Tales of Hollywood Through Time

“Hooray for Hollywood,” the 1937 anthem by Johnny Mercer for the film Hollywood Hotel, says it all cinematically as dozens of star wannabes head for Hollywood in a full production booming vocal number, satirically referencing the illusionary desire to become famous actors:

♫ “Hooray for Hollywood, that screwy, bally hooey Hollywood, where any office boy or young mechanic, can be a panic, with just a good-looking pan … !” ♫

But that is just what happened. A little sun-drenched village in California in 1887 discovered “stardom” and surpasses, at least in lore, any other little village in the world.

Tales of Hollywood Through Time, with or without searchlights, captures a bit of that journey. Tales connects the past with the present via yellowed archival photos combined with the contemporary photography of homeboy Frank Muzzy.

It provides visual storytelling—the closest tool we have for time travel among orange groves and oil wells during the nurturing era of the art form of the twentieth century, the cinema.

“Hollywood” is a recognized global name of a clichéd dream factory, or the nightmare of a realized wish. Both sides of the flipped coin are beautifully packaged from the mountains to the sea in glorious technicolor and cinemascope.