Carl Laemmle Sr. — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸
Carl Laemmle started business life as an apprentice in the paper industry of Germany, working for Aaron Heller, a wholesale dealer in a small town of Bavaria.
When he came to America, he came with visions of millions — a mighty vision for those days, but it has been fulfilled. Unlike some newer producers, he did not have fortune thrust upon him in a brief space of time, but step by step over a period of several years he has built up one of the world’s most solid financial organizations.
When he sold out of the clothing business in Oskosh, Wisconsin, and looked around for a new field, he had a capital of four thousand dollars — not very large even for those days.
He had one chief maxim, which is that if one is selling a very popular thing at a very, small price the possibilities are unlimited. The idea of the new moving-pictures appealed to him both as a business and as an art. He opened a theater in Chicago.
To Mr. Laemmle goes the credit for the first film distributing exchange. He learned from his Chicago theater that the method of getting pictures to show was all wrong. There was at that time no systematic distribution, and he finally decided upon the plan of having a central exchange which should buy pictures from producers and rent them to theaters. The exchange was opened shortly after.
In 1909 it was considered by many that the General Film Company constituted a trust that could not be broken by the average producer and theater. Sounding a clarion call to those independent producers who had begun to fear the power of the so-called trust, he organized the Imp Company (Independent Motion Pictures Company). In that brave pioneer organization under the leadership of Carl Laemmle were many of the leading producers of today.
In 1910 Mr. Laemmle organized the Motion Picture Sales Company, a more complete exchange system, to fight the trust, which was giving ground considerably. In 1912 he bought a large tract of land in the San Fernando Valley — a picturesque stretch of country over the Cahuenga Pass from Hollywood. That was the beginning of Universal City, for it was not long after the organization of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company that Universal City was built.
The walled studio city was opened in 1914. It is eleven minutes’ ride from Cahuenga Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, with water and electrical equipment necessitated by the character of its business.
The company name was recently changed to Universal Pictures Corporation. The leasing organization is known as Universal Exchanges, Inc.
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Carl Laemmle surrounded by notables.
Left to right — W. Worsley, K. C. Beaton, Carl Laemmle, Lon Chaney.
Portrait by Hartsook • Los Angeles
Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)