With DeMille and Lasky's brother-in-law,
Samuel Goldfish (later changed to Goldwyn), Lasky formed the Jesse
L. Lasky Feature Play Company in 1914.
They arrived in California with
$25,000 and some big ideas. They decided to start off boldly by
filming a stage hit of the day, The Squaw Man. $5000 went to Dustin
Farnum as star, $5000 for the film rights, and the rest was spent
on production.
The company didn't have enough
money to establish itself in Los Angeles, so they had to be content
with renting a barn for $25 a month, in a miserable little district
on the outskirts called Hollywood.
The Squaw Man was a huge success
and within weeks, they had doubled their money.
The next major problem was how
to get a wider distribution of their films. Edison's Trust made
it difficult to book films into any of the larger and more established
circuits.
Lasky met with W.
W. Hodkinson who had changed the name of his Progressive Pictures
Company into Paramount
Pictures to distribute films for smaller independent film
companies. Progressive had distributed throughout the west coast,
but the change to Paramount was to distribute nation wide.
Lasky continued to grow, opening
2 sister production companies, Pallas Pictures and the Oliver
Morosco Photoplay Company.
Lasky also met another independent
Paramount producer, Adolph Zukor, who owned Famous Players Film
Company. Lasky and Zukor planned together to have more control
of their distribution.
Lasky and Zukor each sold off
part of their companies to Paramount to raise a large sum of money.
Zukor and Lasky then together acquired a majority of the capital
stock of Paramount Pictures, Inc. They took control of Paramount
and ousted the Hodkinson.
New directors were elected, followed
by the forced resignation of W. W. Hodkinson and his treasurer
Raymond Pawley on June 13, 1916. Zukor instituted his own president
Hiram Abrams as the new head of Paramount. On July 19, 1916, Zukor
and Lasky merged their companies with Paramount, and created the
Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, a $12.5 million producer-distributor—the
largest film company at the time.
