Four brothers from Pennsylvania made the studio that taught films to talk
Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner began with a small film company in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1910. Thirteen years later they incorporated Warner Bros. Pictures, and in 1927 their release of The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson, brought synchronised sound to a mass audience and upended Hollywood.
The brothers' first effort was modest. Sam directed Peril of the Plains in 1912 for the St. Louis Motion Picture Company. Their breakthrough came in 1918, amid the First World War, with a screen version of James W. Gerard's book My Four Years in Germany, a box office success that gave the family a reputation for prestige work. On April 4, 1923 they formally created Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. and committed themselves wholly to cinema.
Postwar turbulence forced hard choices. After the 1948 antitrust case, the studio let go of the bulk of its older library, pictures and animated shorts made before 1950, selling them in 1956 to a distributor called Associated Artists Productions; that company passed to United Artists two years later. In November 1966 Jack Warner, conscious of his age, sold a 32 percent controlling stake to Seven Arts Productions, run by Canadian financiers Elliot and Kenneth Hyman, for $32 million, and the business became Warner Bros.-Seven Arts in July 1967.
The Hymans sold on within two years to Kinney National Company for over $64 million. Kinney already owned DC Comics and the talent agency Ashley-Famous, whose founder Ted Ashley had urged Kinney chief Steve Ross to buy. Antitrust law barred owning both an agency and a studio, so the agency was spun off and Ashley took charge of the studio. A furious Jack Warner turned to independent producing, scoring with 1776 at Columbia, before retiring in 1973.
The new bosses bet on star power, striking co-production deals with Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood and other headliners, and the gamble carried the studio through the 1970s and 1980s with hits such as Blazing Saddles and A Clockwork Orange. Today the Burbank-based studio ranks as the third oldest American film studio still operating, behind Paramount and Universal, and sits within Warner Bros. Discovery.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures
