When Hollywood’s Major Studios Threatened to Leave California — For Florida

Southern California seems to have been terraformed by the Creator to attract the motion picture industry: the mild, sunny weather conducive to outdoor shooting; the boundless variety of natural scenery (ocean, mountains, desert, farmlands) that can double for any location on earth; the diverse population of ready-made extras, and, at least in the first decades, the open shop policies of the city fathers (no pesky trade unions).

Little wonder that the pioneers of the medium ditched the cold, clammy, and crowded precincts of New York and New Jersey to light out for the picture-perfect vista. Soon enough, modern factories staffed by a pool of extraordinarily talented artists sprang up to manufacture quality-controlled product. Why would any filmmaker want to leave such prime real estate and glamorous expertise?

David Ellison has his reasons. The CEO of Paramount has threatened to pick up his infrastructure and depart for a destination to be named later unless California attorney general Rob Bonta and his Blue State cohorts drop their lawsuit to prevent the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. A bracing report from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, leaked to Politico, predicts dire consequences: the loss of an estimated 60,000 jobs and, perhaps, a green light signaling a broader exodus by kindred studio-conglomerates. The outcome need not be ruinous, but it is certainly demoralizing.

Hollywood has been here only once before — in 1934, when the dread prospect of a hostile business environment had the major studios contemplating (or at least threatening) to leave the promised land for friendlier regions. They were bluffing then. Now? I’ve never played poker with Ellison, but, given the stakes, and his cards, I wouldn’t call his hand.

In 1934, it was a socialist not a capitalist playing for keeps — Upton Sinclair, the Democratic candidate for governor. The original social justice warrior (he joked that when he died the two words “social justice” would be found written on his heart), Sinclair had first come to national prominence with the muckraking classic The Jungle (1906), about another company town, Chicago, with another tantalizing consumer product, meat. Sinclair’s forensic description of how the sausage got made led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. He continued to wrote prolifically in the social realist genre, always wielding his prose in the service of a progressive cause.