Eric Jaffe writes of an article appearing in the January issue of the Journal of Urban History in which the forgotten story of a time when Hollywood's jealous co-star tried to claim her throne is re-told.
Apparently there's a good reason why Hollywood is the only neighborhood in Los Angeles with official boundaries. As the story goes, Hollywood's rival was Culver City, a neighboring community with an inferiority complex, that claimed more than 30 percent of motion pictures credited to Hollywood were, in fact, produced in Culver City.
The climax of the rivalry came on June 6, 1937 when Culver City's Chamber of Commerce passed a vote to officially change the city's name to Hollywood and prepared a petition for voters.
"Ultimately the city of Los Angeles stepped in to settle the contest once and for all. On September 20, the city passed an ordinance establishing the legal boundaries for Hollywood...[and] in October, representatives from both Hollywood and Culver City took part in a reconciliation ceremony - arriving at Grauman's Chinese in a "gilded coach drawn by four white horses," Stephanie Frank, the article's author, reports.
Read the full story: The Municipal Feud That Made Hollywood
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