It’s fitting that the life of the man known as the “Father of Hollywood” features its share of myths and legends, given the community he played a key role in developing. Sifting through the stories printed about Hobart Johnstone “H.J.” Whitley is an adventure in which fact, fiction, and conjecture blur together. One thing that’s clear: his story began in southwest Ontario.
According to The Father of Hollywood — a diary written by his wife, Gigi, and edited onto a book by a 21st-century descendant — Whitley’s paternal grandfather was allegedly a British naval commander who served as a British MP and sent Whitley’s father, Joseph, to Upper Canada to pursue great new opportunities. Joseph, accompanied by 14 servants, supposedly settled near Strathroy. Shortly after Whitley’s birth in 1847, his mother, Eleanor, who hated living in the backwoods, prompted the family to move to Flint, Michigan. There, four of Whitley’s six siblings died from a cholera outbreak related to the family water supply. On top of that tragedy, his parents were killed when their buggy was struck by a train in Flint in 1865, leaving the 17-year-old to find his destiny.
It's a tale worthy of a Hollywood drama. But once you scratch the surface – and check with some local Strathroy historians — the narrative falls apart. According to the Strathroy and District Historical Society, the story regarding the paternal grandfather may have actually have involved a different Whitley family. Joseph appears to have settled in Adelaide Township by 1832; by 1840, he owned a plot of land near the present-day interchange of Highway 402 and Hickory Drive (Middlesex Road 39). Eleanor grew up in the area — her father, Robert Johnston, was a military captain and possibly a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. According to family lore, he taught local women how to use firearms.
It’s unclear whether Whitley was born in Adelaide Township or Toronto, but he was definitely listed as a resident of the Strathroy area in the 1851 census. Joseph held several local posts during the 1850s, including postmaster and road overseer. He ran his farm through the early 1860s, when it was taken over by his daughter Henrietta’s family. If the elder Whitleys moved to Flint at some point, they returned to Middlesex County to live out their lives. There was no fatal buggy crash: Joseph and Eleanor died within a year of each other in the early 1880s (Joseph succumbed to bronchitis). Both are buried in Strathroy Municipal Cemetery.
Ad for Whitley's development in Hollywood. (Los Angeles Times, December 7, 1902)
Most accounts of Whitley’s background indicate that he attended a “Toronto Business College” during the 1860s. No official institution by this name existed in Toronto, though a scan of classified ads from period editions of the Globesuggests that it might have been a branch of the Bryant & Stratton private business- college system. He migrated to Chicago, where he established a dry-goods company. He then joined the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad as a land agent, helping to establish over 100 communities as its lines stretched southwestward.
During this period, he developed a growing interest in banking and land development; Gigi provides accounts of adventures with a young Theodore Roosevelt. Most of his significant work occurred in modern-day Oklahoma amid a land rush in 1889, when he helped establish Guthrie and successfully promoted its efforts to become the territorial capital. “The frontier was like a safety valve for him,” Gigi observed. “When people became too emotionally connected to him, he simply sold his land, packed up and left, moving farther west to build another town.” Several accounts indicate he turned down the opportunity to become the first governor of Oklahoma Territory in 1890, due to his distaste for politics. Besides, as the Hollywood Daily Citizen noted decades later, “the spirit of the land developer was strong in his blood.”
According to Gigi, Whitley’s first encounter with Hollywood came when they honeymooned in California in 1886. While heading down a winding road, they encountered a Chinese labourer and asked him what he was doing. “I holly wood,” he said, which meant “hauling wood” in pidgin English. After the encounter, she said, Whitley repeatedly murmured “Hollywood.” He then told Gigi, “I know what to name the new town I am going to build right here, among these beautiful hills.”
It’s easy to be skeptical of this account, one of many legends that claim to explain how Hollywood got its name. Newspaper accounts place the Whitley marriage between 1886 and 1888, and he doesn’t appear to have been publicly involved in development in California then. At the time, the area that would become Hollywood consisted of scattered farms and orchards — and dreams of development schemes amid a land boom. A more plausible explanation involves Harvey and Daeida Wilcox, a pious, teetotalling couple from the Midwest who had settled in the area a few years earlier, aiming to establish a morally upstanding community. Harvey filed the first subdivision plan map bearing the name Hollywood in 1887. Daeida might have come up with name: sources indicate it might have had religious connotations, been suggested by a neighbour, or inspired by a woman she’d met on a train and described her summer home near Chicago. Hollywood was among 60 communities that sprang up in southern California in 1887, but further development fizzled out over the next decade. Harvey died in 1891, and Daieda soon remarried, to the son of former Illinois governor John Beveridge.
The Whitleys first settled in California in 1893; H.J. moved there permanently after having suffered a nervous breakdown back east. As he purchased land, he supplemented his income by opening a jewellery store in downtown Los Angeles. The H.J. Whitley Company, which, according to the Los Angeles Herald, was “the finest of its kind in up-to-date furnishings west of Chicago,” advertised in newspapers across the southwest. He sold the store in 1905, and it continued to bear his name for another half-decade.
As the 20th century began, Whitley dedicated himself to transforming Hollywood from a semi-rural settlement of fewer than 1,000 people into a grand suburb. He became the founding president and general manager of the Los Angeles-Pacific Boulevard and Development Company in 1901. Its powerful backers included fellow developer Harry Chandler, streetcar operator Moses Sherman, and Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis. When the company formed, the Los Angeles Herald reported that it would “expend several thousand dollars in curbing the streets, laying cement sidewalks and planting ornamental plants and shrubs, with the trees and palms that about in this semi-tropical spot.” Whitley and his fellow promoters pushed successfully for infrastructure improvements, including electric streetcar service, full water service, and the construction of Sunset Boulevard, which would provide a stronger connection to Los Angeles.
Ad for Whitley's Hollywood development. (Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1903.)
Ads for the development, also known as the Hollywood Ocean View Tract, touted both the coming modern infrastructure and the opportunity for homeowners to grow crops like bananas and pineapples. “This is the tract that built Hollywood,” proclaimed a 1903 advertisement. “The unexcelled merits of this tract have made it grow faster than any other suburban tract in Southern California in an equal length of time.” Whitley freqeuently organized tours of the development for buyers and dignitaries, proudly outlining its possibilities.
The company’s development was centred around Prospect Avenue (today’s Hollywood Boulevard) and Highland Avenue, where it built a bank and the original Hollywood Hotel. Its primary rival was Daeida Beveridge, who attempted to establish a competing commercial centre farther east, at Prospect and Cahuenga Avenue. Battles between the groups included a vote to incorporate Hollywood as a city in 1903, which Daeida opposed over concerns it would raise taxes. It passed 88-77 (in 1910, an overwhelming majority would vote to merge Hollywood into Los Angeles). Before her death in 1914, she was responsible for donating land that housed churches, a city hall, and the public library.
As Hollywood developed, Whitley became a fixture of social and economic life in Hollywood. “H.J. had the gift of disarming strangers and making instant friends,” Gigi observed. “H.J. was a friend to everyone; one who would cheer you on when you were successful and who would support you when the going got rough. It was difficult to explain just how H.J. created these bonds. After knowing H.J. for just a few hours, it was like you had known him all your life, and you knew you would be friends forever. H.J. stood out from the crowd because of the levels of concern and service he offered.” One example of the help he offered: allowing his orchard to be used in 1911 to film one of the first movies shot in Hollywood, The Law of the Range.
Whitley’s success in growing Hollywood — and bonds with local power brokers — led to even grander development projects. Under the banner of the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company, Whitley and his partners purchased over 47,000 acres in the San Fernando Valley in 1909; they soon became the communities of Canoga Park, Reseda, and Van Nuys. Profiling the growth of the San Fernando Valley a few years later, Sunset magazine described Whitley as “a grizzled six-footer, heavy-handed, shrewd of eye, square-jawed, with a six-cylinder working capacity actuated by a self-starter of electric optimism. He is primarily a builder, with a deep, quiet pride in that which he builds.”
Over the years, Whitley had held onto land in the hills north of Hollywood. Inspired by his visits to the French Riviera and Italy, he imagined developing Mediterranean-influenced posh homes with beautiful hillside views. In 1920, he used this land to launch the Whitley Heights neighbourhood, which he believed would be his final project. “I look upon it as the culmination of a lifetime of development, and frankly, the most beautiful piece of property I ever developed,” he told the Los Angeles Times. At a dinner to celebrate the official opening of Whitley Heights at the Hollywood Hotel in June 1920, Whitley indicated that the development would “create again the get-together enthusiasm which first made Hollywood famous.”
The dinner also provided Whitley with an opportunity to reflect on his philosophies of cities and development. “Cities are largely built by proper enthusiasm, but the thing that makes the world a good place to live in is harmony, and harmony can only be created through close acquaintance,” he observed. “I have always looked to real-estate men to sell my property, and I never take or divide a commission. I look on the real-estate profession, legitimately carried on, as one of the most honourable and necessary to the upbuilding of any community.”
Whitley Heights quickly attracted Hollywood stars as renters and owners; Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino were among those who took up residence there. A “Whitley Heights” hillside sign that he built to promote the development inspired a nearby project: the landmark Hollywood sign, which went up in 1923. Following the Second World War, the neighbourhood was divided by the Hollywood Freeway. In the early 1990s, residents failed in their attempt to turn the neighbourhood into a gated community. Several streets bear Whitley’s name, including Whitley Avenue and Whitley Terrace.
Ad for Whitley Heights from the May 20, 1921, edition of the Hollywood Citizen.
While Whitley Heights proved not to be his final project, it probably should have been. The failure of later developments in Paso Robles — and the purchase of oil wells near Fresno that turned out to be dry — had ruined him financially by the end of the 1920s. An obituary appeared in 1928, but it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. “It seems that an Englishman who came to California some years ago became acquainted with Mr. Whitley,” the Hollywood Daily Citizen reported, and was “possibly was one of the many to receive happiness from the kindness, generosity, and hospitality of the public-spirited citizen, and admiring him, borrowed his name.” The real H.J. Whitley died in June 1931 while staying at the Whitley Park Country Club his son, Ross, had developed in Van Nuys.
Summing up Whitley’s career in a history of Los Angeles published in 1921, John Steven McGroarty concluded that “it is appropriate to speak of Mr. Whitley as the father of Hollywood and many other places which exemplify his modern methods and capable management and are among the best town and suburban communities in the United States.”
Sources: The Father of Hollywood by Gaelyn Whitley Keith (BookSurge, 2009); Some Sketches of the Early Highland Pioneers of the County of Middlesex by Hugh McColl (Ottawa: Canadian Heritage Publications, 1979); Los Angeles from the Mountains to the Sea Volume III by John Steven McGroarty (New York: American Historical Society, 1921); Illustrated History of Oklahoma by Marion Tuttle Rock (Topeka: C.B. Hamilton & Son, 1890); Hollywood: The First Hundred Years by Bruce T. Torrence (New York: New York Zoetrope, 1982); the June 11, 1920, edition of the Hollywood Citizen; the July 26, 1928, and June 4, 1931, editions of the Hollywood Daily Citizen; the October 14, 1898, and November 17, 1901, editions of the Los Angeles Herald; the December 7, 1902, October 18, 1903, June 4, 1931, and January 4, 1987, editions of the Los Angeles Times; and the Fall 1984 edition of Southern California Quarterly. Special thanks to Bill Groot of the Strathroy and District Historical Society and Crystal Loyst of Museum Strathroy-Caradoc.
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