How important was Paramount Pictures to the growth of Hollywood?

Hollywood simply began as a ranch owned by Harvey Henderson Wilcox and was named by his wife Daeida. She learnt the name from her neighbour, Ivan Weid who in turn had heard of the name from HJ Whitley. Hollywood was integrated into Los Angeles since they were in need of a water supply, and then Hollywood became a suburb of L.A. In 1923, a housing development was built in Beachwood Canyon above Hollywood. They called this “Hollywoodland”. In 1924, the Crescent Sign Company to create a huge sign on the hillside, then in 1949, the sign was renovated and Land was removed from the end of the word, it became the landmark that is known all over the world.

Paramount Pictures is the oldest and longest running film studio in Southern California, the home of Hollywood. From its origin which can be traced back to as early as 1914 when both Lasky and Famous Players began releasing through Paramount Pictures Corporation, organised earlier that year by W. W. Hodkinson who owned a Utah Theatre. Eventually, both of the other companies had merged with Paramount Pictures. Adolph Zukor (Founder of Famous Players) believed in movie stars, he decided to sign up multiple actors including Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Wallace Reid. Because of the actors that Zukor had signed, Paramount were able to begin block booking.
This meant that every time an exhibitor wanted a specific actor’s movie, they would have to purchase an entire year’s worth of current Paramount productions. Due to this move by Zukor, this whole process had pushed Paramount into the top during the 1920s and 1930s.

This was an example of the star system. The star system was a process of creating and promoting movie stars during the golden/classic age of Hollywood. Studios would find young actors and mould them into new beings, giving them new names and sometimes new backgrounds. The star system was more about the images of actors rather than their acting and possibly who they really were. Not only were their personas created, studio executives and agents would also work together to hide certain lifestyles and events that could somehow lead to a damaged reputation. Because of this, it was a regular occurrence for stars to have pre-arranged sham dates between single stars to produce publicity, this was often done in the case of homosexuals. Tabloids would take photos and capture the moments of the stars together to further generate the gossip and hype around them.
Zukor had made many other strategic moves including building a theatrical chain which contained just under 2,000 screens, he also became an investor in the radio and took a 50% interest in the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928. He managed to obtain Balaban & Katz; Barney Balaban became the president of Paramount and Sam Katz ran the Paramount-Publix theatre chain. Both of which are valuable assets to Paramount Pictures at the time.

This shows how people within Paramount had been planning ahead to push themselves in front of any possible competition from other studios such as Warner Bros. These strategic moves and the history of Paramount have definitely contributed towards Hollywood and golden ages in such a way that cannot be forgotten. From using the star system to generate more hype and further produce the images of stars and movies to block booking so that more movies became available for theatres to display. Block booking set aside Paramount from other competitors and made it stand above the rest.