For over 100 years, Paramount Pictures has been captivating movie and television audiences worldwide with its alluring imagery and compelling stories. Arising from the collective genius of Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, and Cecil B. DeMille during the 1910s, Paramount Pictures is home to such enduring classics as Wings, Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, Love Story, The Godfather, the Indiana Jones series, Chinatown, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, Titanic, and Star Trek. Early Paramount Stu...

The history of Hollywood is often seen only through the lens of the major studios, forgetting that many of Tinseltown�s early creations came from micro-studios stretched along Sunset Boulevard in an area disparagingly known as Poverty Row. Here, the first wave of West Coast moviemakers migrated to the tiny village of Hollywood, where alcohol was illegal, actors were unwelcome, and cattle were herded down the unpaved streets. Most Poverty Row producers survived from film to film, their fort...

The story of the makeup artist who changed the film industry—and the world of modern cosmetics. Includes photos.When Polish wigmaker and cosmetician Max Factor arrived in Los Angeles at the dawn of the motion picture industry, "make-up" had been associated only with stage performers and ladies of the oldest profession. Appalled by the garish paints worn by actors, Factor introduced the first "flexible" greasepaint for film in 1914. With a few careful brush strokes,...

The fascinating tale of Hollywood powerhouse Paramount Pictures--beginning with its birth in the 1910s through the turbulent decade of the 1930s--was told in Early Paramount Studios by Marc Wanamaker, Michael Christaldi, and E.J. Stephens. Now the same authors are back to tell the next 60 years of the studio saga in Paramount Studios: 1940-2000, with a foreword by former Paramount head of production Robert Evans. This book picks up the story during the time of World War II--a successful er...

Since World War II, Hollywood has fought and won that same war many times, won the West even more often�plus got the girl�and laughed like crazy, too. The postwar era in the dream factory was a prosperous time of expansion and wealth through the 1970s, decline in the 1980s, and rebirth in the new century. Vintage photographs from the rare collections of Hollywood Heritage and Bison Archives depict the municipal, business, residential, and entertainment industry growth in Hollywood proper, ...

Since pioneer filmmakers arrived on its shoreline in the early 20th century, the Santa Monica beach has been a popular location for the making of movies and television productions. Its enchanting beauty led studio moguls, producers, and celebrities to build beach houses there, creating what became known as "Hollywood's Playground." The sand and shore of the Santa Monica beach became a favored site for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, and Cary Grant. It ...

Way before Rodeo Drive and the �pink palace� of the Beverly Hills Hotel were built, way before the namesake hillbillies, its zip code, and Eddie Murphy�s detective techniques reaffirmed its place in popular culture, and way before its 1,001 mansions, Beverly Hills was comprised of wild canyons and ranchlands. Burton Green, one of the three original land developers of the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, named this place of severe terrain after Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, a 19th-century spa. Si...

Nowhere on Earth are sequels and the success that fosters them more apparent than in Hollywood's bejeweled bedroom, Beverly Hills. This continuation of the history begun in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America: Early Beverly Hills presents a compendium of vintage photographs depicting America's one community that's most synonymous with wealth. However, the Great Depression hit here, too, and the book depicts that as well as the subsequent recovery and boom years, homes of the stars, infl...

The image of Hollywood often translates as some otherworldly dreamscape filled with fantastic lives and fantasy fulfillment. The real deal was carved from the Southern California desert as an outpost northwest of Los Angeles. The movie industry arrived when tumbleweeds were not simply props and actual horsepower pulled the loads. Everyday workers, civic management, and Main Street conventionalities nurtured Hollywood�s growth, as did a balmy climate that facilitated outdoor photography and...

Since 1928, Warner Bros. has produced thousands of beloved films and television shows at the studio�s magical 110-acre film factory in Burbank. This collection of evocative images concentrates on the Warner Bros. legacy from the 1920s to the 1950s, when timeless classics such as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and East of Eden came to life. It also looks at WB�s earlier homes along Hollywood�s �Poverty Row,� the birthplace of Looney Tunes, and the site of WB�s pioneering marriage between f...

After watching pioneer filmmaker Thomas Ince film one of his famous Westerns on Ballona Creek, city founder Harry Culver saw the economic base for his city. Culver announced plans for the city in 1913 and attracted three major movie studios to Culver City, along with smaller production companies. �The Heart of Screenland� is fittingly etched across the Culver City seal. These vintage images are a tour through the storied past of this company town on the legendary movie lots bearing the nam...

Los Angeles has reigned for more than a century as the world capital of the film industry, a unique and ever-changing city that has been molded and recast thousands of times through the artistic visions and cinematic dreams of Hollywood�s elite. As early as 1907, filmmakers migrated west to avoid lengthy eastern winters. In Los Angeles, they discovered an ideal world of abundant and diverse locales blessed with a mild and sunny climate ideal for filming. Location Filming in Los Angeles pro...