Carl Laemelle: The Making of the Movie Business - Part 3: The Founding IMP

In the nickelodeon era, actors were shadows. You might recognize a face from one picture to the next, but you didn’t know the name, and that was by design.

The big production companies, especially those in Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company, had a rule: no credits for actors. The thinking was simple and cold. If audiences knew an actor’s name, that actor could demand higher pay. By keeping performers anonymous, the studios kept them cheap and replaceable.

But in 1909, determined man from Oshkosh decided to break the rule, Carl Laemmle, and his weapon was a brand-new company with an unmistakable name: the Independent Moving Pictures Company, which he called IMP.

Building the Escape Hatch

Laemmle had just spent two years defying Edison’s monopoly, fighting lawsuits, and dodging raids. He’d learned two crucial lessons… First, that to survive, an exhibitor needed a reliable supply of films and second, that the Trust wasn’t going to let independents have them.

So, he decided to make his own.

Founding IMP in 1909 was a declaration of war. With his own production arm, Laemmle could feed his theaters without bowing to the Trust’s restrictions. He set up shop in New York, where the industry was still centered, and began cranking out short films for the growing network of independent theaters.

The films were competent and entertaining, but they weren’t what made IMP famous. That honor belonged to a single, bold stunt, one that would change the way the public thought about the people they saw in the movies.

The Mystery of “The Biograph Girl”

At the time, one of the most popular faces in American cinema belonged to a young actress working for Biograph. She appeared in dozens of short dramas and comedies, and audiences adored her. They called her “The Biograph Girl,” because that’s all they knew.

Her real name was Florence Lawrence.

Laemmle knew that if he could lure her away from Biograph, and if he could give the public her name, it would be a coup. But how to do it without getting lost in the constant churn of new releases? He needed more than a hiring announcement. He needed a spectacle.

A Stunt for the Ages

First, Laemmle planted a false story in newspapers, claiming that The Biograph Girl had been killed in a streetcar accident. The story caused a wave of shock among movie fans.

Then, a few days later, the “truth” appeared. He revealed that her name was Florence Lawrence, and that she was alive and well, she had signed with Carl Laemmle’s IMP, and she would be appearing in new films, starting immediately.

It was a brazen move. Laemmle had faked her death to make her “resurrection” front-page news. The public loved it. Florence Lawrence’s name was suddenly on everyone’s lips, and her IMP debut drew packed houses.

The stunt wasn’t just about publicity, it was about breaking a system. Laemlle changed the way people would see actors, and for the first time, an actor’s name was used as a selling point. The audience had been watching shadows; now, they were following people.

Florence’s Leap

Lawrence herself wasn’t just a pawn in Laemmle’s game. She was ambitious and knew her own worth. The move to IMP came with a pay raise and the promise of greater creative freedom. Laemmle also promoted her heavily in advertisements and posters, something Biograph had never done.

She became the first true “movie star” in the modern sense: A performer whose name could be printed on a marquee to sell tickets. Within months, she was a household name across America, her fame rivaling stage celebrities who had spent years building their reputations.

The Star System Is Born

Once Florence Lawrence proved the concept, the dam broke. IMP began crediting its other actors. Rival companies followed suit, not because they wanted to, but because the public demanded it. People wanted to know who they were watching, to follow their favorites from film to film.

Laemmle had created what would later be called the star system, the practice of promoting individual actors as attractions in their own right, putting the actors name above the title of the film. It was a radical shift in the economics of moviemaking. Now, the face on the poster mattered as much as the story. Studios had to court their stars and negotiate salaries in a way they’d never had to before.

For actors, it was a revolution. They went from anonymous workers to public personalities, with fan clubs, interviews, and promotional tours. For audiences, it added a new layer of connection to the movies, a personal investment in the lives and careers of the people they saw on screen.

IMP’s Growth

With the star system giving him a powerful marketing edge, Laemmle expanded IMP rapidly. He set up production units in New York and New Jersey, and later in California, where the year-round sunshine made filming easier.

The company’s films ranged from comedies to melodramas to action shorts, often starring Lawrence or other rising stars. Each release carried the IMP brand proudly, a reminder to theater owners and audiences alike that this was an independent product, free from The Trust’s control.

Laemmle also used IMP to refine his distribution strategies. He built a network that could get films to theaters quickly, keeping programming fresh and audiences coming back. His understanding of both production and exhibition made IMP a rare hybrid: a company that could make movies, market them brilliantly, and deliver them efficiently.

The Trust Strikes Back

The Motion Picture Patents Company didn’t take IMP’s rise lightly. They continued to sue Laemmle for patent infringement, and their agents tried to intimidate theaters into refusing his films. But now, Laemmle had something powerful on his side… Public opinion.

People who loved Florence Lawrence, and later, other named stars, wanted to see their films. If a theater stopped showing them, audiences noticed. The Trust’s tactics began to backfire, painting them as villains trying to keep beloved entertainers off the screen.

By 1912, the Trust’s grip was slipping badly. That year, Laemmle took the next step in his evolution, merging IMP with several other independents to form a new giant: The Universal Film Manufacturing Company.

From Shadows to Spotlights

The founding of IMP was more than a business milestone. It was a cultural turning point. By giving actors names, and by selling movies on the strength of those names, Carl Laemmle altered the very nature of how films were made, marketed, and consumed.

It’s easy to underestimate how radical that was. Before Laemmle, the star of a film was the film itself. After Laemmle, the star could be a person, someone whose career you could follow, whose personal story could be part of the entertainment. It was a shift that would define Hollywood for the next century.

Florence Lawrence’s time at the top was relatively brief, as the industry was fickle, and new faces emerged constantly. But the path she blazed, with Laemmle as her co-architect, became the standard. Every marquee, every movie poster with a star’s name in bold letters, is a direct descendant of that gamble in 1909.

Carl Laemmle had turned shadows into celebrities, and in doing so, he’d proven once again that his brand of independence wasn’t just about defying monopolies. It was about giving the audience something they didn’t even know they wanted until they saw it: a human connection to the magic on the screen.

And he was just getting started.