March 10, 1910: D.W. Griffith launches the Hollywood film industry with In Old California, the first film to be made in the new municipality. March 10, 1922: Hollywood hires former postmaster general Will H. Hays to oversee “moral and artistic…

March 2, 1906: Biograph Studios wins appeal of kinetoscope inventor Edison’s patent claims, preventing (temporarily) a potential monopoly on the making of movies. March 5, 1919: Pioneering black producer/director Oscar Micheaux releases his first film, The Homesteader. March 5, 1922:…

February 18, 1913: The Edison Film Co. introduces its synchronized film-phonograph Kinetoscope process for showing “sound films” in New York. February 14, 1927: Director Alfred Hitchcock first tries his hand at suspense with The Lodger, based on the Jack the…

February 8, 1915: D.W. Griffith’s Civil War epic, The Birth of a Nation, opens. At a White House screening, President Woodrow Wilson calls it “like writing history with lightning.” February 8, 1926: The New York Sun is the first to…

February 2, 1922: Hollywood has a real whodunit on its hands when Paramount Pictures director William Desmond Taylor is found slain. February 5, 1927: Buster Keaton‘s comedic masterwork The General, based on a true Civil War incident, is released. February…

January 27, 1918: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ jungle lord debuts on screen in Tarzan of the Apes, starring former Arkansas peace officer Elmo Lincoln. January 26, 1936: Filmmakers in Hollywood organize the Screen Directors Guild and name King Vidor as their…

January 19, 1907: An Exciting Honeymoon and The Life of a Cowboy are the first films to be reviewed in the entertainment trade magazine Variety. January 18, 1923: Drug addiction claims leading man Wallace Reid, whose morphine dependency followed an…

January 10, 1914: With Mack Sennett‘s instruction to Charlie Chaplin to “get into a comedy make-up,” the legendary “Little Tramp” is born. January 10, 1923: The “Hollywoodland” sign is dedicated. It was built on the Hollywood Hills to promote sales…

January 9, 1931: Diminutive actor Edward G. Robinson creates a chilling persona in ruthless gangster “Rico” Bandello in Warner Bros.’ Little Caesar. January 4, 1954: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the right of film distributors to confine first-run engagements to…