“When you get stranded out there in the West I will send you your railroad fare — as usual.”
In 1913 William DeMille wrote disapprovingly to his younger brother, Cecil, who had set out west on the train from New York to begin filming on “The Squaw Man,” which would declare itself the first full-length feature film shot in Los Angeles (and which celebrated its centennial last summer at the Hollywood Heritage Museum's Lasky-DeMille barn). “I cannot understand how you are willing to identify yourself with a cheap form of amusement, and which no one will ever allude to as art,” the elder deMille wrote, signing his letter, “With love (which is akin to pity).”
But when Cecil DeMille set out by train from the East Coast with his crew, the original destination had been Flagstaff, Arizona.
So how did Hollywood end up in...Hollywood?
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