The home office of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company was located at 600 Broadway, a midtown Manhattan office tower not far from several of Universal's eastern studios and the company's laboratory in Bayonne, New Jersey. On a cold Saturday morning in March 1915, two hundred of the company's employees gathered on a platform at Grand Central Terminal. Their boss, Carl Laemmle, was about to leave for the West Coast to open the company's vast new studio, to be called Universal City. Bundled up against the chill air, Laemmle arrived at the terminal in the tonneau of a flashy touring car, part of an entourage of honking horns and waving banners assembled by the studio press office. His thinning white hair made him seem older than his forty-eight years, and to many in the industry he was already "the old man," or "Uncle Carl," a diminutive Bavarian immigrant known for his broad smile and thick accent. Laemmle had started as an exhibitor in 1906, had moved into distribution, and since 1909 had been making his own films. When a group of independent producers coalesced as the Universal in 1912, Laemmle had come out on top, but the corporate pot was still bubbling.
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