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12 - The Southland on screen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2010

Kevin R. McNamara
Affiliation:
University of Houston-Clear Lake
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Summary

Surely no single city has such a close relationship with motion pictures as Los Angeles, which has appeared on screen in myriad guises for over a century since a film crew employed by Thomas Edison's Edison Manufacturing Company arrived in December 1897. South Spring Street, Los Angeles, California (1898), a twenty-five-second “actuality” film shot by Frederick Blechynden, captured a sense of Los Angeles as a metropolis-in-the-making by presenting a view of pedestrian and horse-drawn traffic on that busy downtown commercial thoroughfare. Painters and photographers had long flocked to Southern California for its climate, sunlight, Mediterranean landscapes, and the romantic appeal of its Spanish and Mexican heritage. D. W. Griffith first captured these ingredients on celluloid in Ramona (1910), a fifteen-minute adaptation of Helen Hunt Jackson's novel. Offering a utopian image of the region as a combination of flower-filled garden and expansive wilderness waiting to be exploited, Ramona assisted the civic boosters in marketing Los Angeles as an ideal place in which to live and work. Ramona was remade in 1916, 1928, and 1936, while another romantic Mexican legend, that of Zorro, was adapted for the screen in 1920, 1925, 1937, 1946, and 1949.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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  • The Southland on screen
  • Edited by Kevin R. McNamara, University of Houston-Clear Lake
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles
  • Online publication: 28 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521514705.013
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  • The Southland on screen
  • Edited by Kevin R. McNamara, University of Houston-Clear Lake
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles
  • Online publication: 28 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521514705.013
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Southland on screen
  • Edited by Kevin R. McNamara, University of Houston-Clear Lake
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles
  • Online publication: 28 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521514705.013
Available formats
×