Hollywood: City of Celluloid (1932)

This seven-minute documentary short captures the dream factory when it was still carving itself out of the rolling hills and orange groves of Southern California. See Maurice Chevalier and Walt Disney, and get a look down Hollywood Boulevard before it became congested with traffic. It's Hollywood in the early days of sound before the sprawl of Los Angeles.

Hollywood Extra Girl (1935)

Cecil B. DeMille steps in front of the camera for this bit of tinseltown self-promotion, directing a young movie hopeful in her screen debut as a costumed extra in his production of The Crusades. For this short film, the stars become the background players: Loretta Young, Alan Hale, Henry Wilcoxon, Joseph Schildkraut, Montagu Love, and Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head can be seen in this staged documentary.

Hollywood Make-Up Magic (1942)

Make-up artists reveal a few of their tricks and techniques to movie audiences in this short subject, produced in partnership with Max Factor, but what makes this particular survey is one of its unidentified models. That's an uncredited Robert Mitchum making his screen debut as the actor getting his chest shaved to make way for a custom chest hairpiece.

By Sean Axmaker