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PART 1: Geography and tourism
Hollywood, also called Tinseltown, (tinsel meaning a sparkly Christmas garland) is a district within the city of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A, whose name is synonymous with the American film industry. Since the early 1900s, moviemaking pioneers found in southern California an ideal mix of mild climate, sunshine, varied landscape, and a cheap workforce. Since then, the image of Hollywood as the fabricator of tinseled dreams has been engraved worldwide.
The most visible symbol of the district is the white-lettered Hollywood sign which is located on the hills and overlooks the entire area. First built in 1923, the sign originally said “Hollywoodland” but the sign fell into disrepair, and the “land” section was removed in the 1940s when the sign was repaired.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a street which comprises more than 2,690 five-pointed stars embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
The stars are permanent public monuments to achievement in the entertainment industry, bearing the names of a mix of singers and musicians like Michael Jackson, actors like Marylin Monroe, directors like Steven Spielberg, producers, and even fictional characters like Mickey Mouse, probably the most universally recognized icon of the 20th century.

PART 2: The Origins of Hollywood

In 1908 one of the first movies, The Count of Monte Cristo, was completed in Hollywood. Hollywood had become the centre of the American film industry by 1915 as more independent filmmakers relocated there from the East Coast. Cinema went from silent films like Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin to the talking pictures, also called “talkies”, in the late 1920s. This “Golden Age of Hollywood Cinema” started with the release of the first long talkie film The Jazz Singer in 1927.
Jewish immigrants such as D.W. Griffith, Samuel Goldwyn, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Louis B. Mayer, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Harry Cohn became great film producers in Hollywood and the lords of the biggest film studios, called the big Six, —Twentieth Century-Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, and now Disney Studios.
All film studios continued to develop even during the Great Depression, a big economic crisis from 1929 to 1939. More and more people were looking for entertainment on big screens, and the adventures of their favorite film stars, especially the very first child star: Shirley Temple.
After World War II, film studios began to move outside Hollywood because they were expensive, and the practice of filming “on location” developed. In 1949, the Golden Age of Hollywood was over and the post-WW2 consumers and the rise of Television forced Hollywood to reinvent itself.

PART 3: Famous Hollywood Movies
Hollywood is considered to be the oldest film industry. It is also the birthplace of various genres of cinema—among them comedy, drama, action, musical, romance, horror, science fiction, and the war epic—and has set the example for other national film industries.
A very successful movie is called a “blockbuster”. The movie Gone with the Wind—first released in 1939— set in the American South in the context of the American Civil War, is generally considered to be the most successful film of all times. Guinness World Records in 2014 estimated its global revenue at $3.4 billion. Guinness World records had Avatar, released in 2009 in second place with $3 billion, immediately followed by Titanic, released in 1997.
During the 20th century several trends emerged. During the silent era, films with about war were the most popular with audiences. With the advent of sound in 1927, the musical became the most popular type of film with audiences.
Throughout the 1950s began a trend of very expensive historical dramas set during Ancient Rome or biblical times such as Spartacus for example.
Then came a strong interest in the superhero genre, with many blockbusters in the Marvel comic books universe. The 1980s have been marked by very successful sagas such as Star Wars directed by George Lucas or Indiana Jones by Steven Spielberg.

PART 4 : The Dream Factory

The media business, with filmmaking as its heart, generates tens of billions of dollars into the Los Angeles economy per year and directly employs several hundred thousand people. Hollywood produces about half of all the films shot in the United States.
Hollywood is not only a town and an industry but also a creator of dreams and fantasies that have tremendous cultural impact. The “dream factory”, the other name for Hollywood, is among the most global of industries, with huge overseas markets and an impact on people in practically every corner of the globe. For decades movies made in Hollywood dominated the world's screens.
As we sit in the darkened theater, watching movies, we may easily enter into a dreamlike state. We feel a sense of power and identification with the heroes and heroines, who are beautiful people showing the extremes of wealth and glamour, of violence and action. The movies’ fictional plots allow emotionally satisfying resolutions and make us happy.
The Academy Award ceremony of the Oscars broadcast from Los Angeles is said to have a TV audience exceeding one billion people each year. The industry also attracts many tourists into southern California for a visit of one of the famous studios like Universal Studios or Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio Tour.

PART 5 : Hollywood’s Star System

Many stars live in Hollywood neighboring communities such as Beverly Hills and Bel Air. One of the first stars of Hollywood was Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was already a pretty big star by the start of the 1920s. Among his most famous movies were Modern Times in 1936 and The Great Dictator in 1940.
Hollywood’s star system was the method of creating, promoting and exploiting stars in Hollywood films. Movie studios would select promising young actors, glamorise them and create public characters for them, often inventing new names or new backgrounds.
These actors were repeatedly given leading roles, which inspired a massive fan base that perpetuated the system. If an actor was introduced to the “star system”, it literally changed his/ her career. Examples are actors like Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant.
Women were expected to behave like ladies, and were never to leave the house without makeup and stylish clothes. Men were expected to be seen in public as gentlemen. Morality clauses were a common part of actors' studio contracts.
The restrictive aspect of the star system, manipulating images and reality, finally began to fail. By 1970 the star system which started in the 1920s, had disappeared.
Today the phenomenon of stardom has remained essential to Hollywood’s attractiveness but actors are more free to choose their own careers.