(gentle inspirational music)
- Carl Laemmle loved ceremony and he loved people.
He knew what people wanted.
By the time he formed Universal,
he was 40 years old,
but Laemmle created something that would last forever.
(light upbeat inspirational music)
- Laemmle was born in Germany in 1867.
When he was 17,
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,
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 a 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 not only was one of the biggest owners
of nickelodeons and movie theaters,
he was one of the biggest exchange owners in the Midwest
in the United States.
Like many other founding moguls,
he began to look at production.
- He formed a company that 1909
called the Independent Moving Pictures Company
and made his first film in 1909,
a Western called "Hiawatha"
based on the famous epic poem.
- Then Carl Laemmle partnered
with five other independent producers
to create Universal in 1912.
- And the first film that they distributed
was a film called "Traffic in Souls."
- And it dealt with the sensation of white slavery,
kidnapping young girls
and putting them into a life of prostitution,
all shot on location in New York.
- It was a huge success
and it really was an indication
that Universal could go for a larger audience.
- It was really pioneering in its time.
And Carl Laemmle was innovative in many ways.
(gentle music)
- Laemmle Sr. was one of the pioneers in the star system.
He understood
that movie audiences now wanted something more
than just going to see a movie,
what's the next attraction?
Well, let's create somebody you actually want to go see
and put the spotlight on an actor or an actress.
(gentle upbeat music)
He helped pioneer the large studio
where you could do 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 encouraged the crowd
to boo all of the villains
and to 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 ambitions that he had
for the movie business and for Universal
in those early days.
He never lost his immigrant's attitude toward things.
(dramatic music)
He saw the business in a kind of a familiar way.
- He was known as Uncle Carl,
and he always had at least 80 members of his family
working in the studio.
And there was an old ditty that went around
that Carl Laemmle has a big family
and that was because he was also known as a soft touch.
- Part of his attitude about family in the business
is that of course his son, Carl Laemmle Jr.
He was really groomed from the beginning
to take over the business
that Carl Laemmle Sr. had started.
He had been there from the beginning.
He'd lived the production every day,
and essentially on his 21st birthday,
he was given the studio to take over.
- Carl Laemmle Jr. was much less interested
in the bread and butter pictures that Universal made.
He wanted the prestige,
and so he embarked on a number of efforts.
(gentle cheerful music)
One of the things that most people today
have no conception of
is 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"
in which this Black woman
essentially becomes the equal and the partner
of this white woman
was a very brave thing to do.
- Oh, it ain't her fault Miss Bea.
And it ain't yours and it ain't mine.
(ominous music) (electricity popping)
- [Jon] In Germany, in the silent era,
there was a movement called expressionism.
(electricity popping)
They were sort of very eerie and powerful films.
That inspired Carl Laemmle Jr.
to go into the horror monster genre.
- I am Dracula.
(sinister music)
- [Jon] And sure enough,
these films are hugely successful for Universal.
- It's alive! It's alive!
It's alive!
- Over 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.
(Frankenstein grunts) (apparatus booms)
- [Jon] The "Bride of Frankenstein,"
some consider even a better film than the first.
(the Bride hisses)
- And that eventually became standard practice
in the industry.
But the Laemmles were really at the forefront
of figuring this out and actually doing it.
(sinister music)
(the Bride screams)
(bombs booming) (soldiers screaming)
- In the 1930, Carl Laemmle Jr. and Sr.
produced "All Quiet on the Western Front."
(bombs popping)
- "All Quiet on the Western Front"
is one of their first big prestige film.
(bombs popping)
- This is their first film that gets them an Academy Award
and it marks a big breakthrough for Universal.
(bombs popping)
- It's very controversial at the time
that you would do a film
from the enemy's point of view.
(dramatic suspenseful music)
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 '20s
and particularly by 1930,
once he saw Hitler and the National Socialists
coming into power,
he saw the handwriting on the wall.
And what he did is he brought over personally 300 people,
many of them members of his family
but other Jews from his town and neighboring villages.
He used his own personal wealth
to save all these families.
And he did it very quietly.
I mean, he wasn't trying to grab the headlines with it.
He was that kind of a man.
- Well, I don't know how many families
he brought over to this country
and helped give them jobs or find jobs for them.
He was just wonderful in that area.
(gentle inspirational music)
He was beloved by everybody that worked for him.
Coming as a young guy 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 there on the property or osmosis,
whatever it is,
there's still an element of that in Universal.
(gentle inspirational music)