#120 NYC and the Birth of the Movies

New York City inspires cinema, but it has also consistently manufactured it. And long before anybody had heard of Hollywood, New York and the surrounding region was a movie capital too, the home to the earliest American film studios and inventors who revolutionized the medium. It began with Thomas Edison's invention of the Kinetoscope out in his New Jersey laboratory. Soon his former employees would spread out through New York, evolving the inventor's work into entertainments that could be projected in front of audiences. By the mid 1900s, New Yorkers fell in love with Nickelodeons and gasped as their first look at moving pictures.  We also take a look at the medium's first superstar director D.W. Griffith and how he helped hasten the move out west. But even as studios fled for sunny California weather, movie making never left New York. Find out where you can still find some relics of New York's pre-Hollywood movie career. NOTE: As this is of course a New York podcast, we are very NYC-centric here. Our apologies to Georges Melies and to Fort Lee, NJ! www.boweryboyspodcast.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys