I once learned in a cultural studies class that the film industry can trace its earliest origins to NYC. However, various parties (including organized crime) with a vested interest in the status quo effectively chased film producers out of the city and pursued them westward. Eventually the producers ended up in the relative backwater of Los Angeles where they could more or less conduct their business without being bothered.
Is this an accurate summary of what occurred? Can you elaborate on the details, such as who the key players were? And explain why, if California was the ultimate destination, did the film industry land in LA and not San Francisco? Thanks!
It all comes back to the Motion Picture Patents Company. Led by Thomas Edison, this was a trust between all the major studios of the day (the day in this case being 1908), as well as Eastman Kodak (film supplier) and the largest distributor of films. Essentially it made it so that if anyone else wanted to get into the movie business, they'd get sued by the MPPC for using patented technology. This was to ensure that Edison, Biograph, Essanay, Vitagraph, Pathe American etc. would keep a solid hold on the film industry.
There are a number of reasons cited for the great move westward - obviously the varied terrain and dependable sunshine of southern California were key - but one of the driving factors was the desire of independent filmmakers to flee the MPCC and make movies on their own. A movie made in Hollywood wouldn't necessarily make its way to the attention of the patent holders back east.
Eventually (as you can read about in this NY Times article) the government stepped in and allowed for fair competition in the industry. The studio system as we came to know it in the first half of the 20th century, as well as many of our modern studios (Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers) were thus born on the west coast. A more detailed history can be found here.
As covered in Tim Wu's The Master Switch, perhaps the biggest player in the shift to LA specifically was Adolph Zukor, a Hungarian Jewish tailor turned successful NYC theater producer. After premiering the French import "Queen Elizabeth" in 1912--likely the first feature ever screened in North America--he became convinced that dedicated venues showing films running as long as a full-length stage play could be more profitable than the vaudeville-hall-friendly shorts that Edison's trust preferred. When Edison refused to grant Zukor permission to make his own features, he headed west and started Paramount. It wasn't the first movie studio in California, but it was the one that proved feature films were a viable business model. Just three years later, more movies were being made in LA than NYC.
I've heard Detroit was also a large film hub. Any truth to this at all?
Can I suggest the BBCs 'Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood' which is a great 3 part documentary that explains just the above. All the episodes are on YouTube - here's Episode 1.