Fiddlers on the Roof: The Laemmles Bring Art-House Movies to Angelenos

Motion picture buffs probably know something about Carl Laemmle (1867-1939), the German-born Hollywood producer who helped found and run Universal Studios.  In 1915, he opened the world’s largest movie production facility in what has come to be called Studio City, just over the Cahuenga Pass from Hollywood, California. As a producer he was chiefly known for classic silent and early sound horror flicks, among them Dracula and Frankenstein (both 1931). As everybody’s “Uncle Carl,” he was later revered for saving scores of family members and one-time Jewish neighbors from the Nazis by sponsoring their emigration to the U.S.

 There’s a venerable movie theatre on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Los Angeles that devotes one lobby wall to memorabilia from the life and career of Carl Laemmle. That’s not surprising, because the Royal is the flagship of the Laemmle theatre-chain, known throughout the L.A. area for presenting independent and foreign-language movies that might well be overlooked by big multiplexes where the Hollywood studios have box-office clout. (The official Laemmle Theatre motto is “Not afraid of subtitles.”) The Laemmle chain was founded in 1938 by Kurt and Max Laemmle, cousins of Carl and themselves immigrants from Germany. In the early 1970s, when my boss Roger Corman decided to distribute Ingmar Bergman’s extraordinary Cries and Whispers and Federico Fellini’s delightful Amarcord to American audiences, I remember Max and his son Robert showing up at a local screening-room to check out the films and help make plans for their local and national release. No question: these guys really loved films by European masters. Over the years they introduced to L.A. audiences such super-hits as La Cage aux Folles, as well as offbeat films by Martin Scorsese and other American talents.

 The Laemmle chain is still very much an all-in-the-family venture, now headed by Robert’s son Greg. He has presided over the theatres in a difficult era, coping with the challenges posed by streaming and (yes!) the pandemic, a time when public venues like movie houses were closed for over a year. Probably to raise everyone’s spirits, Greg and company kept updating the Royal’s pandemic-era marquee, using actual movie titles to comment on the situation. Films that were supposedly “now playing” included Mask and Requiem for a Dream, while among the promised films that were “coming soon” was The Awakening.    

 Today Greg Laemmle, who just prior to the pandemic had seriously considered selling the theatre chain, continues to run it. Which means that art-film lovers across the L.A. megalopolis can still feast their eyes on foreign movies, quirky movies, and the occasional revival of a golden oldie. Following some pandemic-related adjustments, there are now seven locations throughout SoCal, including my beloved Monica Film Center, where the Laemmles annually screen Fiddler on the Roof on Christmas eve. (Costumes are encouraged, and everyone is invited to sing along.)

 A fairly new feature of Laemmle World is a video podcast, “Inside the Arthouse,” which offers an insider’s perspective on today’s art cinema. It’s co-hosted by Greg Laemmle and veteran actor Raphael Sbarge, who has recently turned to directing. (His 2019 documentary, Foodways, was nominated for an Emmy.) Sbarge’s 2022 documentary, Only in Theaters, chronicles the story of the Laemmle Theater chain, with special attention to those tough pandemic years. For me there’s a quiet personal joke in Sbarge’s deep involvement with the Laemmle theatres. Back in 1993, he starred for Roger Corman in a gory but lucrative creature-feature, Carnosaur, which was explicitly designed (how well I remember!) to beat Spielberg’s Jurassic Park into theatres. That’s one Corman movie I suspect never played on a Laemmle screen. 

 

A is for Avatar

I’m one of those unfortunate people who sometimes have trouble getting to sleep. When I do, I have some quiet games I play inside my head. They’re so boring that they usually manage to send me off to slumberland. Though I sometimes try to name, in order, all the teachers I’ve had from kindergarten onward (yawn), my games usually have something to do with movies.

A favorite involves listing all the movies I can think of that bear single-word titles. Working my way through the alphabet, I’ve discovered that the letter A is a great source of terse, evocative titles for action films like Avatar, Alien, Aliens, and Armageddon. And how can I forget Adventureland, Airport, Airplane!, Arachnophobia, Atonement, and Awakenings? Not to mention Aladdin, Anastasia, and Arthur? What is it about the letter A that encourages such a wealth of movie titles? Well, for one thing, in commerce it’s always a good idea to place yourself at the beginning of the alphabet. And there are so many intriguing polysyllabic words that kick off with an A. Isn’t your curiosity more piqued by the words above than by vague and sappy titles like As Good as It Gets? Admittedly, As Good As It Gets was a truly delightful film, but I always struggle to remember it by name. For me, it will always be “that romantic comedy starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and a dog.” As opposed to Something to Talk About (aka “that romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts”) or Something’s Gotta Give (aka “that romantic comedy starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton”).

Roger Corman too seems to have discovered the magic A, as his science-fiction film Android and his disaster flick Avalanche attest. But his decisions about titles have often stemmed from the hope that moviegoers will confuse his movie with one that’s better known. In 1974, when he imported a Franco-Czech animated feature, La Planète Sauvage, he chose as an English-language title Fantastic Planet, to deliberately remind viewers of both Fantastic Voyage and Forbidden Planet. A Corman movie about mayhem in the world of strippers was called Stripped to Kill, not coincidentally a variation on Brian De Palma’s sexy thriller, Dressed to Kill.

Roger, in the days when I worked for him, knew full well that his audiences craved films that promised sex and violence. The word “blood” was always effective, which is why Don “The Dragon” Wilson starred in nine (count ‘em) martial-arts movies entitled Bloodfist. (Yes, Don was a real-life kickboxer, but you wouldn’t want to see a movie called Bloodfoot.) Another great word, of course, was “naked,” and so we called one of our erotic thrillers Naked Obsession. Our films always had a certain similarity, and I admit that in my own mind it’s hard to separate Naked Obsession from Midnight Tease, though I only appeared in the latter.

Roger knew full well that, just as everyone judges a book by its cover art, so everyone judges a movie by its poster and its title. When Steven Spielberg’s screen version of Jurassic Park was still in production, Roger decided it was high time to make his own epic about dinosaurs running amok in the modern world. Remarkably, he shelled out good money for a novel to use as the basis for his film. It was written by the pseudonymous Henry Adam Knight, actually a well-established author who chose a pen name with the initials HAK to comment on the literary merits of this potboiler. I can attest that the novel’s contents were practically useless for our purposes. But we capitalized on its terrific title: Carnosaur.