Why did Southern California become the epicenter of the American film industry ? The overnice weather certainly help . But there ’s another factor that modern Hollywood plausibly hope you ’d leave : Rampant piracy . Even though it was just the piracy of moving-picture show camera tech rather than the Jack Sparrow motley , there were mountain of real public bullets being discharged over it . Including bullets being train at the legendary conductor Cecil B. DeMille .
Thomas Edison command the former movie business . Edison ’s Motion Picture Patents Company ( commonly called the Edison Trust ) had a monopoly on some of the fundamental engineering that allowed citizenry to make films . They also dominated the statistical distribution business in the United States . So autonomous filmmakers of the early 1910s sought resort in intemperate to reach places .
southerly California presently emerged as one of these go - to destinations ( along with Cuba and Florida ) to shoot film , since it was a five - day string drive from New York to Los Angeles . And Cecil B. DeMille was one film maker who make a motion west to bring in peace , harbour by geographics to apply Edison movie equipment without give royalties . This , of course , did n’t make the Trust too well-chosen — and Edison ’s thugs would often be dispatched to go after DeMille and his movie .
DeMille , naturally , sought to protect himself as the bookLost Hollywoodby David Wallace explain :
DeMille , for example , receive legion anonymous scourge to his life and was shot at double in his first months in Hollywood . The director was certain it was the Trust trying to kill him , but the culprit were never get . On more than one occasion , he sleep in his first studio armed with a scattergun to guard his picture . Like many other early filmmakers , he carried a .45 revolver conspicuously in a holster on his rap . finally he owned eighty - six gunslinger , often using them as props for his pic .
As Simon Louvish’s2008 biographyof DeMille notes , he even observe a tamed prairie wolf in his home as added protection . The brute was used in filming his 1914 filmThe Squaw Manand certainly would intimidate any hood sent by the Trust to go after DeMille .
The Edison Trust was formally dissolved by court rescript in 1918 , paving the mode for the movement picture industry to blossom in the 1920s . And Hollywood would be the better for it . Until it decided , like every industriousness built on piracy eventually does , to over - react anytime it sees a menace to its mastery of noetic property practice of law .
Images : Thomas Edison operating a move motion-picture show camera circa late twenties via AP ; Cecil B. DeMille shows off his collection of gunscirca 1935
Los AngelesThomas Edison
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