Synopsis

When the famed Hollywood sign was built into the hills of Los Angeles in 1923, it in part served as a gravestone: it marked the death of Hollywood’s first and only competition. The deceased was Jacksonville, Florida, a turn-of-the-century film town that once drew industry elite and wide-eyed hucksters like a cinematic Gold Rush. When the city finally imploded from a combination of greed, racial conflict and moral upheaval, the West Coast raised its nine iconic letters and toasted its new and future monopoly.

Jacksonville’s silent film era is little known to academics and film buffs alike, but THE FIRST HOLLYWOOD uncovers this fascinating piece of American film history in great detail. The story begins with the Great Fire of 1901, which razed the city completely. The charred landscape was left to a diverse group of architects who imported different pieces of America — New England’s Colonial Revival, Savannah’s Plantation-style — and inadvertently transformed the city into a studio backlot. Shortly thereafter, industry heavyweights from New York began moving south to avoid the brutal winters. Major Hollywood studios like Metro Pictures (later MGM), Fox and Technicolor weren’t far behind. Two decades of unprecedented growth followed; national grosses exceeded $735 million a year, the equivalent of $13 billion today. But the industry collapsed from financial strain, racial clashes and world war. Decaying film studios and weathered marquees are the only landmarks left behind, but THE FIRST HOLLYWOOD uses first-person accounts, filmmaker autobiographies and city archives to tell this previously untold story.