Early Warner Bros. Studios
By E.J. Stephens and Marc Wanamaker
4/5
()
About this ebook
E.J. Stephens
Authors E.J. Stephens and Kim Stephens are longtime employees of Warner Bros. Studios and have authored or contributed to several books on Hollywood and Southern California history. They own their own travel company and host tours of film sites throughout Southern California.
Read more from E.J. Stephens
Early Paramount Studios Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly Poverty Row Studios Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Santa Clarita Valley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Early Warner Bros. Studios
Related ebooks
Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Showmen, Sell It Hot!: Movies as Merchandise in Golden Era Hollywood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood's West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, & History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Decline of Sentiment: American Film in the 1920s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Making of The Wizard of Oz Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise and Fall of the Silent Film Era, Vol I: The Actors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mr. & Mrs. Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and Their Entertainment Empire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly Burbank Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings1939: The Making of Six Great Films from Hollywood’s Greatest Year Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Those Glorious Movie Musicals! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalt before Mickey: Disney's Early Years, 1919-1928 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Historic Theaters of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHomes of Hollywood Stars Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Location Filming in Los Angeles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Movie Studios of Culver City Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood 1940-2008 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Culver City Chronicles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeverly Hills: 1930-2005 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHollywood Studios Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hollywood 1900-1950 in Vintage Postcards Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsForest Lawn Hollywood Hills: The Unauthorized Guide Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Entertainers and the Rich & Famous For You
Counting the Cost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: An Oprah's Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fallen Idols: A Century of Screen Sex Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elvis and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Open Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capital Gaines: Smart Things I Learned Doing Stupid Stuff Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Radical Love: Learning to Accept Yourself and Others Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey through the Art and Craft of Humor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScrappy Little Nobody Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm Your Huckleberry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Is This Anything? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Me: Elton John Official Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Early Warner Bros. Studios
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Early Warner Bros. Studios - E.J. Stephens
him.
INTRODUCTION
If you wanted to concoct a mogul for one of Hollywood’s major film factories during the early years of the motion picture industry, the formula generally went something like this: Take a group of impoverished, ambitious, first- or second-generation male Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, limit their formal education but school them in the competitive profession of sales in rugged eastern U.S. cities, give them the vision to glimpse the potential of motion pictures where others see only a fad, and most importantly, provide them the chutzpah to act on their insights.
This formula, with only slight modifications, produced the biographies of the founders of Universal, Fox, Columbia, MGM, and (the focus of this book) Warner Bros. The four Warner brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—were sons of a Polish cobbler and peddler, who moved his family to America to escape the ever-present threat of terror levied against Jews in his native land. Through vision, hard work, and the occasional lucky gamble, they were able to rise above the huddled masses yearning to breathe free
to become Hollywood studio chiefs within a generation.
The meteoric rise of the Warner brothers is a tale so unlikely that had it been presented as a screenplay at their own studio, it may well have been rejected as unbelievable. The story begins in 1903, at roughly the same time another set of siblings from the Midwest named Orville and Wilbur Wright were busy birthing the airplane. Albert Warner, the second-oldest brother at the age of 19, was in Pittsburgh selling soap when he chanced upon a nickelodeon. He was so smitten by the hand-cranked silent films projected onto a stretched bed sheet that he returned to the Warner home in Youngstown, Ohio, with only one desire in mind: to get into the motion picture business. He was shocked to learn that his brothers Harry, 23, and Sam, 17, had come to the very same idea independently.
As fortune would have it, a friend offered to sell the boys an early projector called a Kinetoscope, along with a ragged copy of The Great Train Robbery (1903) for $1,000. The brothers, who added 12-year-old Jack to the venture, pooled their money, but came up $175 short. Their father saved the day when he tossed his gold watch and a family horse into the pot.
For the next several months the brothers traveled throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania showing their frayed film to miners in rented halls. They raised enough money during their tour, and from the sale of the family’s bicycle shop, to open a nickelodeon of their own called the Cascade Theatre in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Since funds were always tight, they had to borrow chairs from a nearby mortuary, forever fearing that one of their shows would be disrupted by a well-attended funeral.
The brothers settled into roles at the Cascade that they would continue to play in one fashion or another for the rest of their careers. Harry, the oldest and most sober, handled the money; affable Sam, a technically minded dreamer, cranked the projector; salesman Albert hawked the tickets; and showman Jack entertained
the crowds as the chaser
—the less-than-gifted singer whose performances helped clear the theater between shows.
It did not take long for the brothers to see that the reel money
to be made in motion pictures was to be found in distribution. This led them to create the Duquesne Amusement Supply Company. This film exchange, as distributors were known at the time, was a successful concern for several years until crushed in 1910 by Thomas Edison’s monopolistic film trust.
Not ones to give up without a fight, the Warners scrounged up enough cash to move into film production on the East Coast. For the next few years, the fledgling enterprise was kept afloat by producing cliffhanger serials and a film made for the U.S. Army warning World War I soldiers about the dangers of venereal disease. In 1918, the brothers scored their first legitimate hit with My Four Years in Germany, which funded a move to the West Coast, where they rented space in a studio near downtown Los Angeles. Within months they took up permanent residence on Hollywood’s Poverty Row.
By 1923, the brothers were successful enough to attract the talents of director Ernst Lubitsch, writer-producer Darryl F. Zanuck, and actor John Barrymore. But it was actually a four-legged star named Rin Tin Tin who kept the lights lit at Sunset and Bronson. Jack Warner liked to call him The Mortgage Lifter.
The Warners, who always believed in expansion, took the biggest gamble of their careers in 1925 by purchasing Vitagraph Studios, one of filmdom’s founding enterprises. This acquisition gave them two new studios, access to Vitagraph’s vast film library, plus 50 new exchanges in North America and Europe.
On March 3, 1925, Warner Bros. launched KFWB, their first radio station in Los Angeles. Three of the four Warner brothers felt it should primarily function as a vehicle to promote Warner Bros. films. Sam Warner, however, saw the radio station as the first step in ushering in a new era of motion pictures where the audiences not only saw their heroes on the screen, but heard them as well. Sam had a lifelong fascination with machines and technology and worked closely with an engineer setting up KFWB’s studios. That same engineer later showed him a process he was working on to synchronize sound to moving pictures. Further demonstrations convinced the other three brothers of the merits of the new system, which they purchased and renamed Vitaphone
to capitalize on their recent acquisition of Vitagraph.
The following year, Warner Bros. produced Don Juan, starring John Barrymore, as their first full-length feature employing the Vitaphone process for music and sound effects. Sam oversaw the recording of an orchestra for the film in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York (a location that was problematic, as a subway line ran directly below the theater). Don Juan premiered at the Warners’ Theatre in Manhattan on August 6, 1926, and all 1,200 seats sold out at the record price of $11 per ticket. In spite of the hugely successful premiere, the film was unable to recoup its costs, and the brothers were left seriously in debt.
Don Juan was WB’s warning shot fired across the bow of silent