Robert “Bob” Laemmle, the president of the Los Angeles-based Laemmle Theatres who ran the chain until his son Greg took over in 2004, died Thursday in Santa Monica. He was 89.
Bob Laemmle was born in Paris and came with his parents, who were fleeing the Nazis, to the U.S. in 1938. He graduated from Marshall High School where he was a basketball star and from Cal State L.A. and received an MBA from UCLA. Laemmle Theatres was established that same year by his father Max and Kurt Laemmle, German immigrants who were nephews of Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle.
Bob Laemmle started working in his father’s theater at the age of 14 at their first location in the Highland Park neighborhood, he recounted in a Laemmle 75th anniversary booklet. After working as a banking trainee, he joined the family business officially in 1963 to help open a Pasadena location since the only Laemmle location at the time was in Los Feliz.
Bob Laemmle helped redefine the image of an “art house,” programming and innovatively marketing films from around the world.
“We believe in personal handling of our product,” he told Variety in 1983. “You have to remain small and intimate to have the time to do that.”
Laemmle Theatres are an integral part of L.A.’s exhibition community, showing a mix of first-run independent and foreign-language films as well as classics and re-releases at the Royal in West. L.A., the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica and seven other locations, including one in Kingston, Wash.
The 2022 documentary “Only in Theaters” tells the story of the family-run theater chain. “It’s pretty rare to have a three generational family business and I think we occupy a unique, interesting place in Los Angeles: being the family that has been bringing foreign films to L.A. for generations, and those films educate and inspire people,” Greg Laemmle told the Santa Monica Daily Press when the doc was released.
In 2000, Bob and Greg Laemmle established the Laemmle Charitable Foundation to give back to the community. The foundation focuses on donating to locally based nonprofits with a focus on social and environmental giving. Past award recipients include Heal the Bay, the Venice Family Clinic, the Westside Food Bank, Tree People, Union Station Homeless Services, the Trust for Public Land, and many others.
Bob Laemmle was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, a distinction his father also earned.
He is survived by his wife Michelle Laemmle, children Yvonne Ascher and Leonard Laub, Michael and Haidee Ascher, David and Tammy Ascher, Greg and Tish Laemmle, Jessica Laemmle, Carri Bisbee, Mitch and Debbie Needelman, Maitland Finley and Robert Finley.
