Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy

by Debra Ann Pawlak

  The younger Grauman left Alaska in 1900 traveling south to San Francisco where he once again teamed up with his father. It was there that they discovered moving pictures at the Cinemagraph Theater, San Francisco’s first movie house. Sid Grauman was so impressed with the place, he took a job there selling tickets. His boss gave him fair warning: “Don’t let even the wind get by without a ticket!”

  Before long, he and his father financed a theater of their own, The Unique, located on Market Street. They set up hundreds of kitchen chairs along with a piano and held fifteen shows daily—a blend of live performances and single reel films. Actors took their meals onstage right in front of the audience to avoid disrupting the schedule. Even then, Grauman had an eye for talent, hiring movie-mogul-to-be Jesse L. Lasky to play the cornet and future movie star Al Jolson to sing.

  The Unique Theater was so successful that the Graumans built a second cinema, The Lyceum. The two theaters were popular venues among the locals until the devastating earthquake of 1906 shook things up. The theaters along with most of the city were flattened, and what remained standing was severely damaged. Never one to give in, Sid Grauman believed that, in the midst of tragedy, entertainment was more important than ever. Just days after the earthquake, he raised a large tent, which had been used for revival meetings, where The Unique once stood. Under the big top, he installed old church pews. Holding 3,000 people, Grauman’s National Theater brought movies back to San Francisco with a banner proclaiming: “Nothing to fall on you except canvas!”

  Each day, thousands of people came to the makeshift theater seeking short-term relief from their troubles. The soft-sided cinema remained in continuous operation for the next two years. To the locals, Grauman was a hero. He even received a commendation from the city for aiding public morale during the disaster. Sid Grauman always had a knack for endearing himself to the people who surrounded him and he certainly knew how to put on a helluva show.

  While the Graumans were searching for Alaskan gold, Harry Warner was fixing shoes and selling bicycles in Ohio. Born on December 12, 1881 in Krasnashiltz, Poland—at the time a Russian province—Warner’s parents, Benjamin and Pearl Wonskolaser, named their first son Hirsch Moses. Benjamin, a cobbler, found it hard to live and support his family under the unrelenting threat of overbearing Cossacks. He made a difficult decision and left for America without his family hoping life might be better there. Taking the new last name of Warner, he arrived in Baltimore and opened a shoe repair shop. One year later, he had saved enough money to send for his family. That’s when Hirsch Moses, newly arrived in America, became Harry Morris Warner.

  As the Warner family grew, cobbling shoes no longer provided a steady enough income. Benjamin went on the road attempting to sell pots and pans while Pearl and Harry minded the shoe shop. The traveling peddler business didn’t live up to Benjamin’s financial expectations so he made another daring move. He left the shoe business behind, packed up his family and, with a horse and a wagon, headed north to Canada. There, he found fur trappers willing to trade their pelts for supplies. What should have been a prosperous business turned into a disaster when a dishonest partner stole all the furs, leaving the hardworking Warners destitute. They had no choice but to return to Baltimore and once again fix shoes.

  By now, fifteen-year-old Harry and his twelve-year-old brother Abe had become pretty good cobblers themselves. With two sons to work with, Benjamin decided to leave Baltimore in 1896 and try his luck in Youngstown, Ohio. The shoe business was good, but with nine children to care for (including four-year-old Jack who was born in London, Ontario, Canada in 1892 during the fur-trading days), the Warners needed more. They expanded their business to include groceries and meat. At long last, the tide of instability turned and the family’s finances improved. In 1899, Harry and Abe ventured out with their very own bicycle shop.

  In 1904, the Warner Brothers, Harry, Abe and now Sam, had a chance to buy a projector. Dazzled by the possibilities that moving pictures might offer, they pooled their resources. Even their father contributed after pawning his watch and faithful old horse. The projector came with one reel of film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), a groundbreaking western by early filmmaker Edwin S. Porter.

  Within 800 feet of film, Porter sequenced together several scenes that told a complete and true story in ten minutes. He included a daring robbery, a thrilling chase and a gripping shoot-out—still staples of all good westerns. Porter even incorporated a revolutionary closeup of a six-shooter that appeared to fire straight into the shocked audience. Paying patrons flocked to see all the action and for the first time it was apparent to the Warners that these moving pictures might just have some big business potential. Harry and his two siblings temporarily rented an empty store in Niles, Ohio and played to sell-out crowds making $300 the first week the film rolled, which is the equivalent of more than $7,000 today.

  While Harry tried to find a more permanent place to house their burgeoning business, brothers Sam and Abe went on the road. They traveled around Pennsylvania and Ohio until the reel of film literally wore out. Back home, Harry sold the bicycle shop when he found a former penny arcade in Newcastle to rent long-term. They built a stand for the projector and then painted the opposite wall white. All they needed now were seats. No problem. The innovative brothers visited the funeral parlor next door where they persuaded the undertaker to loan them 99 chairs. The Cascade Theater held its first showing on May 28, 1905.

  While Harry took care of the business, Abe and Sam manned the projector and carefully handled the nitrate films. Younger brother Jack was brought in to sing and recite poetry in between showings, which guaranteed the audience’s quick exit making room for the next group. Their venture was a huge success, but Harry was always thinking.

  Renting movies one at a time from the actual filmmakers was expensive and finding good movies was even harder. Abe Warner described what happened next:

  One day a man came around and told us he was getting twenty representative theater owners to pay him a hundred dollars each for ten weeks’ supply of films—twenty reels. Well, we gave him the hundred dollars each and got our films. It was a good plan and it worked. Everyone was satisfied, you see, and at the end of ten weeks the man still had his twenty reels of film that he could take to another territory and begin all over again.

  Harry soon realized that more money could be made renting movies than showing them. He sent Abe and Sam to New York instructing them to buy films—as many as they could. There, the two brothers met Marcus Loew who owned several successful movie theaters. Loew never rented films, he bought them and once he was done running the reels, he simply stored them in trunks. For $500, Loew sold three trunks filled with film to the Warners.

  The brothers’ next stop was Pittsburgh where they opened The Duquesne Amusement Supply Company, the first official film exchange, or distribution center, in the country. Harry, now married to a woman named Rea Ellen Levinson, stayed in Newcastle to run the theater while Abe and Sam manned the exchange. A bitterly disappointed Jack was sent back to his father’s house in Youngstown to help mind the family store. He desperately wanted to be with his brothers, especially Sam, but Harry gave the orders—something Jack resented for all of his days.

  Harry, however, had good business sense and knew what he was doing. The exchange was so successful, bringing in about $2500 weekly, that Harry sold The Cascade in 1909. He then opened a second exchange in Norfolk, Virginia and this time gave a happy Jack the position of Sam’s assistant while Abe remained in Pittsburgh. The Warner Brothers, with Harry at the helm and Jack bringing up the rear, were finally on track to a future with unlimited potential.

  Like the Warner family, Jacob and Sarah Meir were originally from Russia where they were married in 1874. The Jewish couple had three children, Yetta, Ida and their first-born son Lazar. Later in life, when Lazar turned into Louis (pronounced the French way “Louie”), he would claim that his birthday was July 4, 1885, but his father reported it as July 12, 1884.
Either way, the boy grew to be his mother’s favorite.

  By 1886, the Meirs were one of many Jewish families who left their homeland to escape the oppressive Russians after they had enacted a series of severely anti-Semitic laws including the forced conscription of at least one boy from every Jewish family. The Meirs fled to England and then to Ireland before finally coming to America and settling in Long Island. There, Jacob, a small man with a big temper, worked as a peddler/junk dealer for the next few years and Americanized the family name to Mayer. In New York, the couple had two more sons, Rubin and Gershon. Moving from the east coast, the Mayers migrated to St. John, New Brunswick near the Bay of Fundy. The exact reason why they headed north is unclear. Some say that Jacob’s temper got him into a spot of trouble with the law. Crossing the border may have been his version of the “get out of jail free” card.

  Once in Canada, Jacob continued collecting and selling unwanted items. He even salvaged shipwrecked objects that found their way to shore. Eventually, the Mayers became Canadian citizens and Lazar, now using the name Louis, attended school. He also helped his father in the scrap business, by collecting bits and pieces of metal. By 1899, young Louis Mayer was doing a lot of Jacob’s legwork. Then the boy got arrested for running a business without a license. As it turned out, Louis wasn’t even old enough to hold a license. Upon hearing that the lad was simply trying to support his family, the judge assigned to the case helped Jacob obtain a license and legally hire his son so that everything was on the up and up. In his down time, Jacob’s eldest son escaped the daily drudgery by visiting the local theater—a place he found fascinating.

  In early 1904, as Sid Grauman was opening up a movie theater in San Francisco and Harry Warner was acquiring his first projector, Mayer left his father and struck out on his own. He traveled to Boston where he met bookkeeper Margaret Shenberg, three years his senior and the daughter of a kosher butcher/cantor. The couple married on June 14, 1904 and Louis, like his father, went into the junk business. Their first daughter, Edith, was born the following year. Shortly after, the young family moved to Brooklyn where a second daughter, Irene, joined them in 1907—a momentous year for the Mayers.

  Intrigued by flickers and the fact that patrons were willing to part with a nickel to see one, Mayer changed professions. He found an empty, rundown theater called The Gem in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Years later, Mayer recalled: “What I saw in front of me wasn’t that dingy theater. I saw what it could become, and I convinced Margaret that I knew what I was doing.”

  With financial help from his siblings, he leased the place. It took several weeks and a lot of elbow grease to clean up the 600-seat theater, but Mayer opened it on Thanksgiving Day in 1907 with a mix of motion pictures and live vaudeville acts. Renamed The Orpheum Theater, Mayer declared that his establishment had only “high class film” and “refined amusement.” He also picked up a middle name—Bert—a common thing for immigrants to do in those days. He must have liked the way it sounded and later admitted that he enjoyed being called “L.B.”

  The first actual feature shown in the updated theater was a film by Pathé called The Passion Play (1903). This biblical movie covered the entire life of Christ in about 27 scenes beginning with the angel’s appearance to the Virgin Mary and ending with Christ’s ascension into heaven. Mayer’s biggest concern was whether the audience would sit through such a long film—two reels worth instead of one. He needn’t have worried. Coinciding with Christmas and accompanied by a series of religious slides and hymns, the show was a holiday hit. Crowd-pleasing seemed to come natural for the man who once sold junk.

  With Margaret keeping the books and Mayer in charge of everything else, the theater flourished. He even took a chance and doubled, sometimes tripled general ticket prices to 10 or 15 cents. Moviegoers were not deterred by the increases and Mayer’s theater evolved into a local hotspot. After a weeklong closure due to further remodeling in 1908, he reopened the theater as The New Orpheum and was finally able to move his family into a nicer home.

  To ensure the continued success of his business, Mayer hobnobbed with Haverhill’s upper echelon. His name appeared in the paper. He spoke to civic groups assuring them that movies were not immoral, but wholesome family entertainment to be enjoyed not feared. In the process of selling himself and his theater, he also captured a spot in the city’s social registrar. Louis B. Mayer was in his element—a celebrated member of the community who ran the show.

  By 1908, about 8,000 neighborhood movie theaters had opened throughout the country. That equated to a sharp rise in patrons, who could now go see a show whenever they wanted to, which also meant a huge demand for new films. Multiple film production companies popped up around the nation, but the most successful ones were located on the east coast—primarily New York and New Jersey—not far from America’s very first movie studio built by inventor Thomas Edison on the grounds of his laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. New York provided the big city backdrop while New Jersey offered more scenic locations for filming. Situated within the same proximity, early filmmakers traveled between both to make movies that required the hustle and bustle of a sophisticated metropolis and/or the serenity of a picturesque countryside.

  Several of the larger film companies such as The Edison Manufacturing Company in New Jersey and The American Mutoscope Company along with the American Vitagraph Company in New York were embroiled in a number of heated legal battles involving patents. The underlying issue was control of the film process itself. No one wanted to back down; they knew that film was here to stay. The long drawn-out fight finally ended when they all joined together forming The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), or “The Trust”—a fancy name for a movie monopoly.

  The Trust permitted only certain producers to make films with approved equipment while The Eastman Kodak Company only sold film to Trust members. All other filmmakers were considered renegades and their movies illegal. In addition, the MPPC was not above using violence to get their point across, foreshadowing the years of mobsters and hired goons that were to come—not the best circumstances for creativity to flourish.

  A few venturous souls headed west taking their production companies with them. California with its fair weather, sparkling sun and magnificent landscapes had a certain appeal—especially for flickers shot outdoors. The thousands of miles that distanced the west and east coasts, and the bitter corporate rivalries, didn’t seem so bad either.

  As for that sleepy little town called Hollywood, it was about to wake up with a bang.

  Chapter Two

  WELCOME TO HOLLYWOOD!

  The first American movie studio traces back to inventor Thomas Edison and West Orange, New Jersey. Located on the grounds where his laboratory stood, “The Revolving Photograph Building,” formally known as The Kinetographic Theater, opened in early 1893 for film production. The structure itself was nothing to brag about and certainly not user-friendly. The odd-shaped building was completely covered with black tar paper on the outside and painted black on the inside. This dismal venue caused some members of Edison’s staff to dub the place “The Black Maria”—a slang term of the period that referred to a police paddy wagon, also black and uninviting.

  Pronounced “muh-rye-uh,” the working studio sat upon large rollers and had a hinged roof that opened to the sun through a series of ropes, pulleys and weights. As the angle of sunlight shifted throughout the day, the entire building also rotated ensuring that there was always enough light for filming. Early flickers made at The Black Maria included such simple actions as sneezing and kissing—not on the same reel, of course. Edison also hired circus performers, vaudeville acts and sparsely costumed dancers, who jumped, gyrated and jiggled their way around the stage while a large wooden camera called a Kinetograph caught all the action. Filming even included a couple of boxing matches, the second of which was fought inside the studio on September 7, 1894. Boxing Champion James J. Corbett knocked out his opponent Peter Courtney in front of the camera.

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p; As flickers grew in popularity, other production companies began to surface, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Then the complicated patent problems emerged. With their work negatively impacted, some early filmmakers, like David Horsley, took their business elsewhere. Prior to Horsley’s move, several film companies, including The Selig Polyscope Company, set up shop in the Los Angeles area. Other companies, such as Biograph and its pioneer producer/director D. W. Griffith, sent units out west to take advantage of the mild weather and spectacular scenery. Until Horsley, however, none of them had established a permanent studio in Hollywood.

  Horsley originally founded the Centaur Film Manufacturing Company in Bayonne, New Jersey along with partner Charles Gorman in 1907. They chose the name “Centaur” because it referred to the mythological creature who was half-man half-horse. After four years of struggling under the thumb of The Trust, Horsley knew that survival in the business meant relocation. He thought Florida would work, but one of his directors, Al Christie, disagreed. He suggested California. Two fair-minded businessmen, they flipped a coin. Christie won.

  Packing up and heading west, The Centaur Film Manufacturing Company became The Nestor Motion Picture Company. Nestor of Gerenia was another figure from mythology—the Greek king of Pylos who led his people to victory during the Trojan War. In 1911, Horsley’s outfit became the first motion picture studio to take up permanent residence in the boondocks of Hollywood. He housed his fledgling film company in the former Blondeau Tavern on the corner of Sunset and Gower. For $30 a month, he rented not only the pub, but also the stables and carriage house. The tavern garden served as his back lot. With a weekly budget of $1200, the company averaged three films every seven days—a comedy, a western and an “eastern” or drama. Al Christie was in charge of the comedies and also served as overall manager for the company.