Hollywood is Not the Capital

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 182, 22 October 1927, Page 23 (Supplement)

Hollywood is Not the Capital

Movie City Moving SUBURBAN FIELDS FAVOURED The name of Hollywood as capital of the motion picture world is becoming a myth. Hollywood is moving. Encroachment of business is sending major producing companies out to suburban fields.

Here is an American correspondent’s impression of the change at Hollywood. The studios -where countless historical pictures have been made are being razed to make way for office buildings, grocery stores, butcher shops and beauty parlours. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Cecil B. de Mill© and Hal Roach, together with Samuel Goldwyn, are in Culver City, midway between Los Angeles and the sea. First National lias built its big new studio at Burbank, far to the northwest, beyond Universal. Now Studio City, a 20,000,000 dollars project, is under way, to -which it is expected numerous companies will move. Mack Sennett is to abandon his present studio and build a new one there at a cost of approximately 800,000 dollars. The Christie Film Company is expected to follow. Just what other changes will be made is problematical, but the personnel of the promoters of Studio City is indicative of further migration. Milton E. Hoffman, executive manager for Famous-Players-Lasky, is president of the corporation. Charles Christie is chairman of the executive committee. On the board of directors are B. P. Schulberg, who is in charge of the Paramount West Coast studios: Hector Turnbull, associate producer of the same company: Mack Sennett, Noah Beery and others. Studio For Harold Harold Lloyd has acquired a tract of ground not far from the new Studio City and is now building his first sets upon it, although still using the Metropolitan studios for headquarters. William Fox has acquired another site nearby. The only major producing companies remaining in Hollywood proper are Warner Brothers, United Artists, Paramount, Fox, Christie, F. B. 0., Metropolitan and Columbia. As has been indicated some of these / likely will move. At the present time throughout most |of the world Hollywood is spoken of as the capital of the picture industry, ' although many of the big companies have left. Now citizens of the town itself are wondering if the Hollywood of picture lore will continue to be looked upon : as the motion picture centre, notwithstanding the hegiru.