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A native of Czechoslovakia, producer Paul Kohner came to Hollywood in 1920 at the personal invitation of Carl Laemmle, the president of Universal, who had been impressed by Kohner (then a news reporter) during an interview for a Prague newspaper. In 1923, Kohner produced The Hunchback of Notre Dame and in 1925 was behind the Phantom of the Opera. In 1928, Kohner was appointed head of Universal's European division, a post he held until the 1930s. He later came back to the States where he produced foreign language films through 1938 when he opened his Paul Kohner Talent Agency. Over the next 50 years, he would manage such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Maurice Chevalier, Billy Wilder, Liv Ullmann, Henry Fonda, David Niven and Ingmar Bergman.