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Apr 4, 2023 · An origin story of the siblings who incorporated a studio 100 years ago today, overcoming obstacle after obstacle before finally finding an entertainment venture they could excel at together....
- Overview
- Origins
- Films of the 1920s and ’30s: The Jazz Singer and gangster dramas
- The 1940s and ’50s: classic films and the first TV series
- New ownership and diversification
- Later developments: Time Warner, Friends, and Harry Potter
Warner Brothers, American entertainment conglomerate founded in 1923 and especially known for its film studio. In 1990 it became a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. Warner Brothers’ headquarters are in Burbank, California.
The company was founded by four brothers: Harry Warner (b. December 12, 1881, Poland—d. July 25, 1958, Hollywood, California, U.S.), Albert Warner (b. July 23, 1884, Poland—d. November 26, 1967, Miami Beach, Florida, U.S.), Samuel Warner (b. 1887—d. 1927), and Jack Warner (b. August 2, 1892, London, Ontario, Canada—d. September 9, 1978, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), who were the sons of Benjamin Eichelbaum, an immigrant Polish cobbler and peddler. The brothers began their careers showing moving pictures in Ohio and Pennsylvania on a traveling basis. Beginning in 1903, they started acquiring movie theatres, and they then moved into film distribution. About 1913 they began producing their own films, and in 1917 they shifted their production headquarters to Hollywood, California. They established Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc., in 1923. The eldest of the brothers, Harry, was the president of the company and ran its headquarters in New York City, while Albert was its treasurer and head of sales and distribution. Sam and Jack managed the studio in Hollywood.
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When the company ran into financial difficulties in the mid-1920s, Sam Warner persuaded his brothers to collaborate in developing a patent on a process (Vitaphone) that made the “talkies” possible, revolutionizing the film industry. The studio’s Don Juan (1926) opened with a completely synchronized musical sound track, and The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first film with synchronized dialogue. (Sam died only 24 hours before the latter’s premiere.) Warner Brothers then made Lights of New York (1928), the first full-length all-talking film, and On with the Show (1929), the first all-talking colour movie. The enormous financial success of these early sound films enabled Warner Brothers to become a major motion-picture studio. By the 1930s Warner Brothers was producing about 100 motion pictures a year and controlled 360 theatres in the United States and more than 400 abroad.
Warner Brothers became known for its tightly budgeted, technically competent entertainment films. In the early 1930s the company started the craze for gangster films with Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932), and throughout the ’30s it presented films featuring such stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson in gangster roles. Warner Brothers also presented Busby Berkeley’s musical extravaganzas, many swashbuckling and adventure films starring Errol Flynn, and dramas featuring such stars as Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and John Garfield. The decade was also notable for the debut of Looney Tunes, an animated short film series.
Among the studio’s best-known films of the 1940s and ’50s were such classics as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), and Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
During this period Warner Brothers also expanded into television with the premiere of the western series Cheyenne in 1955. Other noteworthy series to debut that decade included Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip. In 1956 Jack Warner, Warner’s longtime vice president in charge of production, became the company’s president, after the last of his elder brothers had retired; Jack remained with Warner Brothers until 1972, when he also retired.
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Although the studio had successes in the 1960s with such films as My Fair Lady (1964) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), its offscreen efforts were also of particular note. In 1967 Elliot and Ken Hyman acquired Warner Brothers and renamed it Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. Two years later, however, they sold it to the Kinney Corporation, which was headed by Steven J. Ross. He transformed Kinney into the media and entertainment empire Warner Communications, and Warner Bros., Inc., as it was renamed, became a highly diversified subsidiary, venturing into such areas as music, video games, and comic books.
Despite such expansion, Warner Brothers remained focused on films and television programs. Over the next two decades it produced such noteworthy big-screen movies as The Exorcist (1973), Blazing Saddles (1974), Blade Runner (1982), and The Color Purple (1985) and introduced the blockbuster series Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon, and Superman. Its TV hits included Welcome Back, Kotter; The Dukes of Hazzard; and Murphy Brown. It also had success with the miniseries Roots, The Thorn Birds, and North & South. In 1972 Warner entered into cable television, and in 1989 it acquired Lorimar Telepictures, which was known for such popular series as The Waltons, Dallas, and Eight Is Enough.
In 1990 Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. to form Time Warner Inc., the largest media and entertainment corporation in the world. Warner Brothers became a division of the newly formed venture. Subsequent films included GoodFellas (1990), The Fugitive (1993), Inception (2010), and Wonder Woman (2017) as well as The Matrix, Harry Potter, an...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The three elder brothers began in the movie theater business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. In the beginning, [18] Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery.
The initial film company was incorporated in 1923 in Los Angeles as Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc., by Polish immigrant brothers Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, who had started out with a nickelodeon in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, in 1903.
The genesis of the Warner movie empire actually began in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the three older Warner brothers, Harry, Albert (Abe), and Sam, all still in their twenties, went into the nickelodeon business around 1903.
Under Jack until 1967, Warner Bros. would remain a high-profile Hollywood studio, and later morph into the global entertainment conglomerate we know today. Yet it would never again be what it...
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The four founding Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack entered a fledgling new business when they acquired a movie projector and began showing “flickers” in the mining towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio, opening their first theater New Castle Pennsylvania in 1903.
