Mr. Edison Invented The Movie Making Machine

 Grandma Lu continued telling Marlee about Hollywood and told her that Mr. Wilcox and his wife loved the area in California so much that they would take buggy rides to the beautiful canyons outside of a city called Los Angeles. His wife, Ida, named the land Hollywood even though there were no holly bushes on the land. There is a huge sign on the hill that people still see when they go there.
"I've seen that sign, Marlee. I was in a lot of traffic, but there it was high up on the hill for everyone to see. That sign is really old; ninety-six years old. It's older than I am!" There is another story about that sign, but that can wait for another day,"

 "So Mr. Wilcox decided to buy some of that land. He paid $150 an acre. He tried raising fruit trees, but he just couldn't do it very well, so he decided to sell some of his land for $1000 an acre. When he died he was a very wealthy man."

"On the other side of the country in New York, there was a young man whose name was Thomas Edison. Look, see this is a picture of him, but he wasn't much older than you are when he started inventing things."

" He was very very smart, but he didn't do very well in school, so his mama taught him things at home. That is now very popular. It is called Homeschooling. Well, Thomas invented over a thousand different things he was so smart."
Grandma B said, "Wow! I didn't know that. I knew he invented the light bulb and the phonograph, but I didn't realize he had invented so many other things."

"I didn't either until just the other day I was reading about him. He was such an interesting person."
"One of those things he invented was the motion picture or movies. He invented a machine that made pictures move.  It was a strange looking thing, but it worked."

"He was afraid people would use his invention without paying him for it so he went to man called a lawyer. He filed some papers called a patent. That made it against the law to use Mr. Edison's machine to make movies without his permission.  People didn't like that. They wanted to make movies too so they started looking for places to make movies themselves. They eventually found Hollywood. It was perfect. It had the perfect weather and it was close to a big city; Los Angeles. A lot of people started moving there wanting to be actors and actresses in the movies. The movie producers knew it was only five hours to Mexico in case they got caught making movies without his permission."

Marlee said, "Oh good. I want to be in the movies too. You said I am beautiful and my grandmas say that I am beautiful so I should be in the movies. I have pretty dresses that I wear to be a princess and I have a crown and everything.  I have one here at Marleewood. Just a minute I am going to put it on so you can see me."

"What do you think, Grandma Lu. Is this dress good enough to be in the movies?"