UNIVERSAL PICTURES COMPANY

U.S. motion-picture studio that was one of the leading producers of film serials in the 1920s and of popular horror films in the '30s. Carl Laemmle, a film exhibitor turned producer, formed the company in 1912. In its early days it was a top producer of popular, low-budget serials and also presented many of the films of Erich von Stroheim (18851957), who was a pioneer in realistic film direction. For many years after the award-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the studio presented its characteristic low-budget films, which included the well-known horror films Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931). In the 1960s it regained much box-office success through the comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson. It was known as Universal-International for a time and since the early 1970s has been owned by the Music Corporation of America, which turned it into the largest and most profitable packager of films for television in the world.