Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg: The Tributes at Universal Studios Hollywood

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The Stories Behind the Names on Universal Blvd

Hello and welcome to the Where In The Park Podcast, this is Kevin, and this episode is a follow-up to our last episode about a few more of buildings found along the entrance street at Universal Studios Hollywood in California. On this episode, we will be going over the stories of the people honored on the buildings that we had described.

Before we get started, we want to make sure to remind everyone that the Where In The Park Podcast is brought to you by WhereInThePark.com. Visit WhereInThePark.com to check out the games we have created for theme parks on both the west coast, like Universal Studios Hollywood, and the east coast, with Universal Studios Florida and Islands of Adventure, as well as games for several other theme parks in Florida and California. Stock up now before your next visit, because you want to have fun exploring the parks, don't you?

So yeah, among those buildings we described on the last episode were the Laemmle Hollywood Apartments, the Thalberg Talent Agency, and Laemmle Court. Let's dive into who the Laemmles were, and who Thalberg was, and why they're important to the Universal Studios story.

The Laemmles: The First Family of Universal Studios

I do want to point out that there is also a Carl Laemmle parking structure near the soundstages on the lower lot, it's over past gates 1 and 2, and the tram tour usually turns to the right after passing Super Nintendo World, with the parking structure across the street on the left. I couldn't find out anything about when it was built, so if you know about it, please share with us.

With that out of the way, Carl Laemmle should already be a familiar name to long-time movie and, specifically, Universal Studios fans. If you've been on the Studio Tour, you may -or may not- have heard the guide talk about the founder of Universal Studios. People in the movie industry affectionately referred to him as "Uncle Carl," but what is rarely mentioned is that back when the studios were new, Carl had several family members working at the studio, and many of them lived in the bungalows on the lot. So, it's possible that the Laemmle Apartments facade is a reference to that fact, beyond just being a nod to the founder himself. Also, as Amanda had mentioned on the last episode, the sign at the apartments reads "No actors," and besides a few cameo walk-ons in films, the majority of the Laemmles were not actors, with the only cited exception being Carl's niece Rebekah Isabelle Laemmle, who went professionally by the name Carla Laemmle. But, he also had cousins and nephews who were directors, and who knows what else the Laemmle's were up to?

But yeah, if the apartments are not for every member of the Laemmle family, at the very least I'm sure the reference also covers Carl's son, who also went by Carl, but many people referred to as simply "Junior."

So, we're going to focus on the Carls...

Carl Laemmle: The Founder

Way back in 1884, seventeen-year-old Carl Senior immigrated to New York from Laupheim, Germany, a year after his mother had passed away. He would learn English while working as a clerk at a drug store in New York, and would then find himself working in various jobs, including a book-keeper job in Chicago, picking vegetables on a farm in South Dakota, and then during the panic of 1893, which we had mentioned as a setback for the original Ferris wheel in our episode about the Pixar-Pal-Around at California Adventure just a few weeks ago, it was during that same panic that Carl found himself working as a book-keeper of a clothing store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the Continental Clothing Store, where he would soon become a manager, and he would eventually work there for the next twelve years. 

This is where he met his wife, Recha, she was the niece of the store's owner, and they had their first child, a daughter named Rosabelle, in 1903.

There are some conflicting stories out there about exactly what happened at the end of those twelve years... Some say that he had a disagreement with his bosses at the clothing company, others say he was just unfulfilled with his life at a clothing company, and other say that he sold his clothing company. I don't think he actually owned the company, so that last one can't be right. There is a book from 1931, The Life and Adventures of Carl Laemmle, that tells a story of what may have happened, where Carl went from Oshkosh to his boss in Chicago to ask for a raise, and in the end of a heated argument, he had suggested that if his boss wanted his resignation letter, he could have it, and then the boss accepted it... and he was then out of a job.

In either 1905, before he quit/was fired, or 1906 when he was trying to figure out what to do after quitting/having been fired, Carl was in Chicago, and he came across a "nickelodeon." Regardless of which timing of the story is correct, he did visit a nickelodeon and really appreciated how the men, women, and children in that theater were transfixed with the movie they were watching. Again he had been working at a clothing store, where he would have to work hard to convince customers to buy a suit, so from his perspective, it would be very rewarding to just have people drop nickels to sit for twenty minutes and then leave as happy customers.

After that epiphany, exactly what happened next is also unclear. That 1931 book I mentioned earlier puts it plainly that he moved his family to Chicago, while other sources say he opened his own nickelodeon in Oshkosh, while others say he moved to Milwaukee to do that. The most likely accurate story is that he did move to Chicago, where he rented out a retail space in the year 1906 at 909 Milwaukee Avenue, and I believe that's true because that is where he opened his first nickelodeon. He named it the "White Front," (he had painted the front of the building white to make it stand out) and it played short films that he had bought or rented from the distributors of the day. We found a photo of it, so that's why we believe it actually existed, and it shows writing on the wall that advertised it as the "Coolest 5 cent theater in Chicago," which confirms that it was in Chicago, not a city in Wisconsin, and also, I'm pretty sure that was literal, and just referring to the temperature inside the building. The slang use of the word "cool" was still at least 25 years away. (And just because I've gotten into the habit of telling the story of architecture, that nickelodeon would close in 1911, but other business would come and go in the storefront, including a 5 and dime, and eventually a Foot Locker shoe store before it the building was eventually demolished in 2015.)

Anyhow, later in 1906, Carl started his own film distribution company, the Laemmle Film Service. This came about because of bad practices in the industry at the time, where Laemmle had to deal with unreliable and unethical distributors, which lead him to take his projectionist Charles Chasten's advice to go to State Street to buy a discarded film instead of renting reels. He bought a copy of The Pearl Fisher's Dream for ninety-six dollars, and he played at his nickelodeon, and then rented it out to other theaters. By 1908, his son Julius was born, that baby boy was named after Carl's father, but he would later go by the name Carl Laemmle Junior, and also that year, the nickelodeon business had expanded to 50 theaters, and they were running the largest film distribution company in the country. He would then found the Independent Motion Picture Co. in New York in 1909, and he began making his own films. We should point out that back then, Thomas Edison owned several patents on filmmaking, and Carl was actually an original member of the Edison Patents Company, but he did not like the idea of having to pay royalties just to make movies. So, he essentially ignored the patents, and would go on to produce 100 short films by 1910 without paying those. Edison's company would sue Laemmle several times over the next few years, and they would also sue a handful of other companies that were also making movies without paying the royalties, and most of them would end up moving their operations to California to get away from the lawsuits. Laemmle, on the other hand, fought the, reportedly, 289 legal actions against his company, and eventually won. The Department of Justice made the decision that Edison's company was in violation of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. As I mentioned earlier, the White Front nickelodeon closed down in 1911, and that's because by this point Laemmle was all-in on distribution and filmmaking, and he got out of the theater business completely that year. On June 8th, 1912, he merged his company with some other companies, including Powers Motional Picture Company, Rex, Champion, Nestor, and the New York Motion Picture Company, to form Universal Film Manufacturing Company, which Laemmle was the largest shareholder of, and therefore was in charge of.

Okay, I know this all escalated very quickly, so I just want to recap a few things here... He moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1893, he met a woman, got married, had a daughter, lost his job, and then moved to Chicago in 1905. Within three years, he now had a son, a large nickelodeon business, and a film distribution company. Then, one year later he's living in New York running a (possibly illegal) motion picture company in 1909. By 1912, his business was now officially legitimate, and he has merged with some other business under a name that now includes the word Universal. Oh yeah, according to his great-grandniece, Antonia Carlotta, over on her Universally Me blog, Carl came up with that name for the combined company after a truck went by during an important meeting about that name, the truck was for a company named "Universal Pipe Fittings."

So anyway... It would take a few years, but in 1915, Universal City opened, located where the studios and theme park are today, and they went straight to work creating 250 silent films that year. Universal, the company, though, was still headquartered in New York.

Irving Thalberg: The Boy Wonder

Remember, we are talking about the nods to people mentioned in the park, so we need to mention that it's around here in the timeline, specifically June of 1918, when a young Irving Grant Thalberg was introduced to Carl by a neighbor of his at his summer cottage at Edgemere, Long Island. Carl used to have film screenings at his summer home, and he would invite neighbors over to see what his company had been working on. Really, it sounds like it was one part social gathering, and another part market research. But either way, it wasn't anything fancy, it was just a film projected on bed sheets on the front porch. And yeah, Thalberg and his mom were visiting his grandmother that summer just after he had turned 19, and his mom thought it would be a good opportunity to try to get her son a job. So, Thalberg and Laemmle had a chat, but what happened next is reported a few different ways... If you can believe it. Some say that Laemmle offered him a secretary job, which Thalberg thought would be too easy, so he turned it down, others say he was simply offered a position, but Thalberg politely declined, while the book "Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince" from 2009 states that Laemmle did not offer him a job, despite their conversation seeming to go well.

Either way, it is agreed that Thalberg would next be seen by Laemmle at that New York office, where he was working as a secretary to Carl's assistant, D.B. Lederman. That book mentions he was proud that he had secured the job by applying for it rather than by nepotism, while other sources say Lederman knew that Laemmle had met and liked the guy, and that's why he hired him. Regardless, Carl would eventually appoint him to be his own secretary instead.

Just a quick background on Thalberg, he was born in 1899 with a congenital heart condition. Doctors didn’t expect him to live very long... Maybe only to age 30. He was physically fragile from childhood, and was often confined indoors, but that limitation shaped him. His mother insisted that he should still get a good education, and provided every opportunity for her son. While other children ran and played, Thalberg read, and he read a lot - not just to kill time, but to study. He analyzed the sentence structure of each author and how they approached storytelling, and developed an instinct for narrative that he would, SPOILER ALERT, use to later transform the film industry.

Okay, one of his first tasks while now working directly for Carl Laemmle was to go to Universal City in California to assess studio operations. Things were going well when Laemmle was there, but that wasn't adding up to what the bottom lime was showing. He needed Thalberg to go in as a newcomer and see what was really going on at the Studio, like a spy essentially. And what he found was... Let’s call it loosely structured: Poor coordination between New York and Los Angeles, factional leadership, declining film quality, and falling profits.

There wasn’t a clear production hierarchy at the studio. Films were underperforming, and budgets were slipping. Thalberg proposed centralizing production authority. He introduced cost controls, standardized workflows, and shifted creative power toward the producer. He became head of production just shy of his twenty-first birthday.

But, as time went on, tensions with Laemmle grew.

Universal's fragmented structure limited what Thalberg could accomplish. He wanted to focus on high-quality, feature-length films with big-name actors and show these films to larger theater chains; Laemmle refused, insisting that they continue their standard mixed slate of genre films and shorts for smaller, second-run theaters in rural locations. But Thalberg was driven and saw the potential, so he pushed forward despite pushback from Carl and produced The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the film that made Lon Chaney a star, and is considered by some film historians to be the first truly memorable Universal movie. Although Thalberg had proved his point, some say that Laemmle was annoyed that Thalberg went around him, and he was still not ready to budge on the need for innovation. 

We should point out that Recha, Carl Senior's wife and Carl Junior's mom, had died from what they were calling the Spanish Flu in January of 1919, and also sometime between 1919 and 1920, Thalberg and Rosabelle Laemmle, that's the daughter/sister to the Carls, had been romantically interested in one another. There are only rumors about what exactly happened there, but it did result in some tension among the families.

Thalberg Leaves for MGM, Laemmle Jr. Joins Universal

There are multiple justifications for it out there, whether it was an issue with his pay, his not having enough control at Universal, or a response to the Rosabelle situation, but Thalberg left Universal in early 1923. His final film there, Hunchback, officially released in the fall of that year and it ended up being one of Universal's biggest box office hits.

It was also this year, 1923, when Carl Laemmle Jr. would get his first producer credit, and he was only fifteen years old when the movie, named Trimmed in Scarlet, came out in April of that year. And, not really that important to the current story, but just to put some perspective on the timeline, Walt Disney would found his company just a few months later in October of 1923, but don't worry, he'll come back up again in a second.

Now, as for Thalberg, his direct contributions to Universal technically ended when he left. But, he would continue to innovate and push the entire industry forward. Thalberg went straight to working with Louis B. Mayer Productions, which in 1924 merged with Marcus Loew's Metro Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn's Goldwyn Pictures to form MGM. Mayer and Thalberg negotiated a profit-sharing agreement: Which meant if MGM succeeded, Thalberg succeeded, with his contract requiring that he would create at least fifteen films per year.

In November 1925, while overseeing the epic movie Ben-Hur, Thalberg suffered his first heart attack.

He recovered and went right back to work — maybe a little too quickly. Because if your doctors say "slow down" and your response is "produce more movies," that could become... an issue. But that just shows the drive, determination and passion he had for his movies. As MGM's success grew, Thalberg repeatedly asked for higher compensation — which would strain his relationship with MGM partner Louis B. Mayer.

In 1927, he would marry actress Norma Shearer, and by 1928, he was producing fifty-six films annually at MGM, up quite a bit from the fifteen minimum that he was contracted to create.

Leaving Their Marks on Universal

But as for leaving his mark on Universal, it was the success of Thalberg's last Universal film, Hunchback, that lead to the production of 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, which was also a huge success for the company. 

But, back to Universal, also in 1927, Carl Laemmle Sr. actually came up with the idea to have a rabbit cartoon character for some animated shorts, that idea would turn into a young Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks designing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. If that sounds familiar, we went into detail on this story in our episode from last December, Finding Walt: The Hidden Tributes to Disney's Founder in the Parks. There is some debate, but either Carl wanted to pay less for those cartoons, or the distributor just wanted to pay Walt less, but either way, Walt wouldn't accept a pay cut and was fired by Universal. That, of course lead to the development of Mickey Mouse and the Walt Disney Company as we know it today, so we can, maybe indirectly, thank Carl Laemmle for that.

Also, right here, we should mention some more about Carl's son, who again he was often referred to as Junior, a name which apparently he hated being called, but if he would have just stuck with Julius, it would make us talking about him over a hundred years later not have to rely on that moniker as the easiest way to differentiate between the two men, so I'm going to call him that, but I promise I have nothing but respect for him. But yeah, film historians like to point to 1928 as the year that Junior began really working with his father at Universal. He had grown up on the studio lot. He turned seven the year that the studios opened at Universal City, having been born in 1908 while his dad was running those 50 small movie theaters in the Chicago area. And by the time he was 21 in 1929, he was essentially given Thalberg's old title, making him "chief of production."

So in a way, Junior and Thalberg were in a competition at this point, which drove the entire industry forward.

While Thalberg was leading the production department at MGM how he wanted to, forever changing how movies were made, Junior worked to adjust the way Universal worked as well. Thalberg held script conferences and sometimes had multiple writers working on the same project. He treated the rough cut as a midpoint, not the finish line. He reedited films, recast roles, reshot scenes and pioneered advance audience previews to test reactions - going back to reshoots afterward, if necessary. All standard practices in the film industry today.

Over at Universal, the Laemmles began producing films with synchronized sound, starting with the re-release of a 1927 silent film named The Cat and the Canary reshot with another lead actress and renamed The Cat Creeps. By 1930, all of their films had sound, that was the same year that All Quiet on the Western Front became the first best picture award winner for the studio.

In 1931, Junior convinced his father that Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, was worth turning into a film after seeing the play starring Bela Lugosi. This decision lead to Junior producing the many more hit horror movies that Universal would become famous for, including The Mummy in 1931, Frankenstein in 1932, The Invisible Man in 1933, and Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. We went over some of these in a little more detail in our episode talking about make-up artist Jack Pierce back in September of last year.

Meanwhile, in 1932, Thalberg produced Grand Hotel — one of the first films to feature multiple major stars in interwoven storylines, which wasn't a standard practice at the time. He helped elevate stars like Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, and Joan Crawford. 

He was actually known for kind of casting stars in his films and creating "the movie star." Which is probably why, in the park, it says "Thalberg Talent Agency," so even though he didn't actually run a talent agency, he was casting actors into movies.

The End of an Era

But yeah,  in December of that year, Thalberg suffered another, more serious heart attack. This one forced an extended leave, where he traveled to Europe to recover. During his absence, Mayer reorganized MGM, dismantling the single production chief model and implementing a central producer system. When Thalberg returned in August 1933, he discovered he had been stripped of his title as vice president in charge of production. Whether intended to ease his workload or consolidate financial control, Thalberg saw it as a demotion. He was upset, but he remained at MGM, continuing to produce major films with the same rigor and ambition that had defined his career - only this time, among many other producers as his equals, and not as the only one running the department.

As for the Laemmle's, the Great Depression, which had started in 1929, was taking its toll on several Hollywood studios, and Universal was no different, by the mid-1930s movies were getting more expensive to make, and it was getting harder to make that money back. Early in 1935, Universal almost sold to Warner Bros. for $9 million, but Carl tried to raise the price by half a million, and the Warners backed out. Junior, though, continued to try to make bigger, and better movies, which eventually lead to the production of the film Show Boat. 

Down the road and around the corner from the buildings that we're talking about at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park today, there is a theater facade that has a poster in a window for Universal Picture's 1936 film Show Boat. This movie is considered significant because it is the reason why Carl Laemmle Jr. got his dad to take out a loan for $750,000 in 1935 from a wall street firm named Standard Capital. That loan's stipulation was that it needed to be paid back in 90 days, otherwise they, Standard Capital, would have the option to buy Universal for $5.5 million. There were two other films in production at the time, Magnificent Obsession and Sutter's Gold, that were already going over time and beyond their budget, so paying that money back on time didn't work out.

By March 15th, 1936, Carl Laemmle was no longer the owner of Universal. By April, after Show Boat was released, Junior requested to be released from his contract. Also in April, Senior would step down. Despite the fact that Show Boat went on to be hugely successful, neither of them would ever make another movie.

Meanwhile, on March 5th, 1936, ten days before Universal was sold, Irving Thalberg had won the Academy Award for Best Picture for his film Mutiny on the Bounty. This would be one of the few awards he would personally win. He is quoted as saying "Credit you give yourself is not worth having." As such, he was known for insisting that his name not be credited in any movies he produced. Thankfully, somebody kept track, and IMDb has a list of his accomplishments for us to acknowledge him by today.

But, it was just a few months later in September 1936, when Thalberg, who again, was never considered to be "healthy," became ill. The illness worsened into pneumonia, and he actually died at just thirty-seven years old.

Hollywood paused, literally. Every movie studio went dark for 5 minutes in tribute, including Universal under new management, and there were also many celebrities, movie personnel, and newspapers who shared in their grief by writing about how Thalberg impacted their careers and the movie industry as a whole.

A Lasting Legacy

His legacy lives on. Two years later, in 1938, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences created the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. It is not given every year — which I think makes it more meaningful. It's given only when the body of work for a producer, actor, writer, or any other movie-making personnel, meets the standard of consistent excellence by the academy's Board of Governors.

As of this recording in March of 2026, it has been awarded just thirty-nine times. Recipients include Walt Disney in 1941, Alfred Hitchcock in 1967, Steven Spielberg in 1986, and George Lucas in 1991 — filmmakers whose influence reshaped the cinematic landscape. Originally, the award took the form of a sculpted bust of Thalberg himself. That version was last presented in 2018 to Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. When the award was given again in 2024, the Academy transitioned it to the regular Oscar statuette — a change in form, but not in meaning.

Also, back in 1960, Thalberg received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7006 Hollywood Boulevard — directly in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. That hotel was completed in 1927 by a group that included Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Louis B. Mayer, and Joseph M. Schenck. It hosted the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Thalberg was a founding member of the Academy.

As for the Laemmles, like I said, they never made another movie. Junior had a producer job at MGM for a few months in 1937, but nothing ever came from it. In 1939, Senior died from cardiovascular disease at age 72, leaving his son the remainder of the $5 million from the buyout from Standard Capital. He lived the rest of his life at his home in Beverly Hills, he passed away in 1979 from a stroke, he was 71.

And, to not end on such a downer, starting in 2014, reports began to come out about how Carl Laemmle Sr. had actually spent 1936 to 1939 working to help German Jews escape Germany. The plaque at Laemmle Court in the park states that he is credited with sponsoring over 300 affidavits for people to come to the United States. I'm pretty sure it was also around that time when decisions were being made for who to honor with these buildings in the park, and I'm guessing that this news didn't hurt when it came to making the decision to include the Laemmle name in the park.

And well, those are the important details that we know about Carl Laemmle Sr. and Junior, as well as Irving Thalberg, but if there is anything we missed, please share what you know about them with us on our free private Facebook group Where In The Park Explorers.

And that wraps up this episode of the Where In The Park Podcast, this is Kevin signing off. Until next time, we’ll see you, somewhere in the park. Bye for now! 

 

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Articles Referenced:

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, and each is notated accordingly. If you click and make a purchase using these links, Where In The Park may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. These commissions are used to cover podcast operational costs. Thank you for your support!

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