Developer Earl Loy White (1885-1971) is credited with naming this thoroughfare. White came to L.A. from Kansas when he was 21, and in 1917 he and his wife Anna (1886-1971), a fellow Kansan, bought a dairy farm at Verdugo and Pioneer avenues in rural west Burbank. Six years later, White set up a 400 acre residential and commercial tract just north of it, and Anna dubbed it Magnolia Park. On November 23rd, 1924, Pioneer Avenue was reopened as Hollywood Way with great fanfare and promotion. Some say that White himself, hoping to encourage movie people to shuttle between Hollywood and Magnolia Park (see also: Screenland Drive), funded the grading of the road when the City of Burbank refused to foot the bill. But the entirety of Hollywood Way opened that November, from San Fernando Road all the way down to the Cahuenga Pass (the last stretch later renamed Barham Boulevard). I’m skeptical that White would have paid for the whole thing. Regardless, Burbank reimbursed him.
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