Universal Appeal

Universal's centenary logo redesign

 As the oldest of the surviving movie studios hit its centenary, WWTW traces Universal’s illustrious history and finds out how the small fish in a big pond grew into a cinematic great white.

 A group of teenagers sit by a night-time campfire on the beach, drinking, smoking and laughing. A young couple quietly slip out from the main group and run along the dunes. When they are far away they start tearing off their clothes and head towards the water. The man, too drunk to continue, falls to the ground, murmuring to himself. The girl, naked and carefree, goes in the water alone. As she swims, enjoying the cool Atlantic water, something below begins to stir. The girl lets out a piercing scream as she is viciously yanked down from beneath the inky surface. She writhes in pain and the ocean froths and turns blood red. The boy, still slumped on the beach, is too drunk to hear the screams and lays motionless as the girl is dragged down to the depths, never to resurface.
                                                                                       

The opening to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one of the most memorable scenes in cinema’s history, shocking and thrilling audiences upon its release in 1975. Raking in over $470 million at the worldwide box office, it became the highest grossing movie of its time and forever changed movie making in Hollywood. It also reignited the cinematic fortunes of Universal, a studio celebrating its centenary this year. Whilst a world famous brand in big-budget cinema today, in the mid-70s, the studio had fallen by the wayside and was specialising, primarily, in cheap TV production. Perhaps it was fitting that it was Jaws – a brilliantly crafted monster movie – that catapulted Universal back to the forefront of cinema. Why? Because it was the monster movies that sealed Universal’s success in its early years.

Early Years

Founded in 1912 by German-Jewish immigrant Carl Laemmle, Universal was a relatively minor studio until it unearthed the lucrative market of horror and monster movies in the 1930s. Famous for its nepotism (it is rumoured that at one point Laemmle had 70 of his relatives on the Universal payroll), it was Laemmle’s son and successor who converted the small studio into one that could compete with the big guns like Warner Brothers, MGM and RKO. Michael Mallory, author of Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror, says it was Carl Laemmle Jr.’s love of horror that changed everything. “Junior, as he was commonly known, had a fondness for horror properties and heavily invested in the supernatural. He was particularly interested in Dracula, in part because it was a Broadway hit at the time.”

Laemmle Jr. brought Bram Stoker’s supernatural chiller to the big screen, which turned out to be a great success. Mallory is certain that Dracula’s triumph was the catalyst for Universal Horror; “The success of Dracula, obviously, led to Frankenstein (1931). Had Dracula bombed, I doubt there would have been Universal Horror.”

It was a fool proof strategy: horror movies were cheap, easy to make and followed a set formula. The studio quickly established their name as the horror specialists, soon releasing two sequels to Frankenstein as well as The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941).

Inevitably, the horror bubble burst when audiences became disillusioned with the monotony. Numbers waned and the Laemmle family became financially irresponsible and lost control of the studio. With a new board in place, “The New Universal” brand was born. This Universal had successes in the shape of comedy duo Abbot and Costello with films such as Buck Privates (1941) and The Time of Their Lives (1946). Yet it was signing of Alfred Hitchcock who briefly brought the scare factor back in the 50s when he made The Birds (1952).

Hitchcock and Hedren

Like the audience of the 30s, Universal was once again terrifying people back into the cinema. Trippi Hedren was cast in the lead role and it was one of Universal’s most successful films of the 50s. Reminiscent of old horror, but with a modern twist, The Birds is a typical, psychological Hitchcockian masterpiece. It revolves around a small town in California that inexplicitly comes under attack from murderous birds.

Whilst a seamless cinematic feat on the surface, the success of this film obscured the seedy underbelly of its production and the, reportedly, sadistic shoot that Hitchcock put Hedren through. The experience ended her career before it had really begun.

Still unknown, Hedren had been handpicked by Hitchcock after he saw her in an advert for a diet drink. But that was where where the fairy tale ended. One of the film’s collaborators said Hitchcock reran her screen test over and over again, “quivering with lust” and his treatment of her was described as “borderline sexual harassment”, foreshadowing the perverse production process yet to come.

Even so, it started innocuously enough, with Hedren describing the initial shooting as, “wonderful.” She had developed a fond relationship with the trained birds used on set. “I became quite fond of the birds,” Hedren said in an interview in 2008 with The Times. “One was so nice Hitch couldn’t put him in the movie because he wasn’t aggressive. He’d come hopping up the steps of my dressing room, play with my make-up and sit on my shoulder.”

Hitchcock with a couple of birds
(sexism of this kind was forgivable in the 50s).

But as the shoot progressed, Hitchcock became more tyrannical, both professionally and in his personal life. During the scene when Hedren is attacked by birds in the attic – one of the last scenes to be shot – Hedren was assaulted by real birds when she had previously told that models would be used. “Those birds pecked – I’d seen what had happened to the trainers. They tied the birds to me with elastic bands. They hurled birds at me. One of the birds tied on my shoulder only just missed scraping its claw into my eye. I shouted, ‘Get these birds off me’ and I sat in the middle of the sound-stage and cried.” By the end of the scene Hedren was so exhausted and traumatised that she fell unconscious. She recalls that it was at that moment that her ostensibly fortuitous break in being cast as the protagonist became clear: “I realised that Hitch had chosen [me] because no famous actress in their right mind would have done this movie.”

As well as putting her through physical hardship, Hitchcock’s desire for Hedren was turning sinister. “It was the start of an obsession. He watched me all the time. He really wanted to control my life.” The sexual advances of her director became so strong that the actress wanted out of the contract. Hitchcock refused to release her and only made one more movie with her, Marnie (1964). By the time she was freed from Hitchcock’s contractual clutches, she was no longer considered “hot property” in Hollywood and her career as a lead actress was effectively over.

The age of television

But these scandals behind the scenes soon became the least of Universal’s worries. By the late 50s a new threat had started to emerge in the entertainment industry; the television. As mass audiences drifted away from cinemas, the old Hollywood struggled to keep up with changing technology, resulting in huge revenue losses and the break-up of the classical Hollywood studio system. However, whilst its competitors were battling with the changing landscape, film scholar Dr Warren Buckland believes Universal had an ace up its sleeve. “[Universal’s] speedy production of low grade formulaic films was ideally suited to TV production. Universal established the blueprint for TV production when the classical film production methods dissolved.” Low budget westerns, comedies and melodramas rolled off the TV production line and into the homes of millions of Americans.

Trucking hell!

Television dominated Universal’s output for 15 years. From this fertile small-screen expansion a young Steven Spielberg emerged. At 20 he had directed episodes of Columbo and at 22 he made the TV movie Duel (1972), which was so good it subsequently received a cinematic release. Buckland says Duel’s theatrical success was because of the vision of its director. “This could have been a routine TV movie, soon to be forgotten. Instead, Spielberg turned what is basically one long chase scene into a tense, pared down thriller. He reduces the thriller format down into its two essential effects: mystery and suspense.”

Three years later Spielberg would change the landscape of film forever with Jaws. Later, in an interview with TCM, the director said the reason he thought he would be good for the job was because it was “Duel with a shark.”

The film is now credited with creating the phenomenon of the summer blockbuster, but shooting wasn’t always smooth sailing. The production team encountered numerous problems with the mechanical shark. “One of the reasons there is so little shark and so much water [on screen],” the director said, “is because there was so little shark to work with. It never quite got out of its dressing room on time.” Spielberg realised he was had to greatly reduce the amount of scene time the shark was due to appear in. “Plan B was basically to make the film as scary as I possibly could by suggesting the shark without having to show the shark.”

Despite the technical difficulties encountered, the final result was ground-breaking and made audience everywhere dread the murky depths of the ocean. Soon other studios were following Universal’s lead, releasing action- heavy adventure films, filled with special effects and promoted by hugely expensive advertising campaigns. Universal had further blockbusting successes with Spielberg throughout the 80s and 90s with E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993), both of which became the highest-grossing films of their time. He also directed the harrowing holocaust film Schindler’s List (1993) with Universal, a film that would go on to win Spielberg the Best Director award and Universal the Best Picture award at the 1994 Oscars.

Even without Spielberg, Universal had critical and commerical triumphs in the shape of the Saturday Night Live comedy spin-off The Blues Brothers (1980), Vietnam drama Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and the Back to the Future franchise (1985-89).

Multimedia expansion

However the media landscape is never a static one. Since the break-up of the classical studio system in the 50s, every movie studio in Hollywood had lost their independence and become part of larger conglomerates. But the time the 90s came along movie studios were being bought and sold by mega-multinationals like regular people purchase milk. These enormous conglomerates - along with owning film production - would synchronise soundtracks, merchandise, video games and other assorted tie-ins that could be marketed alongside a new film releases to maximise profits. Universal was no exception to these takeovers and throughout the 90s and into the new millennium it changed hands many times. From 1990 up until 2010 it was bought, and subsequently sold, by Matsushita (parent company of Panisonic), Canadian distiller Seagram, French media giant Vivendi, and then General Electric – who also own NBC – and the resulting media arm became known as NBCUniversal. In January 2011 GE sold 51% of the company to Comcast, the USA’s largest cable television provider, in a merger that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts described as creating "the ideal entertainment and distribution company."

While the movie studio has been passed around like a canapé tray at a cocktail party, it has still found time to produce movies, heavily focusing on its formulaic, money making franchises such as The Fast and the Furious (2001-2011), American Pie (1999-2012) and the Bourne Identity series (2002-2012). Universal also have plans to release further installments to franchises like Jurassic Park, Despicable Me and the Pitch Black series. It seems that, just like with the 30s horror movies, when they find a formula that works, they stick with it as long as they can.

To tie in with its 100th birthday the studio is rereleasing 13 of its most famous films for the first time on Blu-Ray including Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Buck Privates, Jaws, The Birds and Schindler’s List.

 Here’s to another 100 years.