Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937. Founded in 1912 by German immigrant Carl Laemmle, Universal Pictures built their giant hilltop studio in 1915, on the site of a chicken farm. On March 25, 1966, the Universal Pictures Company, located at 100 Universal Center Dr., merged into Universal City Studios, Inc. In September 1937 a brush fire, burned 22 acres, destroyed three house set pieces on the Universal Pictures Company back lot, requiring six fire departments to extinguish it. One of the houses was a Spanish ranch used in hundreds of Western films and the other two were part of a Swiss village. A mounted fireman helps a line of men pull a hose up the hillside toward the fire raging behind a veil of smoke.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm. Photographic prints
Universal Pictures Company Motion picture studios--California--Universal City Fire fighters--California--Universal City Horses--California--Universal City Fires--California--Universal City Smoke--California--Universal City Fire hose Universal City (Calif.) Schultheis Collection photographs
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