Hollywood Babylon

[first lines]

Narrator: This was Hollywood, once considered a suburb of sprawling Los Angeles - destined, perhaps doomed, to become it's very heart. In 1916, however, it was just a junction of dirt roads and a scattering of orange groves. If there was sin, it was not to be seen. Scandalous sin that is, for what was going on at the studio on Sunset Boulevard was merely play-acting, a Babylonian orgy involving hundreds, nay thousands of actors and extras, portraying the doom Belshazzar. This passion play, D.W. Griffith's most ambitious epic, was titled "Intolerance" and it set the tone for Tinseltown... something to live up to, something to live down. The shadow of Babylon had fallen over Hollywood. Scandal was waiting just out of camera range.