He was a clothing store owner from Oshgosh, Wis., but he ended up operating one of the biggest movie studios in the world. When Carl Laemmele took a trip to Chicago, he was amazed at the number of people buying tickets to see movies. He calculated how much money the theatre was taking in and decided that making movies was the business he had to be in.

So he gave up the clothing business and with two partners created the Yankee Film Company. A year later, his company merged with several other small movie companies and moved to California. The result was Universal Studios.

They bought 230 acres of farmland outside of Los Angeles and made films starring Rudolph Valentino, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and others. Early horror films like Frankenstein and Dracula were huge successes. They put out the blockbuster Arabian Nights movies and Abbott and Costello comedies.

Over the decades, Universal has put out of string of box office hits, including Psycho and To Kill A Mockingbird in the '60s, The Sting, American Graffiti, Dirty Harry and Jaws in the 1970s, and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park in the 1980s.

Some of the local high school football officials used in the filming of the movie "Best Man Holiday" (Dale Mussen photo)
Some of the local high school football officials used in the filming of the movie "Best Man Holiday" (Dale Mussen photo)
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And coming out at Christmas time is a Universal movie shot partly in Buffalo last week, The Best Man Holiday, starring Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard and Morris Chestnut and directed by Malcolm Lee. The movie closes with scenes at a football game that were shot at Ralph Wilson Stadium last week.

Hundreds of extras were used -- most of them from Buffalo.  About 300 people were used for crowd scenes, and it meant moving them all around the stadium for the various angles they shot. It's amazing how Hollywood can turn 300 people into a stadium sellout. We'll get to see how it all turns out in November.

Actor Morris Chestnut and director Malcolm Lee discussing a scene. (Dale Mussen photo)
Actor Morris Chestnut and director Malcolm Lee discussing a scene. (Dale Mussen photo)
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