Carl Laemmle

Birthplace of Carl Laemmle in Laupheim

Carl LaemmleTemplate:Efn (born Karl Lämmle;Template:Efn January 17, 1867 – September 24, 1939) was a German-American film producer and the co-founder and, until 1934, owner of Universal Pictures. Laemmle, along with Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, William Fox, and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack), was part of the group of Eastern European immigrant Jews that founded the movie industry in Hollywood, California in the first decades of the 20th century. Laemmle produced or worked on more than 400 films.

Regarded as one of the most important of the early film pioneers, Laemmle was born in what is now Germany. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and worked in Chicago for 20 years before he began buying nickelodeons, eventually expanding into a film distribution service, the Laemmle Film Service, then into production as Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), later renamed Universal Film Manufacturing Company, and later still renamed Universal Pictures Company.

Early life and education

Karl Lämmle was born in 1867 to Julius Baruch Lämmle and Rebekka Lämmle, a Jewish couple in the Radstrasse, a street in the Jewish quarter of Laupheim, in the Kingdom of Württemberg.<ref name="maucher">Template:Cite web</ref> His father was a cattle merchant, also involved in land transactions. The family struggled financially and lived in poverty: Of his eleven siblings only 3 reached adulthood.<ref name="Mustea">Template:Cite web</ref> He was one of the youngest children, and close to his mother, who enrolled him in a Jewish school. When he was 13, she arranged a three-year apprenticeship for him in Ichenhausen, a nearby village, where he learned accounting and sales, and worked to support his family.<ref name=":0">Stanca Mustea, Cristina. "Carl Laemmle." In Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 4, edited by Jeffrey Fear. German Historical Institute. Last modified June 19, 2012.</ref>

Career

After his mother died in 1883, Laemmle decided to emigrate to the US for a better life, also following his thirteen-year-older brother Joseph. For his 17th birthday, his father had given him the tickets for an Atlantic crossing on the steamboat SS Neckar plus fifty dollars. He left Bremerhaven on January 28, 1884, and arrived in New York on February 14, 1884.<ref name="Mustea"/> He settled in Chicago. Here he lived for about twenty years as a bookkeeper and office manager.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1889, he became a naturalized American citizen.<ref name=":0" /> Laemmle worked a variety of jobs, but by 1894 he was the bookkeeper of the Continental Clothing Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he introduced a bolder advertising style.<ref name=":0" />

In 1906, at the age of 39, Laemmle quit his job. He initially wanted to open a network of cheap retail stores, but changed his mind after entering a nickelodeon.<ref name="Mustea"/> He started one of the first motion picture theaters in Chicago, The White Front on Milwaukee Avenue, and quickly branched out into film exchange services.<ref name=":0" /> He challenged Thomas Edison's monopoly on moving pictures, the Motion Picture Patents Company, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.<ref name=":0" /> As part of his offensive against Edison's company, Laemmle began advertising individual "stars," such as Mary Pickford and Florence Lawrence, thus increasing their individual earning power, and thus their willingness to side with the "Independents."<ref name=":0" />

After moving to New York,Template:When Carl Laemmle became involved in producing movies, forming Independent Moving Pictures (IMP); the city was the site of many new movie-related businesses. On April 30, 1912, in New York, Laemmle brought together Pat Powers of Powers Motion Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Film Company, William Swanson of Rex Motion Picture Company, David Horsley of Nestor Film Company, as well as Charles Baumann and Adam Kessel of the New York Motion Picture Company, to merge their companies with IMP as the "Universal Film Manufacturing Company", with Laemmle assuming the role of president.<ref name=obit/><ref name="Dick">Template:Cite book</ref> They founded the Company with studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where at the beginning of the 20th century many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref>

On March 15, 1915, Laemmle opened the world's largest motion picture production facility, Universal Studios Hollywood, on a 230-acre (0.9-km²) converted farm in the San Fernando Valley, just over the Cahuenga Pass from Hollywood.<ref>"Making moving pictures" The National Magazine, 42: 409–417. Boston: Chapple Publishing, 1915.</ref>

Universal maintained two East Coast offices: The first was located at 1600 Broadway, New York City. This building, initially known as the Studebaker Building, was razed around 2004 or 2005. The second location to house Universal's executive offices was at 730 Fifth Avenue, New York City. Many years later, 445 Park Avenue was the location of Universal's executive offices. In 1916, Laemmle sponsored the $3,000 three-foot-tall solid silver Universal Trophy for the winner of the annual Universal race at the Uniontown Speedway board track in southwestern Pennsylvania. Universal filmed each race which ran from 1916 to 1922.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Laemmle with Gaston Leroux at the Palais Garnier

In 1932, Laemmle opened the Laemmle Building on Hollywood and Vine. Originally planned as a 900-seat theater and office tower, the final construction was a one-story restaurant, the original plans thwarted by the Great Depression.<ref name=waterandpower4>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1936, Laemmle sponsored silent-era filmmaker James Cruze, giving him carte blanche to direct a large-scale western, Sutter's Gold. Cruze spent too lavishly and the resulting film was a notorious box office bomb. A consortium of angry investors undertook a hostile takeover of the company, ousting both studio founder Laemmle and his son Carl, Jr. The senior Laemmle briefly resumed distribution in partnership with Michael Mindlin, specializing in foreign films as CL Imports, in the mid-1930s, but for the most part remained in secluded retirement until his death in 1939. Laemmle's last act was writing a letter to Mindlin, commenting on his own health: "I am feeling pretty good these days." Mindlin received the letter after Laemmle's death.<ref>Film Daily, Sept. 26, 1939, p. 6.</ref>

Personal life

In 1898, Laemmle married Recha Stern, the niece of Sam Stern, his employer at the Continental Clothing Company.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Together, they had a daughter named Rosabelle (born 1903) and a son named Julius (born 1908). Rosabelle later married Stanley Bergerman, while Julius became known as Carl Laemmle Jr. On January 13, 1919, at the age of 43, Recha died from pneumonia caused by the Spanish flu.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

After moving to California, Laemmle purchased the former home of film pioneer Thomas Ince on Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills, which was razed in the early 1940s; he also maintained a large apartment for himself and his two children at 465 West End Avenue in New York City.

Asked how to pronounce his surname, Laemmle told The Literary Digest in 1936, "The name means 'little lamb' and is pronounced as if it were spelled 'lem-lee'."<ref>Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.</ref>

Laemmle's relatives in the film industry included his cousins Max Laemmle, Kurt Laemmle, and William Wyler; his nephews Ernst Laemmle and Edward Laemmle; his niece Carla Laemmle; and his brothers-in-law Isadore Bernstein, Joseph Stern, and Abe Stern.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His great-nephew Michael Laemmle is a noted resident of Darwin, California, and was featured in the 2011 documentary Darwin: No Services Ahead. His great-grandniece, Antonia Carlotta, talks about him at length in Universally Me, her web series about the history of Universal Studios.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Poet Ogden Nash observed the following about Laemmle's habit of giving his son and nephews top executive positions in his studios:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Poemquote

Death

Laemmle died from cardiovascular disease on September 24, 1939, in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 72.<ref name=obit>Template:Cite news</ref> Laemmle was entombed in the Chapel Mausoleum at Home of Peace Cemetery.

Awards and honors

• Oscar, 1930 for All Quiet on the Western Front.<ref name="carl">Template:Cite web</ref>

Legacy

Laemmle, although having made hundreds of films in his active years as a producer (1909–1934), is remembered for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of The Opera (1925), both with Lon Chaney Sr. in the title role, and The Man Who Laughs (1928) and most of the early sound horror films, such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), with his son, Carl Jr.

Laemmle remained connected to his home town of Laupheim throughout his life, providing financial support to it. In the 1930s he sponsored hundreds of Jews from Laupheim and Württemberg to emigrate from Nazi Germany to the United States, paying both emigration and immigration fees,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> thus saving them from the Holocaust. To ensure and facilitate their immigration, Laemmle contacted American authorities, members of the House of Representatives and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. He also intervened to try to secure entry for the refugees on board the Template:SS, who were ultimately sent back from Havana to Europe in 1939, where many were murdered in the Holocaust.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Carl Laemmle (seated far right) and Irving Leroy Ress (sitting, far left) at Laemmle's 70th birthday celebration (1937).

Representation in other media

• as a main character in the novel The Dream Merchants (1949) by Harold Robbins, a former Universal Studios employee.
• as a historical character in the TV series The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (1992).
• as a main character in the novel Sweet Memories (2012), David Menefee.
• German actor Berthold Biesinger plays Carl Laemmle in the theatre play "Marlene in Hollywood" by Hannes Stöhr.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> “Marlene in Hollywood” premiered in May 2023 at the Theater Lindenhof in Germany, deals with Marlene Dietrich and her time in Hollywood. Carl Laemmle is extensively honored on stage as the inventor of Hollywood. Erich Maria Remarque (novel author of "All quiet on the western front") introduces Carl Laemmle.<ref>https://www.theater-lindenhof.de/wp content/uploads/2023/05/Programmheft_Marlene_Dietrich_in_Hollywood_web.pdf</ref> The play was supported by the Deutsche Kinemathek.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Played by actor David Davino in the docudrama Titans: The Rise of Hollywood produced by Curiosity Stream, which was picked up by Netflix (2022).

See also

• History of the Jews in Laupheim
• Laemmle Theatres

Further reading

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External links

• Template:Cite web — Biography sponsored by the Transatlantic Program of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Official Laemmle family website
• Universal Studios Archives & Collections
• The Jewish Past of Laupheim
• Template:IMDb name
• Template:Find a Grave
• Template:Internet Archive film clip
• Carl Laemmle at Virtual History
• A 9 minute video produced by Universal City Studios from 2013