Hollywood

**Hollywood** (informally **Tinseltown**) and frequently referred to in the parks as **Hollywoodland** is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. The neighborhood is notable for its place as the home of the U.S. film industry, including several of its historic studios. It is the main setting of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Hollywood Land and Disney's Hollywood Studios.

## Description

Its name has come to be a metonym for the motion picture industry of the United States. Hollywood is also a highly ethnically diverse, densely populated, economically diverse neighborhood and retail business district.

### Features

#### Assorted

* **Back Alley Club**:
* **Backlot Stage 17**: An indoor filming stage at Hollywood's backlot which also sold premiere merchandise.
* **Earffel Tower**:
* **The Forum**: This was a concert-venue in Hollywood. In the 1990s, it hosted a one-night-only Aerosmith concern.
* **Hollywood Sign**:
* **Muppets Courtyard**:
* **South Seas Club**: The South Seas Club is a nightclub located in Hollywood. Its most memorable feature was its intricately designed, nautical-themed stage which had nightly entertainer performances.

#### Echo Lake

Echo Lake is a small, oval-shaped lake surrounded by a neighbourhood which has architecture in-line with the Hollywood's Golden Age. This area was also used to hold various sound-stages.

* **Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction**: Located on the lake itself, this ice-cream service was based out of a sculpture of, "Gertie" from the 1914 animated short-film, "Gertie the Dinosaur".
* **Hollywood and Vine**: Hollywood and Vine is a restaurant said to be, "Where the stars dine". Above the restaurant is the office of private-investigator, Eddie Valiant.
* **Hyperion Theater**: The Hyperion Theatre is a Hollywood Craze theatre which hosted live shows.
* **Indiana Jones Adventure Outpost**:
* **Indiana Jones Sound-stage**: This was a large, mostly outdoors sound-stage used to film *Indiana Jones* media, particularly involving stunt-actors. The outside of the stage may have had actual archaeological activity present.
* **Min & Bill’s Dockside Diner**: The Dockside Diner was based out of a steamboat docked on the lake called the *S.S. Down the Hatch*. It was seemingly run by dockside innkeepers Min Divot and Bill (fictional characters from the 1930 comedy film *Min and Bill*) who shipped cargo to and from various characters including Rick Blaine (Casablanca), Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane), George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life), Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind) and Max Bialystalk (The Producers).
* **Oasis Canteen**: Located near the sound-stage for the Indiana Jones film, this canteen was themed in-line with the movies.
* **Peevy's Polar Pipeline**: This was a dining-service run by the engineer A. "Peevy" Peabody where he also assisted his friend Cliff Secord, who was secretly the flying vigilante, "The Rocketeer". Atop the building for this dining-service was a billboard used by the Maroon Cartoons animation studio.
* **Star Wars sound-stage**: This was a large soundstage, seemingly used to film *Star Wars* media as its outside depicted the forest moon of Endor with a faux AT-AT while its other side has a shop called, "Tatooine Traders" modelled after the sand planet of Tatooine.

#### Hollywood Boulevard

* **Adrian and Edith's Head to Toe Costume Shop**:
* **Avalon Hollywood**:
* **Celebrity 5 & 10**:
* **The Chinese Theatre**: The Chinese Theatre (or Grauman's Chinese Theatre) is a large, historic and ornate movie palace located at the head of Hollywood Boulevard. The outside of the theatre has cement with handprints from various characters and celebrities. The inside of the theatre is known to have projectors connecting to the Toon populated regions of, "Toontown", namely Runnamuck Park. Historically the theatre was known for giving guided tours of various famous movies.
* **Classic Car Memorabilia**:
* **The Darkroom**:
* **El Capitan Theatre**: A playhouse-turned-movie theatre owned by the Walt Disney Company.
* **Hollywood Brown Derby**:
* **Oscar's Super Service**: Oscar's Super Service is a vintage gas-station on Hollywood Boulevard.
* **Studio Prop Co.**:
* **Studio Prop Shop**:
* **The Trolley Car Cafe**: Built in 1928 near the intersection with Sunset Boulevard, the Trolley Car Cafe is a large cafe, made from a base of the Pacific Electric Railway.

#### Sunset Boulevard

* **Carthay Circle Theatre**: This was a movie-theatre and shopping-service located on Sunset Boulevard, nearby the Theatre of the Stars' entrance.
	+ In real-life, this is located on San Vicente Boulevard and was demolished in 1969.
* **G-Force Records Studio**: G-Force Records is a record-label which was active during the golden age of Hollywood. In the 1990s they struck big with large name musical-artists suck as Aerosmith and a large assortment of state-of-the-art recording technology.
* **Hollywood Hills Amphitheater**: The Hollywood Hills Amphitheatre was a massive external stage located adjacent to Sunset Hills and the Hollywood Tower Hotel. It held nightly spectacular shows and had a stage which included a small mountainside stage with a faux river surrounding it.
* **The Hollywood Tower Hotel**: The Hollywood Tower Hotel was Hollywood's premiere hotel during the golden age of cinema. This was until the October 31 of 1939 when the hotel was struck by a bolt of paranormal lightning originating from the 5th Dimension. Five people died during the incident which demolished the hotel's elevator shafts and left it as a haunted locale, causing less business in that area of Sunset Boulevard.
* **Hyperion Theater**: The Hyperion Theatre is a theatre venue located at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard.
* **Rosie's All-American Cafe**: Rosie's All-American Cafe is a Americana café, seemingly named for the American wartime propaganda character of, "Rosie the Riveter". The cafe was decorated with WW2 paraphernalia, including, "Rosie’s Victory Garden" where the café grew vegetables, protected by a scarecrow made from a WW2 uniform and gas-mask.
* **Starring Rolls Cafe**:
* **Sunset Hills Estates**: Sunset Hills Estates was a piece of property at the head of Sunset Boulevard which was founded in 1928.
* **Sunset Ranch Market**:
* **Theatre of the Stars**: The Theatre of the Stars was an outdoors proscenium-arch theatre with a small thrust stage which held shows during the 1990s.

## History

### Background

*There is some discrepancy between the continuities of different versions of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. This section will generally treat the Disney California Adventure and Disney's Hollywood Studios versions as both canonical, with notes on discrepancies when applicable.*

#### Origins

Hollywood was a small community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It officially merged with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, and soon thereafter a prominent film industry began to emerge, eventually becoming the most recognizable film industry in the world. In 1917 (1929 in the closed-down Disney California Adventure version), the *Hollywood Tower Hotel* was constructed. In 1928, the grounds which the hotel were situated on was turned into, "Sunset Hills Estates", presumably holding the residencies of many other Hollywood big-names.

#### 1930s

Hollywood was central to a, "Golden Age" of filmmaking, particularly in the 1930s. Amidst the glitz and the glamour of the Hollywood elite, the Hollywood Tower Hotel was considered to be a star in its own right. The hotel's operations were also quite close with their next-door neighbours *G-Force Records* and the two often intertwined their business. Of the hotel's offerings were the, "Tip Top Club", a grandiose gentleman's club located on the hotel's 13th floor.

The Hollywood Tower Hotel would mysteriously come to bare paranormal phenomena. The first known example of this occurred the July 15 of 1931 when a wealthy Hollywood family known as the Hermans boarded an elevator heading for the Tip Top Club. Due to an elevator malfunction, the Hermans crashed and were presumed dead although no corpses were ever recovered from the rubble. This event was covered by the world's first international newspaper *First International News,* leading many to believe that this would mark the end of the hotel's proud career. Despite this incident, the Hollywood Tower Hotel managed to repair the elevators and reclaimed its star status.

In 1937, the Carthay Circle Theatre debuted the first released feature-length animated film, *Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs*. Attending the premiere were Walt Disney and Shirley Temple.

In 1938, aviator Cliff Secord of Bigelow's Air Circus happened upon an experimental jet-pack made by Howard Hughes then stolen and lost by Nazi agents. Secord used the jet-pack to become the masked Nazi-fighting vigilante, "The Rocketeer". The Rocketeer engaged in a fight with Hollywood actor/nazi secret-agent Neville Sinclair aboard Sinclair's blimp which Secord escaped from with his love-interest Jenny, leaving Sinclair to die in a fiery explosion while crashing into the, "Land" portion of the Hollywoodland Sign. Following this, Howard Hughes recovered the jetpack but left behind blueprints for Secord to continue his heroic deeds.

The Hollywood Tower Hotel's Tip Top Club also hosted various performers including Anthony Fremont & his Orchestra, Velma Woodrow, Lawrence Jones, and the Silver Lake Sisters. In 1939, the *American Automobile Association* awarded the hotel the, "Thirteen Diamond Award", making the Hollywood Tower Hotel the only known hotel to have achieved this status.

Also in 1939, the hotel arranged for a large Halloween party to be thrown on October 31 with a top-tier guest-list. On the 31, the hotel's elevators were inspected by one Cadwallader, a man of apparent supernatural connections. That night, four guests by the names of Gilbert London, Carolyn Crosson, Sally Shine and Emeline Partridge boarded one of the elevators in the lobby with a bellhop named Dewey Todd. At 8:05, the hotel's elevator shafts were struck by paranormal lightning originating from the 5th Dimension once again plunging the elevators and their passengers down. The lightning caused the wings holding the elevator shafts to vanish leaving a black scorch mark across the side of the hotel while those five who were inside became ghosts bound to the hotel.

The night of the incident, the Hollywood Tower Hotel was closed down and left seemingly frozen in time while in a state of decay. It is unknown what became of the other guests of the hotel however it is known that an executive from G-Force Records managed to escape the Tip Top Club under mysterious circumstances. In the Buena Vista Bugle, it was reported that investigations of the missing persons were headed by Officer Calvin Blue of the LAPD, who believed the missing persons would show up and that he would reward them for their experiences. Needless to say, Officer Blue was incorrect in his assessment.

The hotel turned from being a place of pride to being a tower of terror which made many wary of entering its area of Sunset Boulevard, resulting in weakened business for the neighbourhood. All the while, the hotel continued to be haunted by its five victims while further being absorbed into the 5th Dimension and becoming a sort of portal to the realm. Following the disaster at the Hollywood Tower Hotel which cost the lives of five people, many were wary of the part of Sunset Boulevard which the hotel and G-Force records were located at, taking a toll on G-Force's business.

#### 1940s-1980s

Over the years, several ghost-sightings and strange reports came from the Hollywood Tower Hotel. On one anniversary of the 1939 Halloween, the hotel was investigated by ghost-hunters or, "Spectrologists" on a night when meteorologists predicted higher air-pressures, likely foreshadowing another storm. The outcome of these events are unknown.

In 1947, Toon Town's corrupt judge, Judge Doom purchased the Pacific Electric Railway through his business *Cloverleaf Industries* using stolen money from his previous career as a bank-robber. Doom bribed Maroon Cartoons owner R.K. Maroon with the potential of having Cloverleaf buy his studio in-return for Maroon black-mailing his star Roger Rabbit's wife Jessica Rabbit into having an affair with ACME founder Marvin Acme, then hiring P.I. Eddie Valiant to take photos of the event. Judge Doom proceeded to murder Acme with a safe to the head, before framing Roger Rabbit for the murder due to his recent outburst at discovering Jessica's affair. This murder was committed so that Doom could have Cloverleaf purchase Toontown's land and demolish it with a paint-thinner concoction called, "The Dip", committing genocide of the Toons to make-way for a freeway which Cloverleaf could profit off of.

Valiant and Roger teamed up and found out about Doom's scheme. In a fight at Doom's hideout, Valiant killed the Judge by hosing him down with Dip from his machine, painfully melting him alive. After this, Eddie cleared Roger's name and discovered Marvin Acme's will secretly placed in Roger's possession by Acme via disappearing ink, which placed ownership of Toontown in the hands of the Toons.

Also in 1947, the mayor of Los Angeles and, "Mayor of Hollywood" was one Sonny Burbank. Various somewhat notable citizens of Hollywood were active during this year, often seen interacting and holding competitions with visitors of the neighbourhood. On the Sunday, July 17th of an unknown year (possibly occurring in Hollywood's golden age), Hollywood's Theatre of the Stars hosted the premiere of a *Jungle Cruise* movie made by Walt Disney Productions in connection with the *Jungle Navigation Company* and which had JNC members "Skipper Lasseter", "Skipper Brennan" and, "Trader Sam" on its cast.

In 1979, G-Force was connected to the release of Walt Disney Productions', "Mickey Mouse Disco", a late disco entry revolving around Mickey Mouse. This record only sold about twenty-three copies, which was notable enough for G-Force at the time that they awarded Mickey with a framed vinyl and plaque of the track identified as "*MMC* (likely *Mickey Mouse Club*) *Certified Pyrite* (Fool's Gold) *Sales*".

Around the 1980s onwards, the Echo Lake region of Hollywood became host to various stages and shooting locations seemingly used by LucasFilm. Amongst these were various sets for the *Indiana Jones* films (while Jones was seemingly also an existing historic figure), which also appeared to be located near an actual archaeological site used by Jones' old affiliate Dr. Dunfor Pullit. There was also a large sound-stage made to represent the forest moon of *Endor* from the Star Wars films, and an indoor area representing *Star Tours Spaceport THX1138*.

#### 1990s

After 56 years of the closure, the Hollywood Tower Hotel mysteriously reopened in the July of 1994. The reopening of the hotel seemingly correlated with a sudden spike in success from G-Force Records who had recently managed to score big-name deals with names such as Aerosmith*,* Z Ward and music divisions of the Walt Disney Company. After one recording session at G-Force Records, Aerosmith performed for one night only at *The Forum*. Before leaving, they invited various guests to attend and called for Super-Stretch Limos from the company *Lock 'n' Roll Limos* to pick the guests up and speed through the streets of Los Angeles to make it for the concert.

At this point the hotel was staffed by a crew of unnatural if not outright malevolent bellhops who seemed frozen in the 1930s and wished to bring new guests into the 5th Dimension. The bellhops would go about this by utilizing the maintenance service-elevators in the boiler room of the hotel rather than the decommissioned elevators in the lobby. On at least one incident, a group of would-be-victims were encountered by a being from the 5th Dimension known as, "The Narrator" who informed them of the hotel's past and nature allowing at least some of them to escape a dark fate.

#### Later history

Around the 2010s/2020s, various guests attended the Chinese Theatre to watch *Mickey Mouse* shorts. A cartoon accident occurred which blasted a hole in the projectors, leading to the Toontown region of Runnamuck Park. These guests boarded trains engineered by Goofy, only to be detached from his train and need to be saved by Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

## Tower of Terror Appearances

### Attractions

#### Disney's Hollywood Studios

Disney's Hollywood Studios is named after Hollywood and largely themed around it.

### Film

#### The Rocketeer

This film connected to the Tower of Terror is set in LA with multiple portions of the film being in Hollywood.

### Other connections

#### Avengers

Avengers member Scarlet Witch's enemy Agatha Harkness had a presence in Hollywood Land with a director chair for her appearing outside of Backlot Stage 17. Benches advertising the lawyer services of She-Hulk have appeared on the Sunset Boulevard section of Hollywood Land.

## Trivia

* In Tower of Terror materials, the Hollywood Sign is usually altered to say, "Hollywoodland". This was consistent in the Great Movie Ride and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
* Disney's Hollywood Studios' depiction of Hollywood is designed with many elements of theming to the films *The Rocketeer* (1991) and *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* (1989), both of which featured alternate-history depictions of Hollywood.
	+ In the *Rocketeer*, 1930s Hollywood was infiltrated by the nazis via Hollywood actor and German sleeper-agent Neville Sinclair. These nazis were subsequently fought off my 1930s Los Angeles vigilante Cliff Secord AKA The Rocketeer.
	+ In *Who Framed Roger Rabbit*, cartoon characters are animated actors known as, "Toons" hired by studios like Disney, Warner Brothers and Maroon Cartoons. The toons form a social-minority and live on the outskirts of LA in the realm of, "Toon Town".

## References

1. ↑ https://allears.net/2009/06/13/min-bills-dockside-diner-disneys-hollywood-studios/
2. ↑ https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2015/02/04/first-look-and-review-the-trolley-car-cafe-at-disneys-hollywood-studios/
3. ↑ https://wdwthemeparks.com/attraction/rock-n-roller-coaster-starring-aerosmith/
4. ↑ https://mickeyblog.com/2018/12/10/behind-curtain-fantasmic-hollywood-studios/
5. ↑ https://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20190402/36801/3-bizarre-secrets-about-history-disney-s-hollywood-studios?page=2
6. ↑ https://allears.net/2010/02/04/twilight-zone-tower-of-terror-part-one/
7. ↑ https://allears.net/2020/08/04/a-new-show-has-debuted-at-the-theater-of-the-stars-in-disneys-hollywood-studios/
8. ↑ https://wdwnt.com/2021/03/photos-agatha-directors-chair-added-to-wandavision-photo-op-at-disneyland-resort/
9. ↑ https://www.laughingplace.com/w/news/2022/08/18/photos-she-hulk-bench-ad-disney-california-adventure/