Carl Laemmle

Personal

Notable

American pioneer filmmaker and founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios – Universal. Laemmle produced or was otherwise involved in over four hundred films. Regarded as one of the most important of the early film pioneers, Laemmle was born in the Kingdom of Württemberg, at that time an independent state (before becoming part of the German Empire in 1871). He emigrated to the United States in 1884, working in Chicago as a bookkeeper or office manager for 20 years. He began buying nickelodeons, eventually expanding into a film distribution service, the Laemmle Film Service. After moving to New York, Laemmle got involved in producing movies, forming Independent Moving Pictures (IMP); the city was the site of many new movie-related businesses. On 30 April 1912, in New York, Laemmle of IMP, 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, and Charles Baumann and Adam Kessel of the New York Motion Picture Company, merged their studios and incorporated the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, with Laemmle assuming the role of president. They founded the Company with studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1915, the studio moved to 235 acres (0.95 km2) of land in the San Fernando Valley, California. He died from cardiovascular disease on 24 September 1939 in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 72. Link to Wikipedia biography