In early 1910, director D.W. Griffith was sent by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troop consisting of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, and Lionel Barrymore, among others. They started filming on a vacant lot near Georgia Street in downtown Los Angeles. The company decided while there to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. This place was called "Hollywood." Griffith then filmed the first movie ever shot in Hollywood, In Old California (1910), a melodrama about California in the 1800s, while it was still part of Mexico. Biograph stayed there for months and made several films before returning to New York. After hearing about this wonderful place, in 1913 many movie-makers headed west to avoid the fees imposed by Thomas Edison, who owned patents on the movie-making process. In Los Angeles, California, the studios and Hollywood grew. Before World War I, movies were made in several U.S. cities, but filmmakers gravitated to southern California as the industry developed. They were attracted by the mild climate and reliable sunlight, which made it possible to film movies outdoors year-round, and by the varied scenery available there. Several starting points for American cinema can be distinguished, but it was Griffith's Birth of a Nation that pioneered the filmic vocabulary that still dominates celluloid to this day.