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The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking. By Shawn C. Bean. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2008. Pp. [xiv], 193. $27.50, ISBN 978-0-8130-3243-6.)
The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking by Shawn C. Bean is a sociocultural history of the silent film industry in Jacksonville, Florida. Bean sets out to illuminate the role Jacksonville played in the early film industry, follow the filmmakers and studio executives who migrated to Jacksonville, highlight the actors who may have started their careers there, commemorate the city's studios, and demonstrate how Jacksonville lost out to the more renowned Hollywood. Despite a lack of adequate resources, the author has assembled...
