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/. Cheever Cowdin, energetic chairman of the new Universale board of directors, whose financial group purchased the company late in 1935. Under his guidance the "U" banners have risen in a short space of time to high industry station and stability.
the river bank, between the electrical department and the scenario building. He followed that up by having a closed stage erected for trick photography. Then, on the back ranch, permanent sets began to take shape and Universal City assumed the appearance of a sample case of world architecture. Tree lined streets of New England houses stood side by side with dusty streets of false front Western shacks, New York tenements, European churches and chateaux, and the bazaars of the Orient. To make the scene more like a Welsh rabbit dream, elephants, lions, camels and leopards roamed these streets as freely as pet cats and dogs, fed and pampered by the players and directors.
These domesticated beasts were residents
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of the Universal zoo, largest in the industry. When the talkies came, a decade and a half later, the menagerie proved too expensive to keep up ... it represented an investment of $600,000 . . . and the jungle citizens were sold. But at one time, it housed 30 lions and lionesses, 10 leopards, half a dozen elephants and camels and scores of monkeys, including Joe Martin, the famous chimpanzee actor. Charles W. Murphy was the Noah of this dry land Ark for 18 years.
While the Universal wonderland was growing, business was going on there as usual all the time. More than 50 pictures were shot before the official opening. This was set for March 15 th, 1915. Posters blazoned the event in every railroad station in America months before it took place. Advertisements heralded it in the key newspapers. A special train from New York, picked up exhibitors all along the route. At Denver, Buffalo Bill got aboard. Twenty thousand people were on hand to watch Universal City's police chief, Laura Oakley, the only woman police chief the West had known up till then, hand Carl Laemmle the golden key to the city. He unlocked the big front gate as The Star Spangled Banner was played by a big brass band and the banner itself run up to the peak of a tall flagpole. More than 250 pictures were shot at the studio that first year. Two years later, 42 companies were working at once there and between 25 and 30 were operating on a regular weekly schedule.
Between those two dates, the growing prestige of Universal was beginning to attract the great names of the entertainment world to the motion picture lots. In 1916, Anna Pavlowa, the famous Russian dancer came to Universal City for her screenplay, "The Dumb Girl of Portici" which marked the cinema debuts of Lois
The Film Daily Cavalcade