Darryl F. Zanuck, Jack Warner, Rin Tin Tin, and Lee Duncan, 1924
Posted on 03/19/2026 10:22:48 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Hollywood, the most sublime dream factory ever known to humanity, has died. Official reports don’t include an exact time of death, but the end came after years on life support, sustained by a legion of CGI-enhanced superheroes.
Once rollicking and reckless, full of glamour, danger, and suspense, Hollywood spent two decades withering into a cosmetically altered, politically correct corpse. Its one surviving older relative, opera, could not be reached for comment. Its only child, television, and two grandchildren, video gaming and little TikTok, were distracted by family quarrels, and did not attend the funeral.
Hollywood was born in late August 1909, when the Selig Polyscope Company moved from Chicago to Edendale, the Los Angeles neighborhood now called Echo Park. William Selig’s movie production company was the first to make Southern California its permanent home. Selig made newsreels and Westerns, along with the first version of the Wizard of Oz. Cinematic cowboy Tom Mix and funnymen Harold Lloyd and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle all got their start with Selig.
Selig was followed by Mack Sennett, whose Keystone Cops delighted America. Sennett once told a reporter that he understood “comic motion,” and then pushed the reporter into a swimming pool. “That is comic motion,” he guffawed. In the 1910s all the action was at Keystone Studios. Every week Sennett made a couple of two-reelers, each about 15 minutes long. The hijinks were constant as Sennett’s clownish cops knocked over everything in sight, frantically twirling their nightsticks. The pie in the face was perfected, and Sennett’s studio birthed a comic genius, Charlie Chaplin, whose Tramp soon became the face of cinema across the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at tabletmag.com ...
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Darryl F. Zanuck, Jack Warner, Rin Tin Tin, and Lee Duncan, 1924
Love those outfits. And Rin Tin Tin knew who was boss.
Yo Rinny!!
Real actors are studying in the IK not in the US.
A person can, with a couple of friends, create a movie in the basement now with AI and the right software.
So yeah, it’s dead, Jim.
What month was this picture taken?
Assuming you meant UK?
Good article. Thanks for posting.
That's hilarious. Sounds like a line from one of the movies they would make.
Good point. These were people who lived in the real world. The director of King Kong was a bomber pilot in WWI. Kids today can’t make decent movies because all their experience is ordering soy lattes at starbucks.
So true. Sad that the past few years the movies were unimpressive and most people never even heard of the top Oscar nominations. Hollywood is dead, movies will continue in other forms produced for Netflix or Amazon Prime or Paramount plus.
One of my relatives was Gaston Glass and Hollywood was the bees knees
Hey, we have AI to make movies now and don’t need no steeekin,overpriced has been celebs to make them.
In the past year or two, it really as become evident how far Hollywood has fallen. The once mighty studios are bought and sold by streaming giants and VC companies like cheap whores. Even A-list actors are taking any cheap commercial or embarrassing reboot acting gig that they can get to pay the bills. Poor Harrison Ford is 80 years old swinging from a vine in the 20th Indiana Jones sequel about to break a hip to pay his mortgage. Now they will be selling their likeness to some 30 year old VC billionaire nepobaby with a studio holding company so he can put them in embarrassing reboots for decades to come so that they won’t even know peace in death.
A heck of a story. It should have been titled something like “The History of Hollywood Movies” because it covers so much more than the recent alleged downfall.
The article begins with the beginning of movies and goes from there to the present with numerous titles, actors, directors, producers mentioned.
A long article.
Yes, it's hard to miss all the A-listers now making commercials - Matthew McConaughey, Scarlett Johansson, you name 'em. I think they are terrified of AI.
I enjoyed reading this far more than I expected. Definitely worth my time. They say “all good things come to an end” and, sadly, that is true of Hollywood. It was swell while it lasted. No more “stars” - just one-trick ponies capturing a brief moment in tine to rant and rave about their latest political obsession at a farcical awards ceremony. Just as sad and pathetic as Norma Desmond saying she’s ready for her close-up.
A-Listers used to go to Japan to make commercials.
Or Europe. I saw George Clooney all over Italian TV hawking Nespresso coffee makers long before I saw him doing that in the US.
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