Let's Thank Universal Pictures for Monster Movies!

Stuff You Should Know

The episode explores the cinematic history and enduring legacy of Universal Pictures' classic monster movies. The hosts trace the studio's o

Key takeaways

• Carl Lamley founded the predecessor to Universal Pictures in 1906 with a Chicago Nickelodeon.
• The 'star system' was pioneered by Lamley Sr. through a publicity campaign for actress Florence Lawrence.

Main topics

• History of Universal Pictures
• Universal Monster Canon

Notable quotes

It was really the 1930s when we got Draculas and Frankensteins and mummies and wolf men and stuff like that, that things really kicked off.

Conclusion

A nostalgic deep dive into how early studio innovations created the fo

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Speaker 2 (0:16) Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry Gould-Roland is here with us, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, kicking off the great month of October. That's right. One of our Speaker 3 (0:29) favorite months. I just watched Backrooms last night. Didn't you tell me to see that? Speaker 2 (0:34) Yeah, what did you think? Speaker 3 (0:36) You know, I thought it was kind of cool while I was watching it, but it's one of those movies where after when I thought about it, I really didn't like it very much. Huh. Speaker 2 (0:45) What didn't you like about it? Speaker 3 (0:47) It ended up like I liked it. I thought it was cool looking and like had a lot of cool stuff. But afterward, I was like, it felt like just some kid had a bunch of cool ideas that didn't end up making a movie. And then when I read the background of the movie, I was like, oh, that's kind of exactly what it was. Speaker 2 (1:05) I yeah, I guess I didn't take it like that at all. I just enjoyed it on its face. I wasn't aware of like the. mythology behind it and everything like that, which apparently it built on pretty well. Speaker 3 (1:18) Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:19) But yeah, I just liked it as it was, I think. Speaker 3 (1:23) Yeah. I think it felt like he was like, it'd be cool if I did this and this would be cool and this would be cool. And if I introduced this agency, that'd be cool. And then like none of that went anywhere. And so I was kind of like, wait a minute, you can't just throw a bunch of cool things in a movie and have it be a movie, kid. Speaker 2 (1:36) I don't, I disagree that that's what he did. Speaker 3 (1:39) Yeah. I mean, a lot of people liked it. So I'm. Well, I don't know about the minority because a lot of people felt like I did too. So I think it's devices what they say. Speaker 2 (1:46) That's crazy. It's such a neat movie. Everybody just needs to relax and enjoy a neat movie. Yeah, just like everything you like. Exactly. It drives me bananas. Yeah, so we are talking about movies in particular, which I guess is why you brought up Back Rooms. That's right. I got a couple of movies to shout out now that I think about it. Have you seen Undertone? It's a horror movie about a podcaster. So it's really like right up your alley. I finally saw Martyrs, which is an amazing movie that, yeah, that's a really amazing movie. And then I also saw The Devil's Bath. Okay. I would not necessarily recommend that to everybody. It's a very dark movie and it's in German and it's subtitled and it's set in the middle. of the 18th century in rural Germany. Tough watch? Not in the way that you would think. It's more just like some of the gut punches that come through are really hard gut punches. But if you're into like really disturbing, dark, psychological horror, I would recommend it. All right. Okay. Speaker 3 (2:54) That sounds great. You want to talk about the uni-monsters? Speaker 2 (2:57) Yeah, we're talking about the universal monsters, and we should probably talk about horror films in general, because a lot of people point to the universal monster movies starting in the 1930s as essentially kicking off at least monster movies, if not the horror genre itself. And there were other horror movies that came first, but it wasn't until the 20s, pre-universal admittedly, that people started like... trying to scare audiences, hence the beginning of horror movies. Speaker 3 (3:28) Yeah. Specifically, the cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu in the early 1920s kind of got that going. Speaker 2 (3:35) But Speaker 3 (3:36) like you said, it was really the 1930s when we got Draculas and Frankensteins and mummies and wolf men and stuff like that, that things really kicked off. Yeah. And we have a family to thank for that. If you... I don't know if these theaters are still there. I really hope they are. I'm sure they're still there, but I don't know if they have been taken over by a different name. Speaker 2 (3:56) But Speaker 3 (3:56) the Lamley theaters in Los Angeles were always these great sort of usually independently minded or, you know, showing maybe not the first run big hits of the day. And there were a few Lamley theaters and they come from the Lamley family, Speaker 2 (4:11) which Speaker 3 (4:12) is where Universal Studios comes from. A German immigrant in 1906 named Carl Lamley. opened a Nickelodeon in Chicago, and a few years later opened up the Independent Motion Picture Company, and then merged with a few other companies to create Universal Pictures Speaker 2 (4:27) in 1912. Yeah, and then 1915, they opened a 230-acre studio in Los Angeles. So in nine years, that guy went from opening a Nickelodeon to starting a major motion picture company. Speaker 3 (4:42) Yeah. Well, not major yet because the majors were the big five at the time. Paramount, Fox, Warner Brothers, RKO and Lowe's. It's crazy to think about Universal and Columbia being and United Artists being the upstarts. But that's what they were in the early 1900s film business. Speaker 2 (4:59) So, yeah, it was it was actually Lemley's son who really put Universal on the map, as we'll see. Lemley Sr. had a part to play in that. He ended up basically starting the star system in the movie industry by taking one actress, Florence Lawrence. Good Lord, the Lemley family and Florence Lawrence together at last. And he started a publicity campaign that focused on her. And this was new because up to that point, it was like actor, actor, I don't care who you are. I'm here for the story. He made Florence Lawrence like the point to go see a movie. And he did it in fairly dastardly, amusing fashion. Speaker 3 (5:46) Yeah, he created a fake story. about her dying in a car crash and then blamed her former employer, Biograph, for creating that fake story to begin with because they were mad that they lost her to Universal. So this created a lot of publicity buzz and, you know, kind of helped create that star system. Speaker 2 (6:05) Sure. And it's just such a great indicator of like how kind of rogue, do-it-yourself, underground the early days of film were. Speaker 3 (6:16) Yeah. Speaker 2 (6:16) Especially when you compare it to how the whole industry is today, it's neat to just think of it as created by, initially by artists who were dedicated to their art and were coming up with neat, innovative things to do. It's really well portrayed in The Shadow of the Vampire with John Malkovich, where they're making Nosferatu. Speaker 3 (6:36) Yeah, there are quite a few movies about this era because I think it's just so fascinating. Speaker 2 (6:41) Yeah. But moving on, getting back to the monster stuff. Universal had already done a couple of monster pictures that are, depending on who you ask, part of the Universal monster canon. The first one is pretty highly debatable. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came out in 1913. It was the first universal monster movie of any kind. But it was 26 minutes long. So a lot of people are like, that's not feature length. I don't know if we can count that. Speaker 3 (7:09) Yeah, for sure. 1920s, you got The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And then The Phantom of the Opera, two years later in 1925. These are noteworthy because Lon Chaney Sr., the Man of a Thousand Faces starred in these, and the Chaney family would figure heavily in his son's life for the Universal Monster series. Speaker 2 (7:31) Yeah, Lon Chaney Sr. is a really interesting guy in and of himself. He was in 150 films from the 20s to the 30s, and he did his own makeup. He was known as the man of a thousand faces. And he was such an expert on makeup that he wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for makeup. And there was a joke from the 20s. It was, don't step on that spider. It might be Lon Chaney. That's Speaker 3 (7:56) how Speaker 2 (7:56) good he was considered in getting into weird different characters. That's Speaker 3 (8:01) pretty Speaker 2 (8:01) fun. I thought so too. Speaker 3 (8:03) All right. So the studio is putting out spooky movies at this point. They're in, you know, haunted mansions sometimes. They're in strange places. This is between like 25 and 30 when the talkies are happening. And then in 1931, when Carl Lamley Jr., I think he's taken over a couple of years by this point. He started as head of production in 1928 at just 21 years old Speaker 1 (8:27) and Speaker 3 (8:27) then won an Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front. Even though they were like, this is a nepo baby kid, he really was putting out some pretty good movies. And as far as the Monsters canon goes, hit it out of the park, out of the gate with Dracula. Speaker 2 (8:43) Yeah, from 1931, which turned out to be a really big year for monster movies. It kicked off with Dracula on Valentine's Day, 1931. And it was marketed as a romance, which it is. It's a tragic romance in a lot of ways. And Nosferatu. the actual 1920s film starring Max Schreck, was not authorized by Bram Stoker's estate. So it wasn't based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was Nosferatu instead. This was based on Bram Stoker's version, but they adapted it from a stage play. And they hired a director named Todd Browning, who made what I think is one of the great revenge movies of all time, Freaks, in 1932. But that was... This was the year before he was directing Dracula. Speaker 3 (9:32) That's right. We didn't do a whole episode on Freaks, but we mentioned that, I guess, in our – we did an episode about that. Speaker 2 (9:39) About Freak Shows. Yeah, Speaker 3 (9:41) Freak Shows. I Speaker 2 (9:41) didn't Speaker 3 (9:42) know how to say it in 2026. Speaker 2 (9:44) I think that's still how they say it. Speaker 3 (9:46) Okay. So Todd 1D Browning is a big shot director at this point. He's making – Spooky movies. He's working with Lon Chaney Sr. It probably would have been Lon Chaney Sr. as Dracula, but he died in 1930 of bronchial cancer. Speaker 2 (10:03) So Speaker 3 (10:03) he looked around and he said, who can I pick to be Dracula? Who, who, who? And this scary looking Hungarian said, why don't you pick me? Speaker 2 (10:14) Yeah. So Bela Lugosi, every single Dracula idea or impression like you just did. That all comes from Bela Lugosi's 1931 performance. And the reason they picked him is, remember, this was adapted from the stage adaptation. And Bela Lugosi had already made a name for himself starring in the stage adaptation on Broadway. They were like, we think you got the chops for this. And it was a very good casting decision because I watched it last night for the first time and he does an astounding job. Speaker 3 (10:46) It's great. And by chops, you mean literal fangs. Speaker 2 (10:49) That's right. Speaker 3 (10:51) So, you know, what did you think of it, watching it today? Like, do you ever watch old, like old,