- This article is about Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures. See also Carl Laemmle Jr. for an article about his son.
Carl Laemmle (January 17, 1867, Laupheim, Württemberg – September 24, 1939, Beverly Hills, California) was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios.
Laemmle was born in the Radstrasse in Laupheim, in the Jewish quarter of the city. He emigrated to the United States in 1884, working in Chicago as a bookkeeper or office manager in Chicago for 20 years. He began buying nickelodeons, eventually expanding into a film distribution service (the Laemmle Film Service ).
On June 8, 1912 in New York City, Carl Laemmle of the Independent Motion Picture Company, Pat Powers of Powers Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Films, and Bill Swanson of American Eclair, signed a contract to merge their studios. The four formed a storied name in Hollywood history: the Universal Motion Picture Manufacturing Company.
Laemmle produced or was otherwise involved in over four hundred films.
Laemmle remained connected to his home town of Laupheim throughout his life, through financial support, and also by sponsoring hundreds of Jews from Laupheim and Württemberg as a whole to emigrate from National Socialist Germany to the United States (which meant paying both emigration and immigration fees), thus saving them from the Holocaust.
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