In its heyday, Hollywood's industry had a tremendous impact on the culture and industry of California. For more than sixty years of its Golden Age, Hollywood was an internationally known and recognized symbol reflecting cultural mores, attitudes, styles, and fashions. Hollywood was more than a representation of a film industry. It was a composite of individuals, some of whom were the most recognized and emulated in the world. Sadly, many of these same well-known indi viduals who provided so many hours of entertain ment for older generations of Californians are hardly even recognizable names to a younger generation these days. This article will provide a snapshot of some relatively little-known resources that are avail able for researching the history of the most famous people from a long-gone era, as well as a historical capsule of one person's genealogical search. As a teenager, having just moved from the East Coast to the West, I was captivated by movie as most of us then were. My family had the good for tune to live in Sherman Oaks, in close proximity to many future stars, aspiring actors and actresses, cinematographers, directors, producers, and their families. Next door to our home lived Lou Costello, and across the street in the same apartment build ing lived James Garner and Clint Eastwood. I watched from my front yard as they left for work. Up the street from us lived Jack Webb and Julie Lon don, and still farther up the street lived Mickey Rooney A few blocks over lived Sterling Hayden and his wife, Madeline Carrol. I was surrounded by famous people and was in seventh heaven. I was not exactly an autograph hound because I was too timid, but given a convenient opportunity, I leaped at the chance to get one or two. One of my prizes was the autograph of Jayne Mansfield. I had no real appreciation of the impact Holly wood had on southern California until I began working for the National Archives-Pacific Southwest Region. As an archivist assigned responsibility for providing access to records, I was responsible for learning what information would characteristically be contained in those documents. After studying the finding aids and sampling selected series, I was astounded to learn the magnitude of the holdings that relate in various ways to Hollywood personal ities. Leonard Nimoy stated in a recent re-run of the series In Search of that we are a nation of records keepers. This is a significant concept, since most people cannot begin to imagine the number, nature, and scope of records about individuals that are kept by many local, city, county, and federal agencies. While Hollywood stars are famous for the work they did and do, the basic fact is that they are people, just like you and me, and were required to participate in government activities such as natu ralization and litigation. These activities produced a body of records that provide information about their personal and family histories. While neither typical nor routine, the natural ization process tended to generate documents related to the large number of foreign-born indi viduals involved in the industry who became United States citizens, either by naturalization of their parents or in their own right. A few years ago during the Oscar ceremonies, director Billy Wilder thanked the Immigration and Naturalization Ser vice and the United States government for allow ing him to become a citizen, thus affording him numerous career opportunities in the film industry. Jack L. Warner of Warner Bros. Studios was a deriv ative citizen because of the naturalization of his father. Stars who became naturalized citizens in the
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Jun 1, 1998
Qi Feng 
Open Access