THE BIGGEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT OF ALL

How would you feel if you were given an entire movie studio as a birthday present? How about if that movie studio was also an official city in Hollywood? Well, that's what Carl Laemmle did for his son on his 21st birthday -- he put him in charge of Universal Pictures.

A news item in the June 28, 1929 issue of THE FILM MERCURY announced the passing of the studio torch from father to son. The story carried a caveat that the road Junior walked would be thorny, but the younger Laemmle was up to the task. After all, he had two history-making movies waiting in the wings, DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, that would not only mark the beginning of a new era in "weird thrillers", but would lift Universal off the ledge of bankruptcy.

THE "UNCLE" CARL LAEMMLE STORY

Carl "Junior" Laemmle is known as the man who brought the Universal monsters to life. As producer of Universal Pictures he had actively pursued the filming of both Dracula and Frankenstein. The fruitful results of his quest made motion picture history and, at least for a time, bailed his movie studio out financially from impeding bankruptcy.

It was Junior's father, however, Carl Laemmle who was the mastermind behind the creation of the film studio and its subsequent metamorphosis into a Hollywood "city" of its own.

Here is "Uncle" Carl's story, told in the May 1931 issue of THE NEW MOVIE magazine. Laemmle, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, came to the US with little money in his pocket to build one of the most famous movie studios on the planet.