Movie-Made Los Angeles

Before Hollywood, Los Angeles was a cinematic city, with photography, painting, and tourism promoting the state as a land of transformative experiences and catapulting it to the largest city on the west coast by 1915. These art forms shaped Hollywood, an industry based on world-building, and cultivated the city's self-image through pre-cinema narrative.

Format: Unspecified
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 17 October 2023
Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Before Hollywood rose to prominence, Los Angeles was already a cinematic city. Photographers, painters, and tourism promoters in Southern California provided early filmmakers with a blueprint for creating a myth-making business and imagining ideal moviegoers. These artistic mediums positioned California as a land of transformative experiences and propelled the dusty backwater town of Los Angeles to the largest city on the west coast by 1915. Photography played a crucial role in opening up the region to the rest of the country. Painters revitalized fading European traditions by bringing them to life in the California sun, with signature colors and techniques that would later be adopted by L.A. real estate companies, agriculture, and health retreats. Tourism infused the iconography and signature styles of art with cultural mythology of the state's colonial past, offering proto-cinematic experiences to those who ventured west. Author John Trafton delves into how Hollywood, an industry built on world-building, emerged from these artistic forms in the land of sunshine. A more comprehensive account of the American film industry's ascendancy in Los Angeles emerges when one considers how the City of Angels cultivated its self-image through pre-cinema narrative.

Before Hollywood rose to prominence, Los Angeles was already a cinematic city. Photographers, painters, and tourism promoters in Southern California provided early filmmakers with a blueprint for creating a myth-making business and imagining ideal moviegoers. These artistic mediums positioned California as a land of transformative experiences and propelled the dusty backwater town of Los Angeles to the largest city on the west coast by 1915. Photography played a crucial role in opening up the region to the rest of the country. Painters revitalized fading European traditions by bringing them to life in the California sun, with signature colors and techniques that would later be adopted by L.A. real estate companies, agriculture, and health retreats. Tourism infused the iconography and signature styles of art with cultural mythology of the state's colonial past, offering proto-cinematic experiences to those who ventured west. Author John Trafton delves into how Hollywood, an industry built on world-building, emerged from these artistic forms in the land of sunshine. A more comprehensive account of the American film industry's ascendancy in Los Angeles emerges when one considers how the City of Angels cultivated its self-image through pre-cinema narrative.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780814347775