Peerless Pictures Studios

Transcription

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.