Southport Magazine

Hopefuls flock here by the thousands. Universal Studios is down the street from the Hollywood Bowl is down the street from the Dolby Theatre where the Oscars are held each year. There are stars on the sidewalk and sitcoms on the stages and a light atop the famous Capitol Records building that blinks “Hollywood” in morse code all night long. Here, Monkeys fly and ET phoned home and Superman leaps tall buildings at a single bound. Here’s the birthplace of Minions and Frozen and Shrek. The backyard of Bogart, Garland and Taylor. Johnny Carson held court here. Lassie lazed. Marilyn lounged by the pool. Hollywood’s the place to be discovered, to reinvent oneself, to see one’s name up in lights. It’s a town borne from imagination, a culmination of the American Dream.

More than 10 million people visit Hollywood annually. And for most of them, the first question they’re asked upon returning home is, “Did you see any movie stars?” Celebrity starspotting can be part of the Hollywood experience, but first let’s cover some history.

The area we know as Hollywood today was originally settled in 1853. At that time, it consisted of little more than one adobe hut. Throughout the remainder of the 19th century, it was an agricultural community of citrus groves and avocado trees. In 1887, a developer by the name of Harvey Wilcox purchased land in the area and christened the plot Hollywood, after the suburb of Chicago where his wife grew up. Later that year, the small community began to flourish. By 1900, Hollywood boasted a post office, a newspaper and two markets. A two-room schoolhouse opened in 1903. The school would later become Hollywood High School, and famous alumni of the school would later include Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Mickey Rooney and Carol Burnett. The mascot of the high school became (and still is) The Sheik, taken from a 1921 Rudolph Valentino film of the same name.

But in the early 1900s, the thoroughfare of Hollywood Boulevard was little more than a dusty trail. Then the Hollywood Hotel opened at the corner of Hollywood & Highland (where the massive Dolby Theatre stands today). The 40-room hotel was immediately promoted as an idyllic country getaway from the boomtown of Los Angeles ten miles to the east. The idea caught on and soon after the hotel was expanded to include 104 additional guest rooms, a wide lobby, a chapel, a music room and a popular ballroom. As the filmmakers and early silent movie stars of central Los Angeles were wiled by the charms of rustic Hollywood, the hotel became home base for the who’s who of early Tinseltown. The popular restaurant of the hotel began painting stars on the ceiling above certain chairs at certain tables to help them remember where each celebrity liked to sit while frequenting the hotel. These stars were the precursor to the stars that now line the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard as part of the famous Walk of Fame.