From: "La Reina, A History of Los Angeles" ('A Volume Originally Published to Commemorate the Fortieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Former Security Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles, February 11, 1889 - Written by Laurance L. Hill, Publicity Manager Security-First National Bank (Fourth Edition) copyright 1931) “Motion picture companies were not unknown in Los Angeles when Hollywood was discovered as the future cinema capital. As early as 1904 a film had been shot in old Chutes Park of Roy Knabenshue’s old dirigible. Colonel Selig had rented a boom-time mansion at Eighth and Olive early in 1908 and had there made “In the Sultan’s Power,” the first complete motion picture made in Los Angeles. In 1909 the New York Motion Picture Company sent on the old Bison Company which turned out an average of a “Western” every day and a half in Edendale. In January, 1910, came the Biograph Company with D. W. Griffith as director. With him and unknown to fame were Mack Sennett, Arthur Johnson, Owen Moore, Mary Pickford, Florence Lawrence, Marjorie Favor and Lee Dougherty. Mary Pickford had started the year before at $5.00 a day. In 1910, Essany, and then Kalem came to the Coast. “Lasky, with Cecil De Mille and Dustin Farnum as director and star respectively, ventured to Hollywood in 1913 and, like Nestor, rented a barn across from Stearn’s orange orchard and made the “Squaw Man.” Unlike Nestor, which had refused to buy five acres around their ban at $4,000 because someone in New Jersey had cautioned them to ‘beware of California real estate agents,’ Lasky purchased acreage around his stable and built a permanent studio. That property is now worth millions."