting independently of Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company were often sued or enjoined by Edison and his agents while movie makers working on the West Coast could work independently of Edison's control.Bishop, Jim. "How movies got moving ...", The Lewiston Journal, November 27, 1979. Accessed February 14, 2012. "Movies were unheard if in Hollywood, even in 1900 The flickering shadows were devised in a place called Fort Le, N.J. It had forests, rocks cliffs for the cliff-hangers and the Hudson River. The movie industry had two problems. The weather was unpredictable, and Thomas Edison sued producers who used his invention. ... It was not until 1911 that David Horsley moved his Nestor Co. west."
In Los Angeles, the studios and Hollywood grew. Before World War I, films were made in several American cities, but filmmakers tended to gravitate towards southern California as the industry developed. They were attracted by the warm, predictable climate with reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film outdoors year-round. War damage contributed to the decline of the then-dominant European film industry, in favor of the United States, where infrastructure was still intact. The stronger early public health response to the 1918 flu epidemic by Los AngelesHow one city avoided the 1918 flu pandemic's deadly second wave compared to other American cities reduced the number of cases there and resulted in a faster recovery, contributing to the increasing dominance of Hollywood over New York City. During the pandemic, public health officials temporarily closed movie theaters in some jurisdictions, large studios suspended production for weeks at a time, and some actors came down with the flu. This caused major financial losses and severe difficulties for small studios, but the industry as a whole more than recovered during the Roaring Twenties.