Universal Studios

Universal was founded by Carl Laemmle in 1908, a German-Jewish immigrant from Laupheim who settled in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In a buying trip in 1905 to Chicago, he was struck by the popularity of the movie theatre. Within weeks of his Chicago trip, Laemmle gave up his current job and brought the first of several theatres. For Laemmle and other such entrepreneurs, the creation in 1908 of the Edison-backed Motion Picture Trust meant that exhibitors were expected to pay fees for Trust-produced films they showed. Based on Edison's patent for the electric motor used in cameras and projectors, along with other patents, the Trust collected fees on the movie production and exhibition, as well as the distribution. It was believed that the productions were meant to be used for another company but the firm turned Universal down.

In June 1909, Laemmle started the Yankee Film Company with partners Abe and Julius Stern. That company quickly evolved into the Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP). Laemmle broke with Edison's custom of refusing to give screen credits to performers. In 1910, he promoted Florence Lawrence, formerly known as "The Biograph Girl," and actor King Baggot, in what may be the first instance of a studio using stars in its marketing.

The Universal Film Manufacturing Company was incorporated April 30, 1912 in New York. Laemmle, who emerged as president in July 1912, was the primary figure in a partnership that included Mark Dintenfass, Charles Baumann, Adam Kessel, and Pat Powers. The new Universal studio was a horizontally integrated company; with movie production and distribution capacity (the company lacked a major circuit of exhibition venues, ownership of which would become a central element of film industry integration in the following decade). The company was incorporated as Universal Pictures Company, Inc. in 1925.

 

By the end of 1912 the company was focusing its production efforts in the Hollywood area. Its first logo was an Earth with a Saturn-like ring and the text in a bold Kentucky typeface. In 1963, this logo was revamped with mattes and animated models. In 1990, it was replaced by a filmed 3D model, which was first created to celebrate 75 years. In 1997, another logo, which uses CGI animation, was introduced. Fifteen years later, in 2012, another CGI-animated logo was created, this time, to celebrate the company's 100th Anniversary.

Unlike other movie moguls, Laemmle opened his studio to tourists. Universal became the biggest studio in Hollywood, and remained so for a decade. However, it sought an audience mostly in small town

s, producing mostly inexpensive melodramas, westerns and serials.

He also financed all of his own films, refusing to take on debt. This policy nearly bankrupted the studio when actor-director Erich von Stroheim insisted on excessively lavish production values for his films Foolish Wives and Blind Husbands, but Universal shrewdly got some of its money back by launching a sensational ad campaign that attracted moviegoers. Character actor Lon Chaney became a huge drawing card for Universal in the 1920s, appearing steadily in dramas. His two biggest hits for Universal were The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923 and The Phantom of the Opera in 1925.

In 1926, Universal opened a production unit in Germany, Deutsche Universal-Film AG, under the direction of Joe Pasternak. This unit produced three to four films per year until 1936, as the migrating to Hungary and then Austria in the face of Hitler's overpowered central Europe. With the advent of sound, these productions were made in the German language or, occasionally, Hungarian or Polish. In the U.S., Universal Pictures did not distribute any of these films, but at least some of them were exhibited through other, foreign-language film distributors in New York, without the English subtitles. 

 

 As Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks had created the "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" character, which had enjoyed a successful theatrical run, Universal owned the rights to it. This gave Mintz the advantage that Disney would accept a lower fee for producing the property or he would produce the films with its own group of animators. Universal cut its ties with Mintz and formed its own in-house animation studio to produce Oswald cartoons headed by Walter Lantz. In 2006, after almost 80 years, NBC Universal sold all Walt Disney-produced Oswald cartoons back to Disney. In return, Disney released ABC sportscasters Al Michaels from his contract so he could work on NBC's Sunday night NFL football package. However, Universal kept the Oswald cartoons that Walter Lantz produced for them from 1929 to the mid-1930s.

Universal Pictures was taken by Laemmle, Sir’s son Carl Jr. in 1928. He bought and built theatres, converted the studio to sound production, and made several forays into high-quality production. His early efforts included the 1929 part-talkie version of Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat, the musical Broadway in 1929 which included Technicolor sequences; the first all-colour musical feature for Universal, King of Jazz in 1930; and All Quiet on the Western Front, winner of the "Best Picture" Academy Award for 1930. Laemmle, Jr. also created a successful opening for the studio, beginning a film series of monster movies, “the Universal Horror”, in films included were Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and The Invisible Man. The 1931 six-sheet 81-by-81-inch poster for Frankenstein is considered to be the most valuable movie poster in the world.

During the war years Universal did have a co-production arrangement with producer Walter Wanger and his partner, director Fritz Lang, lending the studio some amount of prestige productions. Universal's customer base was still the neighbourhood movie theatres, and the studio continued to please the public with low- to medium-budget comedies, musicals, adventures, westerns, and serials. The studio also fostered many series: The Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys action features and serials in 1938–43, the adventures of infant Baby Sandy in 1938–41, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in Sherlock Holmes mysteries in 1939–46, teenage musicals with Gloria Jean, Donald O'Connor, in 1942–43, and screen adaptations of radio's Inner Sanctum Mysteries in 1943–45. 

As Universal's main product had always been low-budget film, it was one of the last major studios to have a contract with Technicolor. The studio first made use of the new, three-color Technicolor process in 1942, when it released Arabian Nights, starring Jon Hall and Maria Montez. The following year, Technicolor was also used in Universal's remake of their 1925 horror melodrama, Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains and Nelson Eddy. With the success of their first two pictures, a regular schedule of high-budget, Technicolor films followed, usually starring Montez and Hall.

In my opinion Universal made some very successful films which are still know in our days. They are very inspirational and very professional to refer back to. The musicals are still played today because of the intensive having an intense impact promotion it had on the audiences. The soundtracks from the musicals are still performed for example Phantom of the Opera which is played in big amphitheatre and at classic concerts.

In 1945, the British entrepreneur J. Arthur Rank, hoping to expand his American presence, bought into a four-way merger with Universal, the independent company International Pictures, and producer Kenneth Young. The new combine, United World Pictures, was a failure and was dissolved within one year. In the 1950s, Universal-International brought back a series of Arabian Nights films form William Goetz, a founder of International, many starring Tony Curtis.

By the late 1950s, the motion picture business was in trouble. The combination of the studio/theatre break-up and the rise of television saw the mass audience drift away, probably forever. The Music Corporation of America (MCA) had also become a powerful television producer, renting space at Republic Studios. After a period of complete shutdown, Universal agreed to sell its 360-acre (1.5 km²) studio lot to MCA in 1958, for $11 million, renamed Revue Studios. Although MCA owned the studio lot, MCA was increasingly influential on Universal's product. The studio lot was upgraded and modernized, while MCA clients like Doris Day, Lana Turner, Cary Grant, and director Alfred Hitchcock were signed to Universal Pictures contracts.

In 1964 MCA formed Universal City Studios, Inc. to take over the motion pictures and television arms of Universal Pictures Company and Revue Productions officially renamed as Universal Television in 1966. And so, with MCA in charge, for a few years in the 1960s Universal became what it had never been: a full-blown, first-class movie studio, with leading actors and directors under contract. Universal in the 1970s was primarily a television studio so they could gather as many audiences as they had left them. Weekly series production was the workhorse of the company such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

In the early 1950s, Universal set up its own distribution company in France, and in the late 1960s, the company also started a production company in Paris, Universal Productions France S.A., although sometimes credited by the name of the distribution company, Universal Pictures France. Their first two films it produced, Claude Chabrol's “Le scandale” and Romain Gary's “Les oiseaux vont mourir au Pérou”

In the early 1970s, Universal teamed up with Paramount Pictures to form Cinema International Corporation, which distributed films by Paramount and Universal worldwide. It was replaced by United International Pictures (UIP) in 1981, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) joined the fold. UIP began distributing films by start-up studio DreamWorks in 1997, and MGM subsequently dropped out of the venture in 2001, letting 20th Century Fox internationally distribute its films. In 1990, MCA created MCA/Universal Home Video Inc. to enter the videotape and later DVD sales industry.

 

In June 2000, Seagram the head Edgar Bronfman Jr was sold to french water utility and media company Vivendi which owns StudioCanal.  The media conglomerate became Vivendi Universal. Afterward, Universal Pictures brought the United States distribution rights of several of StudioCanal's films. Burdened with debt, in 2004 Vivendi Universal sold 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment including the studio and theme parks to General Electric, parent of NBC creating the current NBCUniversal deal was closed in 2011.