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Carl Laemmle loved ceremony and he loved people.
He knew what people wanted
by the time he
formed Universal he was forty-years-old
but Laemmle created something that
would last forever.
Laemmle was born in Germany in 1867
when he was seventeen he persuaded his father that his future lie
in America.
And so he bought himself a ticket
to come to the United States. Like the story of so many other immigrants he just had a
couple bucks in his pocket,
but he held down a number of odd jobs and finally became established in
Oshkosh, Wisconsin
and it was on a trip from Oshkosh to Chicago in 1906 that Carl Laemmle
saw his first Nickelodeon.
He watched as people were lining up
to pay nickels
to go into this new thing called Nickelodeon.
And he counted the number of people going in
figured out what the rent would be
and realized he was in the wrong business.
In time he was not only the biggest owners of
nickelodeon and movie theaters, he was one of the biggest exchange owners in the
Midwest and the United States.
Like many other founding moguls he began to look at production.
He formed a company in 1909 called the
Independent Moving Pictures Company and made his first film in 1909
a western called Hiawatha based on the famous epic poem. Carl Laemmle
partnered with five other independent producers
to create Universal in 1912.
And the first film they distrubited was a film called "Traffic in Souls"
and it dealt with the sensation of
white slavery, kidnapping young girls and putting them to a life of prostitution
all shot on location in New York.
It was a huge success,
and it really wasn't indicitation that Universal could go for a larger audience.
It was really pioneering in its time
and Carl Laemmle was innovative in many ways.
Laemmle senior was one of the pioneers in the star system, he
understood that
movie audiences now want something more than just going to see a movie what's
the next to attraction?
Well, let's create somebody you actually want to go see
and put the spotlight on actor or actress.
He helped pioneer the large
studio we could to everything on your studio lot.
In Universal had everything that a city had. It was all just a wonderland.
He was a real visionary I mean he's the one who
saw the land in the San Fernando Valley and realized its potential for
becoming a movie-making capital.
And then he became the first entrepreneur to actually organize
studio tours.
They invited the general public
to come to the studio and see how movies were made
they were able to do that because it was the silent era
so they encourage the crowd to boo all of the villains and cheer the heroes. He was
a showman he understood that the show didn't just occur on the screen but that
Americans were fascinated by this new industry.
So from the beginning
he saw a lot of the things that would develop into the modern
Universal Studios.
The kind of movies that were being made,
the embitions that he had for the movie business and for Universal from those
early days.
He never lost his immigrants attitude toward things
he saw the business of the kind of a familiar way.
He was known as Uncle Carl,
and he always had at least eighty members
of his family
working in the studio and there was an old ditty that went around
that uh... Carl Laemmle
has a big family
and that that was because he was also known as a soft touch.
Part of his attitude about family in the business is of course his son Carl Laemmle Jr.
was virtually goomed from the beginning to take over the business that Carl Laemmle
Senior had started,
he had been there from the beginning he'd lived you know
production every day
essentially on this twenty first birthday he was given the studio to take
over
Carl Laemmle Junior was much less interested in
the bread and butter pictures Universal made
he wanted the prestige so he embarked on a number
of efforts.
One of the things that
most people today have no conception of this just how divided the country was
along racial lines in the wake of the civil war.
So to make a picture like "Imitation of Life" enwhich this black woman
essentially becomes the equal of the partner of this white women was a very
brave thing to do.
In Germany
in the silent era
there was a movement called expressionism
there were certain very eary and powerful films
that inspired Carl Laemmle Jr. to go into the Horror/Monster genre.
and sure enough these films were hugely successful for Universal.
With the early monster movies
Universal right away began to see that people wanted to see these
characters again and so they began doing these franchises.
"We belong dead"
The Bride of Frankenstein some consider even a better film than the first.
And that eventually became the
standard practice in the industry
but the Laemmles' were really
at the forefront of figuring this out and actually doing it.
In 1930, Carl Laemmle Jr. and senior produced "All Quiet on the Western
Front".
"All Quiet on the Western Front" is one of their first big
prestige film.
This is their first film that gets them an Academy Award and it marks a big
breakthrough for Universal. It's very controversial at the time that you would do
the film from the enemy's point of view.
I think in some ways it was a personal story, I mean Laemmle certainly
never
cut-off his ties with Germany. Every year after he made it,
he would go back to Laupheim in Germany where he was born and he would go and
see his relatives and he would give money to people to help them and all of
that
and never forgot his roots.
At this point he was winding
down his own
career as a hands-on producer and by the very late twenties
and particularly by 1930 once he saw Hitler
and the national socialist coming into power
he saw the handwriting on the wall
and what he did was he brought over personally three hundred people
many of them members of his family but other jews from his town in neighboring
villages he used his own personal wealth
to save all these families and he did it very quietly
and he wasn't trying to grab the headlines with that
he was that kind of a man.
I don't know how many
families
he brought over to
this country
and uh... helped give them jobs or find jobs for them
he was just wonderful in that area.
He was beloved
by everybody that worked for him.
Coming as a young guy you know from Germany and he ended up with the biggest
movie studio in the world.
He was just an amazing man.
So yeah I think some of that Laemmle spirit
has continued to this day.
And whether it's in the water or just
being here on the property or osmosis, whatever it is is still an element
of that in Universal.