Hollywood

Hollywood can refer to a neighbourhood in Los Angeles, United Republics or the unofficial grouping of motion picture collectives located within the city. Though initially centered around the Hollywood neighborhood itself, the film collectives have long since established themselves in various locations within the Los Angeles basin.

Early History
The Los Angeles Basin was home to the Tongva Native Americans. Then in 1769 Gaspar de Portola sent them all to a series of forced labor camps. Then in 1833 the newly-independent Mexico began a program of mission secularization, seizing the mission lands from the Catholic Church. This was undone in 1850 when California joined the United States. The missions and their lands were returned to the catholic church, but the state of disrepair meant that the church lacked the funds to repair more than a handful of missions. While a few missions in California had been restored, most of them were in such an advanced state of disrepair that the majority of the missions were demolished after the revolution.

Initially a small town on the periphery of Los Angeles, D.W. Griffith took a small troupe of actors, including future United Artists founder Mary Pickford to a vacant lot in 1910 to film a handful of movies there. Having found the locals friendly and welcoming, as well as the unfriendliness to organized labor engendered by the Los Angeles Times' rabid anti-union stance, a stance that would be reinforced by the 1910 bombings and subsequent trial, Griffith's Biograph films would soon permanently relocate to Los Angeles, followed shortly by Jack Warner, who would later go on to found Warner Bros.

The favorable weather, then-disempowered unions, distance from Edison had made Los Angeles the idea town for the fledgling film industry.

The outbreak of the first world war had nearly halted production in Hollywood, the need for nitrates for the war effort had made film stock difficult to come by, and the infamous "Creel Committee" had taken a heavy hand to anything deemed detrimental to the war effort.

The end of the war had seen a return to form for Hollywood, with the film industry continuing to push boundaries with increasingly racy films. The scandal of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and the increasingly louder calls for "decency" from reactionary circles had forced the studio heads to cave to pressure and begin censoring films.

The Breen Era
From 1930 to 1933, The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association had put together a list of Do's and Don't's for the film industry. At the head of the commission who enforced the code was Joseph I. Breen, who's name was lent to the titular code.

Under the new rules for film production, a film could not "lower the moral standards of those who see it," a broad brush that meant that issues that faced the American body politic at the time could off limits to the film industry.

The Revolution Comes To Hollywood
When the Red May Revolution came to Hollywood, the former studios, lying dormant with the executives having died in the fighting or having fled, quickly collectivized under lead leadership. As a way to break with their former studio heads, the studios of Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Paramount chose to rename their studios after the streets they were located on, Becoming the Olive Avenue, Culver City, and Melrose Avenue Motion Pictures Collectives. The rest of the studios soon followed suit, with choosing to name themselves after their street addresses as a final insult to their former bosses.

With the restrictions of the Breen Code lifted, Hollywood began to release films that were willing to talk about issues had been kept quiet.

The New Film Collectives
Workers Film and Photo League: Continued its pre-Revolutionary function of producing documentaries and newsreels for distribution to theaters to educate and inform the public.

Olive Avenue Motion Picture Collective: Located on the former Warner Brothers lot, this collective had focused on crime and gangster films before the Revolution, and after the revolution began producing propaganda films. Under the Chairmanship of former Warner exec Daryl Zanuck.

Termite Terrace Animated Pictures Collective: Located on the same lot as the Olive Avenue Collective, this animated collective produces animated comedies, ranging from the slapstick socialist Bugs Bunny to the Commander Columbia short films.

Hyperion Animation: Located on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake neighborhood, prior to the Revolution, it was a leading animation studio, with cartoon stars like Mortimer “Morty” Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit becoming icons. Led by Walt Disney.

United Artists Collective: Successfully transitioned to a collective under its original founders. Unlike the other collectives, they have only a single small lot in West Hollywood on the corner of Melrose and Formosa, and instead will share space with other collectives when needed.

Radford Avenue Collective: This collective, formed out of the former Mack Sennett studios mainly produced live-action comedy shorts before the revolution, afterwards they transitioned into producing serials that would be played in theaters for younger audiences on Saturday mornings.

The Gower Street Collective: Created by the workers of a bunch of the different “poverty row” studios, this collective tended to focus on lower budget films, but had some success with Frank Capra’s “The Greatest Gift”

Lankershim Motion Picture Collective: Formerly Universal, they mainly produced horror and monster films, most notably the Lankershim Monsters. Notably they were one of the first movie collectives to start offering the public guided tours so that visitors could see the sets, props and costumes used in making their films, something that the other studios would also follow.

Pico Boulevard Motion Picture Collective: Formerly known as Fox Films, this collective became known for their racy subject matter and willingness to push the cultural and social boundaries in their films. Chaired by Fox’s founder William Fox.

Melrose Avenue Collective: Formerly Paramount Pictures, this collective was known for their personality-based promotion of films, emphasizing their members as stars. After the revolution, they became known for their historical epics such as Spartacus (1952).

Culver City Collective: Formerly MGM and RKO, they focused on large and expansive musicals. Most notably a continuous early adopter of new filmmaking technology, they expanded after the war into producing spy movies about glamorous State Sec agents.

Mosfilm: (Unofficially: Bronson Ave.)  The former home of the Olive Ave and Termite Terrace Collectives, the studios on the corner of Sunset and Bronson had been left empty after the Revolution. With the former workers now moved over to the newer Olive Avenue lot, Mosfilm was able to take over the former Warner Bros lot and use the offices and soundstages to produce collaborative projects with Hollywood talent for distribution in the USSR and the facilitate distribution of Soviet-made films in the UASR.

Moscow Come to Hollywood
Following the revolution, many filmmakers in the Soviet Union set their sights on Hollywood. Sergei Eisenstein received a heroes welcome. Mosfilm, eager to take advantage of the opportunity that Hollywood offered them, established a presence in Hollywood, taking over the former Warner Bros. lot on Sunset and Bronson, Olive Avenue and Termite Terrace not needing it due to only having just finished relocating to the Olive Street lot prior to the revolution.