Carl Laemmle’s Universal Pictures was seemingly always on the precipice of financial disaster. After Laemmle purchased the chicken ranch that would become Universal Studios, he was still selling eggs to make ends meet. After the sound era forced him to close the studio lot to the public, he had to try some new tactics to save money. When 1931’s Dracula was determined to need expensive sets and an elaborate production, Laemmle could have cut the film’s budget. Instead, he took an alternate path that was decades ahead of its time.
Universal’s biggest market outside of the United States was Mexico. At the time, most productions either dubbed over the soundtrack with Spanish language actors or used subtitles. Sometimes they just released the films as-is. This wasn’t much of an issue just three years earlier when most films were silent. Mr. Laemmle saw the potential for larger box office receipts if he made Spanish language versions of his films; Mexican and Spanish speaking audiences would probably flock to the films in greater numbers if they felt they were expressly made for them.
So, using the same sets, costumes and crews, Laemmle produced both English and Spanish versions of Dracula. Non-speaking extras were asked to perform double duty. When production wrapped for the day on the English language version, the Spanish language version would take over the set and continue working through the night. Hence, two versions of the same film were produced, sharing most of the production costs. While Laemmle would use this tactic for a few other films, it proved to not be the huge budget saving process that Laemmle hoped it would be. The experiment would eventually end for good after Carl Laemmle was ousted from the company he had founded.
