Michele StuevenHollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital will be the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ first permanent exhibition, on view starting on Sunday, May 19. Presented in English and Spanish, it tells the origin story of filmmaking in early 20th-century Los Angeles, spotlighting the impact of the predominantly Jewish filmmakers whose establishment of the American film studio system transformed Los Angeles into a global epicenter of cinema.
According to the Academy Museum, the exhibition’s opening day will feature two public programs, a Book Signing with Neal Gabler of An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood in the Ted Mann Theater Lobby, as well as a Curator Conversation, Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital with Neal Gabler in conversation with Dara Jaffe, moderated by Academy Museum President Jacqueline Stewart in the Ted Mann Theater.
Located in the museum’s LAIKA Gallery, Hollywoodland is an immersive exhibition chronicling the studio system’s evolution during the early 20th century. It details how the American movie industry — built predominately by Jewish immigrants — transformed Los Angeles into the mythological concept of “Hollywood” that prevails today, as well as the complex legacy that the studio system leaves behind.
Still from Ben Hur (1925) Courtesy Margaret
Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences
The exhibition consists of three distinct parts:
Studio Origins is an exploration of the founding of Hollywood’s original eight major film studios (often referred to as “the majors”) and their respective studio heads.
Los Angeles: From Film Frontier to Industry Town, 1902–1929 is an immersive projection experience where visitors trace the evolving landscape of Los Angeles alongside the advancement of the movie industry. Consisting of an animated tabletop map of Los Angeles and a choreographed projection screen, this section of the exhibition features a timeline structured around a series of chronologically revealed locations relevant to the city’s early film industry, such as filming locations, studio locations and cultural landmarks. It also will address lesser-known stories of independent producers active in early 1900s Los Angeles.
From the Shtetl to the Studio: The Jewish Story of Hollywood is a short-form documentary, narrated by TCM host and author Ben Mankiewicz that illustrates the experiences of the Jewish immigrants and first-generation Jewish Americans who were primarily responsible for building the Hollywood studio system. The exhibition is designed for visitors to enter and exit through the same door so that they can experience these three sections in any order.
United Artists Theatre, Los Angeles, California, 1929, during the run of Coquette, 1929. Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Universal City. Entrance to the “City of Wonders.” ca. 1915 copy.
Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences
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