L. Lawrence Weber

L. Lawrence Weber (c. 1872 – 22 February 1940) was an American sports promoter, stage show producer and theater manager.

For a period Weber was the secretary of the British Minister to Japan, and became the American representative of the Japanese Government Tea Syndicate.

[4] Weber was one of the sponsors of a film made of a boxing match in Havana, Cuba, on 5 April 1915 between Jack Johnson and Jess Willard.

He set up a motion picture camera 8 inches (200 mm) south of the border between New York and Canada, pointing to a screen on the Canadian side on which each frame of the film of the 1915 Havana fight was projected, thus creating a duplicate negative.

[7] Weber, Bobby North, Aaron Hoffman and Harry J. Cohen organized Popular Plays and Players, the precursor of Metro Pictures.

[8] In 1914, the Popular Plays and Players production company issued a film version of Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff.

[9] In March 1915, Weber, whom Variety described as a "colorful showman, sports promoter", was involved in founding Metro Pictures.

[12] Variety said, "By virtue of its artistry, intensely sustained suspense and irrefutable logic, [the film] must grip audiences for many seasons.

"[13] The production company made The Blue Pearl in 1920 based on the play by Anne Crawford Flexner, starring Edith Hallor, Lumsden Hare, Earl Schenck and John Halliday.

[14] In 1919, John Golden arranged a meeting with his fellow producers J. Fred Zimmerman Jr., Archibald Selwyn, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr., Winchell Smith and Weber with the goal of cooperating on common issues such as censorship and ticket speculation.

[16] In 1921, Weber and William B. Friedlander were in partnership to present dramatic, musical and vaudeville attractions at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway.