Welcome to The Story of the Movies, a chronicle of Hollywood’s rich history, starting with the movies and events that shaped its creation and charting its development throughout the 20th century.
Edwin S. Porter sparks the public's hunger for narrative films with The Great Train Robbery (1903), and both Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith begin their movie careers
Learn about the lives and careers of the key figures in the history of Hollywood...
The emergence of the star system makes players like Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks household names. D. W. Griffith makes his controversial historical epic The Birth of a Nation.
Discover the histories of the studios responsible for delivering more than a century of Hollywood cinema...
1920s - 1990s
An In-depth history of all decades will follow soon
Trace the history of Hollywood, starting from as far back as 1878 to 1917. Further years will be added on a weekly/fortnightly basis to build a complete, authoritative chronology of Hollywood's emergence as the hub of global film production.