Robert “Bob” Laemmle, the president of the Los Angeles-based Laemmle Theatres who ran the chain until his son Greg took over in 2004, died Thursday in Santa Monica. He was 89.

Bob Laemmle was born in Paris and came with his parents, who were fleeing the Nazis, to the U.S. in 1938. He graduated from Marshall High School where he was a basketball star and from Cal State L.A. and received an Mba from UCLA. Laemmle Theatres was established that same year by his father Max and Kurt Laemmle, German immigrants who were nephews of Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle.

Bob Laemmle started working in his father’s theater at the age of 14 at their first location in the Highland Park neighborhood, he recounted in a Laemmle 75th anniversary booklet. After working as a banking trainee, he joined the family business officially in 1963 to help open a Pasadena location since the...