Historical Facts about Hollywood

In 1906, a streetcar line was constructed in the Hollywood district down the middle of "Sandy Road". This lane was known as the "Rose City Line". The establishment of the streetcar route facilitated the growth of the suburb of Hollywood.

In 1923, Harry Chandler, a real estate agent and investor built the famous Hollywood Sign to advertise the area "Hollywoodland". The total expense for this advertisement was $21,000. Initially, it was built to last only for eighteen months. However, as of today, the Hollywood Sign has lasted for eighty years.

In 1939, four thousand twenty-watt bulbs were put to illuminate the signboard and a caretaker was appointed to maintain the same. The part of land, which included the "Hollywood" sign, was sold to the city of LA.

In 1949, the alphabets "L, A, N & D" were removed. The board has read "HOLLYWOOD" ever since 1949.

The alphabets of the signboard began to fall down. To restore the same, in 1978 an auction of the alphabets was held by Hugh Hefner, founder of the magazine "Playboy". This auction was held for a period of three months. Alice Cooper, American rock singer, sponsored the alphabet "O". Gene Autry and Paul Williams sponsored the alphabets "L" and "W" respectively.

In 1995, a trust known as "Hollywood Sign Trust" was set up to maintain the Hollywood sign.

Read more at Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/interesting-facts-about-hollywood.html

Hollywood's Top 10 Highest Paid Women of 2012

O-MG!

Oprah Winfrey has full ownage of Forbes' list of Hollywood's highest-paid women. Her income from May 2011 and May 2012 is more than twice the amount of the second lady in line, Britney Spears. Forbes says this could be Oprah's last year topping the list, now that her show is gone and not bringing in big bucks, but we'll see.
Other than Oprah, Ellen, Gisele and Judge Judy — who has already amazed us with her TV salary — the bulk of the list is made up of pop music stars. So read this list, then go write a hit song and hope it gets tons of radio play!

Lady Gaga's Interview Special With Oprah Lady Gaga's Interview Special With Oprah Lady Gaga's Interview Special With Oprah

Photo Credit: Photo via OWN

Here's Forbes' list of the highest paid ladies in entertainment:
1. Oprah Winfrey — $165 million
2. Britney Spears — $58 million
3. Taylor Swift — $57 million
4. Ellen DeGeneres — $53 million
5. Rihanna — $53 million
6. Lady Gaga — $52 million
7. Jennifer Lopez — $52 million
8. Gisele Bundchen — $45 million
9. Katy Perry — $45 million
10. Judge Judy Sheindlin — $45 million
Read the story for details on how they arrived at these numbers.

Source: Forbes

7 fun facts about the HOLLYWOOD sign

The iconic Hollywood sign has loomed over the epicenter of American movie making since 1923, and its 87 year history includes plenty of interesting tidbits.

1. The sign read HOLLYWOODLAND from 1923 to 1949.
2. Each letter originally stood 50 feet (15 m) and 30 feet (9.1 m) wide high, but renovations in 1978 resized the letters to 45 feet (14 m) tall and anywhere from 31 to 39 feet (9.4 to 12 m) wide.
3. In 1932, Broadway actress Peg Entwistle committed suicide by jumping off the letter “H.”
4. Alice Cooper led the 1978 donation drive to remodel the famous sign. The shock rocker contributed $27,000 of his own money to the project, and bought an “O” in memory of Groucho Marx.
5. Hugh Hefner donated to the restoration of the “Y” with a $27,777 contribution.
6. In the 1940s, the sign’s official caretaker, Albert Kothe, destroyed the “H” after crashing into it while driving drunk.
7. In January 1976, following the passage of a state law decriminalizing marijuana, vandals altered the sign to read ” HOLLYWeeD.”

Steven Soderbergh: Hollywood rejected Liberace film for being 'too gay'

Hollywood studios refused to finance Steven Soderbergh's forthcoming HBO biopic of the flamboyant entertainer Liberace because it was "too gay", the Oscar-winning film-maker has revealed.
Despite the presence of two fellow Academy Award-winners, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, in the leading roles, executives repeatedly passed on putting up the movie's relatively meagre $5m budget. Titled Behind the Candelabra, Soderbergh's film centres on the relationship between Liberace and his younger long-term lover Scott Thorson, who met when the latter was just 17. The film will screen on the pay-TV channel HBO in the US following Hollywood's lack of interest.
"Nobody would make it. We went to everybody in town," Soderbergh told the Wrap. "We needed $5m. Nobody would do it. They said it was too gay. Everybody. This was after Brokeback Mountain, by the way. Which is not as funny as this movie. I was stunned. It made no sense to any of us."
The Ocean's Eleven director denied being disappointed by the lack of a theatrical release for his film, which is based on Thorson's book Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace. "[HBO are] great and they're really good at what they do, and ultimately I think more people will see it, and that's all you care about," Soderbergh said. "Studios were going: 'We don't know how to sell it.' They were scared." The film-maker said reaction from executives to Behind the Candelabra differed markedly to that received by his low-budget, sex-themed drama The Girlfriend Experience, which successfully achieved a theatrical release despite the presence of porn star Sasha Grey in the lead.
Soderbergh's film, which will screen in the spring, is intended to be his final movie before entering self-imposed retirement. It stars Douglas as Liberace, who spent more than 50 years performing and lived a highly colourful life prior to his death in 1987 from an Aids-related illness. Damon plays Thorson, who famously sued his former lover for $113m in palimony in 1982, claiming he had been the pianist and singer's companion for five years.
Soderbergh also has the thriller Side Effects – starring Channing Tatum, Rooney Mara and Jude Law – due for release in US cinemas in February (March in the UK).

Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jan/07/steven-soderbergh-liberace-film

The Hollywood America Deserves

One of the rather frequent responses I get when posting the stories of people like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, or Robert Smalls is that their story deserves to be a movie. A biopic is seen by a lot of us as the ultimate testimonial to a person's life. Moreover, movies have the unique power to reach and influence millions of people. Finally, movies offer the possibility of all the imagery and input we hold when thinking of, say, Harriet Tubman to be made manifest before the world. I think this impulse is basically correct. It is especially correct given that Hollywood doesn't just ignore slavery and the Civil War but turns out revisionist dreck like Gods and Generals.
At the same time I think it's important to not talk as though it were an entity separate from the politics, economics, and history of America. The person who would bankroll a Harriet Tubman biopic would likely be someone who was particularly touched by her story. Such a person would not have to be black, but I don't know how you separate the paucity of black people with the power to green-light from the paucity of good films concerning black people in American history.
Moreover, movie-making is risky and expensive. Any discussion of the lack of a Harriet Tubman biopic should begin with the shameful fact that median white wealth in this country stands at $110,000 and median black wealth stands at around $5,000. It would be nice to think that this gap reflected choices cultural and otherwise, instead of the fact that for most this country's history its governing policy was to produce failure in black communities, and most of its citizens supported such policies. It would be nice if Hollywood were more moral and forward-thinking than its consumer base. But I would not wait around for such a day.
What I would do is interrogate the basic premise that holds that black lives (or any heroic life) is not truly legend unless a financier decides it should be. Movies are an art form—one that I very much enjoy—but they are one of many. Those of us who are unhappy with Hollywood's presentation of black life should not restrict themselves to Hollywood. What was the last play we saw by a black writer? What was the last book by a black writer we read? What did we give for Christmas, Kwanzaa or Hanukkah? When was the last time we went to see an exhibit by a black artist?
Finally, this is a particular moment in Hollywood—one wherein glorious righteous violence and what Alyssa Rosenberg calls "transgressive badassery" reigns supreme. I do wish Hollywood would do other kinds of movies. But a constant view of slavery through lens of badassery somehow feels like more of the same.


Source:http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/the-hollywood-america-deserves/266835/

Academy Members Sound Off On Oscar Voting Issues (Analysis)

As Academy members select the nominees for the 85th Oscars -- phase one voting began Dec. 17 and will close Jan. 4 -- they are feeling the impact of two major changes to the voting process that were implemented by the board of governors: Nomination ballots can be cast online, but the deadline to submit them has been moved up nine days. (That number was 10 days, but the Academy extended the voting deadline by 24 hours on Dec. 31.)

These might not sound like earth-shattering developments, but they have significantly altered the balloting experience of the Academy's roughly 5,700 voting members and also might impact the sorts of nominees those members select. The Hollywood Reporter first reported on this situation Dec. 27 after reaching out to a considerable number of voters and spoke a whole new crop for this follow-up story -- virtually none of whom had discussed e-voting publicly.
All members who opted to forsake a paper ballot in favor of an e-vote -- a "great majority," according to an Academy spokesperson -- were asked to create a special password for the voting site that met highly specific criteria. When they went to log in to the site, though, many said their passwords were rejected, even though they made sure to enter them correctly. After three tries, they say, the site locked them out, and they were forced to call a helpline set up by the Academy to assist people experiencing problems. Some then were given another password but told they had to wait 24 hours before attempting to log in again; others were told they had to wait to receive a new password via snail mail.
"We have to balance the opposing needs of convenience and security," an Academy spokesperson told THR, adding that most issues stemmed from members "forgetting or misusing passwords" and that intricate passwords are a necessary evil of e-voting.
Many interpreted that as a hint that the user issues were not the result of a faulty website but rather with members who were unable to remember or properly type their passwords -- something that was plausible, since average age of Academy members hovers around 60. If this is the case, and older voters participate less in this year's voting than young voters, it probably would weaken the strength of such traditional Oscar bait as Les Miserables and Lincoln and help edgier, younger-skewing contenders such as Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom or Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master.
However, documentary branch member Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) wants to dispel any notion that it's just older people without tech-savvy who are experiencing issues with the website. "There's even some young farts like myself that are having problems," the 42-year-old filmmaker says. "It's not like it's the first time I've ever logged on to a computer."
When Spurlock called the Academy helpline after finding that he was unable to log in, he recalls: “[The operator] says to me, ‘Well, you’re obviously entering the wrong password.’ I said: ‘I’m putting in the right password. I know what I filled out.' When he asked whether a new password could be e-mailed to him, he says the operator told him it could only be sent via U.S. mail. Concerned that it wouldn’t arrive in time, he asked to be FedEx-ed a paper ballot, but he received only one of the two forms that he is entitled to fill out as a member of the documentary branch -- not the best picture ballot. “I still haven’t gotten that,” he says.
Stories like that could be why many members opted not to use the e-voting system. For instance, when producers branch member Don Murphy (Transformers) was asked on Facebook whether he voted online, he replied: "No. Too much work.”
Of the many who have experienced problems with e-voting, "There will probably be a large percentage of people who will just say, 'Screw it,' and not even vote this year," one member speculates.
However, in a statement to THR -- provided just hours before the Academy extended its voting deadline -- Academy COO Ric Robertson urged calm: “The idea that electronic voting will depress participation is without basis. Nominations voting patterns remain consistent with those of previous years, and we have every reason to expect that this will be a great Oscar season.”
Others also are calling for more patience with the new system. "While there may be kinks that need to be worked out, the move to e-voting makes complete sense," posits producers branch member Celine Rattray (The Kids Are All Right). "Over time, it will streamline and speed up the process. It will also make it easier for voters to take part regardless of their location, therefore increasing participation. BAFTA adopted it in 2003, and it has become more efficient each year." Adds Rattray's branch colleague Robert Evans (Chinatown), "There are imperfections in every [system]."
As for the timetable change, the Academy said, when it was first announced in September, that it was part of "an effort to provide members and the public a longer period of time to see the nominated films" during phase two. Most voters that THR spoke with, however, seem to feel that this makes no sense -- even if they will not say so on the record for fear of offending the Academy -- because they are supposed to see the films before they are nominated, not after. In fact, most say, they would have benefited from a longer phase one, since they didn't even have enough time to see all the high-profile films they were supposed to see when they had 10 more days to do so.
“Boggles my mind how anyone can keep up with all the movies and early deadline,” Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films, wrote on Facebook.
But the change does have some defenders. "I think it actually helps to make better judgments," says directors branch member James Toback (Fingers), "because if you're seeing everything in a contracted period of time when you're forced into making these comparative value judgments, you're more likely to make them legitimately -- or as legitimately as possible."
The counter-argument is that the increased time crunch will disadvantage small gems and end-of-the-year releases that members might otherwise have had time to discover and almost certainly will result in more nominations for films from major studios that could afford to spend big money to help them get noticed during phase one. Toback grants that there is a "direct correlation between money and awareness. If it doesn't have money behind it, it's just not gonna be on anybody's map."
(In a related move that many found bizarre, the Academy, instead of banning studio-funded promotional events during phase one, when such an action might help to level the playing field, decided to leave them virtually unregulated, opting instead to ban them during phase two.)
Oren Moverman (The Messenger), who joined the Academy's writers branch this year, tells THR: “These changes have their own internal logic. I like them. Of course, like going from silent movies to sound, film to digital or theaters to VOD, the movie world is always initially uneasy with change, but these new things are all about efficiency, modernizing and marching to our own drum.”
He adds, "I am sure everyone will adapt."

Source:http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/academy-members-sound-oscar-voting-407111

Unsung Alpha Women of Hollywood

Our Alpha Woman theme this month puts a particular focus on women who are upstanding for what we consider "the right reasons". Now Hollywood is full of beautiful, talented people, but there are still some who raise the bar. And we're not discrediting the cut-throat nature of the industry; instead we're paying attention to the ones who work the hardest and often do not receive the sweeping applause. These stars go above and beyond the call of the camera and play an active part in society whether or not the script calls for it.

Olivia Munn

Take Olivia Munn for starters. There's a reason she's so convincing as Sloan on the hit HBO series The Newsroom. Munn graduated from Oklahoma University with a degree in journalism and a minor in Japanese, so that scene where she "goes rogue" and slays a translator with her own Japanese isn't a voiceover. I believe that's what they call "beauty and brains".
Beyond her studious past, Munn is a testament to hard work. Sure, Munn may have recently starred alongside big names like Channing Tatum in Magic Mike, but don't forget she got her break hosting Attack of the Show. Beyond that, she's acted as a correspondent for The Daily Show, written a bestseller, modeled for numerous magazines and continues to show her support for charities such as UNICEF, PETA and Stand Up to Cancer. All that, and she's still not ashamed to nerd out and dance with Ellen.
The bottom line — Munn has made it, to say the least, but she keeps her hands busy, gives back and doesn't take herself too seriously all the while. Any woman who can gain this much status without letting it get to her head is a worthy Alpha Woman in our eyes.
Keep on moving on to exhibit two.

Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts has forever lived up to her Pretty Woman roots, enticing audiences every few years with another wonderful lead in a romantic comedy. And let's not forget that Oscar she received for her powerful role in Erin Brockovich.
She's diverse.
Roberts doesn't have a closet of secrets or bad press. Instead, she's got a reputation for giving back. From her involvement with UNICEF and her visits to Haiti and India, Roberts has a global and willing perspective — something her friends in Hollywood should emulate more.

Adele

What about Adele? An Alpha Woman with an alpha voice, no doubt.
There's no denying her rich talent on the mic and the fact she's got an underdog story makes her all the more compelling. She's returned better and stronger than ever after her vocal chord surgery that very well could have cost her her career.
She's thankful for her newfound success and recognition, though she's said time and again in countless interviews that she doesn't feed off of the public eye, she just does her own thing and stays true to what she feels — which strangely makes us want her more.
And to top it off, she's a new mom. Sadly, a lot of press rained on the parade without remorse, taking the pregnancy as a launching pad for weight and body image critiques. It takes a strong woman to stand on stage alone and belt out songs with such power. It takes an even stronger woman to take the stage and shed the heartless remarks of critics. The way we see it, they've got no room to talk until they're holding eight Grammys, like Adele.
An Alpha Woman is confident in her own body and that fact, alone, makes her all the more beautiful.
And to look ahead, we have to focus on the next generation of Alpha Women in the making.

Dakota Fanning

Dakota Fanning burst into the public spectrum with her timeless part as Lucy "Diamond" Dawson in I Am Sam, alongside Sean Penn. At the time, her role seemed to elude to an old soul deep within the heart of Fanning. It was utterly captivating to see that much control in a 7-year-old girl, but as with many childhood stars, we wondered how long that discipline would last amidst her newfound success.
Fanning's a rarity. No rehab or drama.
Fast forward to 2012, and she's 18, studying at New York University and recently starred in a big movie saga you may have heard of — Twilight. Ring any bells?
She's singlehandedly proving the potential of the youth of Hollywood, and though it's a heavy burden, she hasn't slowed yet.
Munn, Roberts, Adele and Fanning are but a few shining examples of women who know they've got it together, and the fact they don't need to exploit it is incredibly attractive. From beauty to brains, healthy humility, composure and charity, there's still room for the Alpha Woman in Hollywood.