Warner Bros
ALTERNATIVE NAME: Warner Bros.
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: From 1923
LOCATION: U.S.
CATEGORY: Cinema
DISCIPLINE: Motion-Picture Producer
SHORT DESCRIPTION: The first American motion-picture production company to use synchronised sound in a silent feature film
DESCRIPTION:
Warner Brothers was the creation of four brothers (three born in Poland and the youngest in Canada) who started with a single nickelodeon in 1903 in New Castle, PA. By 1912 the Warners were producing their own films in New York City and then finally started their own movie studio in Hollywood, California, in 1918. By 1923 they had founded Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc.
There were two things that helped put Warner Brothers on the map: Their new "talkie" technology that enabled sound to be synchronised with a movie, and their musical The Jazz Singer (1927), starring Jolson*, was the first film to use the technology for several musical numbers.
Their first completely talking movie was ‘Lights of New York’ (1928). The Warners found that movie-goers were extremely interested in talking movies when their company profits surged from 5 million in 1927 to $160 million two years later.” A few of Warner Brothers’ competitors started developing their own versions of their new sound-on-disk technology, developed by Western Electric* (a subsidiary of AT&T) and called Vitaphone.
Early in the 1930s the brothers purchased the Stanley Company, owner of 250 theatres, and First National Pictures, with large studios in Burbank, California.
The years of the Great Depression did a lot to help restructure the motion-picture industry but Warner Brothers managed to make it through, financially unscathed. They did, however, run into problems with the United States Government as the Justice Department filed suit against all eight major film studios for violating the Sherman Act. All eight film studios agreed to change several practices that precipitated the suit and the charges were dropped.
Through the Depression Warner Brothers produced average-quality movies (usually musical, gangster, or film biographies). As the studio became more successful and its reputation improved, during the 1940s Warner Bros. produced an impressive roster of films featuring popular performers. Warner Brothers films of this period ranged from topical melodrama to elaborate musicals, stylish film noir, and large-scale historical epics.
Warner Brothers merged with Time Warner during the early 1990's to become Time Warner Inc.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Warner Brothers, a Hollywood motion-picture studio
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
EBritannica
Sklar, Robert, Movie-Made America, Random House, inc., New York, 1994.
Sandbox (extensive)