On this day in 1880, Jesse Louis Lasky, a pioneer in film production, was born to Jewish shoe store owners in San Jose, Calif. As a teenager, he learned to play the cornet, but was never noticed. At 19, he traveled to Alaska in a failed search for gold. At 21, he sailed to Hawaii to join the Royal Hawaiian Band but returned home penniless.
Lasky then turned to vaudeville, using the proceeds to build a restaurant-theater on Broadway that failed within four months. There, however, he met producer Beatrice DeMille, who introduced him to her son, Cecil B. DeMille. Cecil teamed up with Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn to form the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, which produced Hollywood’s first feature film: DeMille’s “The Squaw Man.” Their studio was a barn that now serves as home to the Hollywood Heritage Museum.
After several feature films, the production company merged several times. Lasky ultimately founded the Paramount Pictures Corporation, which he helped lead until 1932, producing over a thousand films, including classics the “Covered Wagon,” “The Rough Riders,” and the Academy Award-winning “Wings.” Paramount crashed during the Depression Era, forcing Lasky to resign as chief. He then became a radio and film producer, making films for RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., including “Sergeant York.” Though he achieved critical success, his finances never recovered from his Paramount departure, and he died in debt to the IRS at age 77.
Despite the early challenges he faced finding a career and the financial struggles that plagued him until his death, Lasky maintained a sense of optimism throughout his life, suggesting that, “You’re never broke if you have an idea.” An accomplished film producer, a pioneer of the film industry, a loving husband, and the father of three children who went on to successful lives of their own, Jesse Lasky died without a penny to his name, but leaves a legacy that calls upon us to reconsider the meaning of success.
—Rabbi Josh Knobel