Jesse L. Lasky

Jesse L. Lasky was a vaudeville producer and impresario who co-founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in 1913 with his brother-in-law Samuel Goldwyn and director Cecil B. DeMille. The company produced The Squaw Man in 1914, generally recognized as the first full-length feature film made in Hollywood, establishing Southern California as the geographic center of American film production. Lasky's theatrical background and talent relationships provided the creative foundation upon which the Famous Players-Lasky merger of 1916 built its production capabilities.

Jesse L. Lasky's contribution to Paramount's founding story is the establishment of Hollywood as a production location and the demonstration that feature-length dramatic films could attract mass audiences willing to pay premium ticket prices. The decision to film The Squaw Man in California rather than the established East Coast production centers was initially a practical matter — the diverse landscapes of Southern California allowed a single production company to approximate a wide variety of geographic settings — but it proved to be a watershed decision that attracted dozens of other production companies to the region over the following decade. Lasky remained a senior executive in the merged Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and served as a significant creative force in the company's early years, bringing theatrical talent and story rights that formed the basis of Paramount's early content library.