During the 1910’s many filmmakers where sued out of business because of Thomas Edison’s motion picture patents so to avoid his patents many filmmakers fled to the west coast and set up near Los Angeles, it was also cheap and easy to set up there and the weather was ideal a large amount of the time, so it was better for filming. During the 1910’s many major motion picture companies nowadays set up in Hollywood such as MGM, Paramount and FOX. During the second world war the European film industry was devastated which let the Hollywood film industry replace the Italian and French firms as the most popular in the world. During the 1910’s as Hollywood started to get off its feet many of the biggest and most notable studios in the whole world where formed such as William Fox who founded his Box Office Attractions Company in 1915 which is the forerunner to 20th century Fox, Metro pictures (the forerunner to MGM) was also founded in the same year. And Paramount was founded a bit earlier in 1912. Warner Brothers wasn’t founded in the 1910’s but only began to make films after the first world war in 1918. Florence Lawrence was the first movie star, she was a Canadian American stage performer and film actress who was known originally as one of the Biograph girls as prior to the 1910’s film companies refused to credit the actors, she set the stage for what stardom would look like with her rise to fame, her time at the top and then her downward spiral and eventual death from rat poison.
