Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood (TV Mini Series) The Birth of Hollywood: 1907-1920 (2010) User Reviews

Immigrants Strike It Rich With The New Movie Industry

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 24 November 2010]

This is the birth of Hollywood and covers the years 1907 to 1920 and mainly discusses the early "moguls" and screen "stars."

The people who first made in big in the movie industry were generally immigrants, Jews from Russia, Poland and other Eastern European countries. They had come to America for a better life, settled into a profession and then discovered the wonders of Nickelodeons (a nickel to see short films). They were smart enough and lucky enough to gamble it all that this new industry (movies) would succeed and makes lot of money for them....which, of course, it did. It turned out to be a great investment for these folks!

Men like Adolph Zukor, Carl Laemmle, William Fox (Fuchs), the Warner brothers, William Selig, Cecille B. DeMille and Louis B. Mayer were among those and others who really got the business up-and-moving to big-time proportions. Some of their relatives speak in this TCM documentary, and tell what their grandparents were like.

This second episode of the 7-part series mentions a lot of names, including a bunch of famous actors and/or directors like Charlie Chaplin, Max Sennett, Mabel Normand, Fatty Arbuckle, Bronco Billy Anderson, William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Thomas Ince, Lois Weber, Frances Marion and a bunch more including a fascinating look at D.W. Griffith's "Birth Of A Nation."

All in all: good stuff!

Decent But Not Enough Information is Given

[Michael_Elliott · 11 November 2010]

Moguls & Movie Stars: The Birth of Hollywood (2010)

*** (out of 4)

The second entry in TCM's "A History of Hollywood" series takes a look at the big studio system as features came into play with the likes of Cecil B. DeMille and THE SQUAW MAN and movie stars like Charles Chaplin and Mary Pickford began to make large sums of money. As with the previous episode, I think there's just way too much footage thrown into such a short running time that it's nearly impossible to get a real view of this era. The film covers nearly thirteen-years worth of productions and trying to push this into 55-minutes was certainly a big challenge. I'm sure those unfamiliar with these early days are going to enjoy the stories and film clips but I think some people are going to know more than what's on display here and they'll probably know even more that isn't discussed here. We get brief talk about animation, Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle, Mack Sennett and of course THE BIRTH OF A NATION, which ended up changing everything. We briefly hear about Hollywood's need to have political groups in their back pocket and we learn how some filmmakers were willing to push the boundaries with nudity and more exploitation type matters. Again, for those unfamiliar with this portion of Hollywood then I'm sure they're going to learn quite a bit and I'm sure they'll get plenty of great clips that they'll want to check out. I just think as a whole the series doesn't have enough scope and especially when you have so many documentaries out there including Hollywood plus countless other works that take a fuller look at several of the people discussed here.