Waukesha Brothers invent Hollywood

If Rome is an eternal thought in the mind of God, then Hollywood was an eternal thought in the minds of Harry and Roy Aitken. After a very successful career as film distributors, these two Waukesha natives moved to Hollywood to set up shop in a big, new way. At first, everything went well. Through their company, Mutual Films, they backed the first ever feature length American film, D W Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and made a fortune - the film grossed over 10 million dollars in 1914, a time when most movie tickets were 25 cents. Money in hand, they created the first mega studio, Triangle Films. They also invented the Hollywood studio system, a work flow and system of making and releasing films that became the blueprint for Hollywood's golden age. Triangle lived and died with the release of what is still considered the "Mother of all Blockbusters" - Intolerance. The 1916 film was an epic gamble - it was very long, had an unusual story structure and, at the time, was the most expensive movie ever made. The finished film was a visionary masterpiece and a total financial disaster. It's failure forced the brothers into bankruptcy. The first item on the block was their studio. Sam Goldwyn bought the entire operation for 10 cents on the dollar. It would soon become Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Harry Aitken quietly moved back to Waukesha and remained there the rest of his life. He died in 1956, Roy passed away twenty years later. It's only fitting that the iconography, decor and architecture of today's revitalized downtown Hollywood are entirely borrowed from Intolerance.
Interestingly, there was another family from Wisconsin doing business in Hollywood, and on an equally large scale. In 1915, Carl Laemmle from Oshkosh opened the largest production facility in the world - Universal Studios - a business that is still in operation .