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| July 2008 |
| Billie Silvey |
| The History of Screenland |
| It was 1915 when Harry Culver, the developer of Culver City, saw Thomas Ince, a famous filmmaker, shooting a scene from a western near his newly developing community of Culver City. Indians in warpaint rowed canoes down La Ballona Creek as Ince’s crew filmed the spectacle. Thomas Ince. Culver, who envisioned a city with both housing and industry, convinced Ince to move his Inceville Studio from the beach in Santa Monica to prime property on Washington Boulevard. The same year, Ince established Triangle Studios with D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, building the landmark Colonnade, a two-story entrance gate and administration building fronting on Washington. |
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| It’s down at the end of our block, and I look at it often, imagining classic cars passing through that gate, much too narrow for today’s automobiles. Ince also built glassed-in stages and sheds to serve as shops. |
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| The first movie produced by Triangle at their new location was Civilization. Actors who worked at the new studios included the western star William S. Hart and Billie Burke, who is probably best known today as the “good witch” in the Wizard of Oz. I know her as the woman I was named for. |
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| In 1918, Ince sold out to Griffith and Sennett and bought a second property from Harry Culver. The next year, he built a colonial mansion to house the administrative offices of the Thomas H. Ince Studios. It was located east of the Colonnade, at 9336 Washington Boulevard, and is now known as Culver Studios. Across the street were Culver’s offices in the flatiron building that is now the Culver Hotel. |
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| In 1924, Ince died of what was officially called a heart attack on a weekend cruise to celebrate his 42nd birthday. The trip was on William Randolph Hearst’s lavish yacht, the Oneida. Other guests included actor Charlie Chaplin, columnist Louella Parsons, Hearst himself and his lover, actress Marion Davies. |
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| Samuel Goldwyn. Schmuel Gelbfisz left his native Poland, on foot and penniless, emigrating first to England and then to America, where he made a fortune as a salesman and became enamored with movies. A few name changes and broken partnerships later, he bought Ince Studios from Ince's widow Eleanor, renaming it Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. Goldwyn added more stages and structures. He commissioned the Phillip Goodman Agency in New York. to develop a trademark. A Columbia University dropout, Howard Dietz took Columbia’s “Leo the Lion” and added the Latin phrase, “Ars Gratia Artis” (Art for Art’s Sake) to form one of the most recognizable trademarks ever. |
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| Louis B. Mayer. In 1924, when Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and the Louis B. Mayer Company merged to form Metro Goldwyn, Mayer, its vice president, insisted on adding his name. Despite the fact that Samuel Goldwyn had lost control of his company, his name and trademark remained a part of it. Mayer also inherited Goldwyn's most recent production, Ben-Hur. Though the costliest film of its time, it became one of the biggest grossers of all time. |
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| Though poorly educated, Goldwyn focused on quality. He had an eye for talent, discovering actor Gary Cooper and hiring William Wyler to direct his early pictures. His writers included Ben Hecht, Sidney Howard and Lillian Hellman. He was also known for his explosive temper and for such incongruous sayings as "A bachelor's life is no life for a single man," "A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on," and "Anyone who would go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined." |
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| By the 1930s, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer made more money than any other studio in Hollywood. Mayer created the "star system," boasting that MGM had "more stars than there are in the heavens," including John Gilbert, Lillian Gish and Lon Chaney and later Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, James Stewart and Elizabeth Taylor. At its height, MGM released a new feature film every week. |