Studio Famous for Silent Classics, Horror Films

The Universal Studios lot, which suffered major damage in a spectacular blaze Tuesday night, was part of Hollywood’s oldest surviving studio--first built in 1915 on the site of a chicken farm by Carl Laemmle, a German immigrant who made the studio a major force in the industry.

Laemmle founded the Universal Films Manufacturing Co. on the site in the Cahuenga Pass, then an expanse of dry meadows. In its first year, the studio produced more than 250 silent films.

In an announcement to a group of theater owners as the lot opened, Laemmle proclaimed a philosophy of filmmaking that would characterize Universal for 75 years:

“See how we blow up bridges, burn down houses, wreck automobiles and smash things in general in order to give people of the world the kind of pictures they demand.”

Among the early silent classics filmed at the studio were “The Phantom of the Opera” in 1925, and the silent 1923 version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” for which a large facade of the famed cathedral was constructed on the lot. Both films starred Lon Chaney.

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi haunted the lot in the 1930s, as Universal produced a series of early horror classics--including “Dracula” and “Frankenstein.”

Later, the studio lot was the site for many of the comedies of Abbott and Costello and more horror classics, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

A parade of stars regularly visited the studio commissary in the 1940s and 50s, including Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster and Rock Hudson.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, after being purchased by MCA Inc., the studio cranked out segments of such television series as “Adam-12,” “McMillan and Wife” and “McCloud.”

The Universal Studios Tour opened in the summer of 1964, with two trams and a 280-person daily capacity. Then, for an admission charge of $6.50, a couple with one child could see an Edith Head fashion show, a makeup demonstration, a stunt fight, back lot streets and Frankenstein’s monster.

Later, the tour included the original Norman Bates home from the film “Psycho” and the suburban television home of the Cleaver clan.

In one memorable tour mishap in 1973, the “Adam-12” squad car was accidently engulfed in water while cruising through a park attraction depicting the “parting of the Red Sea.”

The studio tour became one of the nation’s largest and most popular amusement parks in the 1980s.

About 5 million people took the tour in 1989, when the price of a ticket for a single adult hit $21.