Original subtitles

Quiet, scene!

Hold it! Action.

When you enter the lot, you can't help but be overwhelmed

by the generations

of actors and filmmakers

writers, costume designers.

- Put a single on number eight. - Quiet down, boys.

Scene 26, take three.

Everything that this studio embodies that happened here

on this land, on this lot.

You know how to whistle. You just...

You just put your lips together, and blow.

There's something magical about it.

It feels like there's something in the air.

You're a wizard, Harry.

You know, ghosts or something.

I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

The excitement that you feel

knowing that you're going to be walking down the streets

that those incredible filmmakers

and those incredible actors walked down

it's quite powerful.

It's a magical place.

Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothing yet.

From the very first day I walked onto the set

and, you know, that big WB...

It felt like having made it.

Welcome to Sherwood, my Lady!

Warner Brothers to me was Hollywood.

The variety of films and movie stars.

With all my heart

I still love the man I killed.

You don't even have to see a logo.

You say the name, and you understand

it's one of the powerhouses of Hollywood

that gave us the cinema.

Founded at the beginning of the motion picture age

by a family of high-rolling visionaries.

I think those guys were just the right side of crazy.

And jealous rivals.

You don't hear many stories

of kindness involving Jack L. Warner.

You're tearing me apart!

Warner Brothers built a legacy on celluloid.

Here's looking at you, kid.

That holds a mirror to our souls.

Mainstream films always try

to reflect society to some degree.

Attica! Attica!

You see that Warner Brothers productions

over the decades.

- I am a revolutionary! - I am!

That's what I think about when I think of Warners.

Very daring, artistic achievements to great success.

Road trip!

Warner Brothers is a steward

of stories to not just America, but the world.

One hundred years later

Warner Brothers is still pushing

the boundaries of the medium.

And here we go.

With passionate storytelling across all platforms.

Yes!

Shaping who we are.

All my life I had to fight.

And what we might become.

We're in for one wild night.

I think television needs to show

the rainbow of what's out there.

Bazinga.

What's up, doc?

Go ahead. Make my day.

What a day! What a lovely day!

We're going in!

Warner Brothers has endured 100 years

because of the original mission.

Move the culture forward, by telling good stories.

They've been in the battle.

And for that, I think

respect must be paid.

We all go to the movies.

And we go with the idea that we want to be entertained.

And we wanna be told a story.

And stories are powerful.

And when you tell a great story

you can change minds.

And the Warner brothers

understood that.

Jack Warner had a policy

which is if you worked on a movie

you had to come meet him

in this office.

All the great stars came through here.

This is the famous Maltese Falcon.

It has special meaning to me

because at the end of the movie, they ask Humphrey Bogart

what this is, and he said...

The stuff that dreams are made of.

And that's what we get to do every day.

It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

So the Maltese Falcon.

Here they are, the original Warner Brothers.

These were the guys that built this place.

Telling great stories

not just to entertain

but to have a real impact

is where the Warner brothers made a difference

when you look back at the last hundred years.

It's an incredible American story.

At the top of the 20th century, Tinseltown was a boomtown.

The American public

accustomed to new movies every week, clamored for more.

Anyone with a camera and enough gumption

wanted in on the action.

At that point

I think Hollywood was barely

the Hollywood we know now.

The streets were still dust.

They were not only creating an art form, but also an industry.

By 1918, successful companies that would become studios

like Paramount, Universal, and MGM

were gobbling up independent shops

and building walled cities within the city.

Newly arrived, a scrappy band of brothers named Warner

were fighting to get their business off the ground.

You gotta understand all these men who were there at the very beginning

it's brutal, clawing to success.

And you had to be tough. Be a tough street guy.

Absolutely ruthless.

They were sort of not considered

the classy studio in the beginning.

It was all MGM.

Without star talent in a stiffly competitive market

the Warners were on the verge of folding

when fate threw them a bone.

Famous Hollywood screen star

Rin Tin Tin.

They were in real trouble

and Rin Tin Tin was really the movie that saved the studio.

An unlikely hero

that you don't see coming

who does something incredible.

That's a classic movie.

We love dogs, and we love stories of underdogs.

As thousands of fan letters

and hundreds of thousands of dollars poured in for every movie

Rinty's adventures padded the brothers' bottom line.

Rin Tin Tin, animal idol of America.

It was a major milestone in a family story

that started a world away from the glitter of Hollywood.

Harry, Abe, Sam and Jack

were children of Jewish immigrants

who fled persecution in Poland in the 1880s.

They were dirt poor as kids.

They sold newspapers, shined shoes.

They didn't graduate from school

but their father had sat them down very young

and said, "Look, as long as you stick together

you'll be strong."

America has always been a place where people come

sometimes escaping political repression.

The Warner Brothers came out of that tradition.

You have the opportunity to work hard and have a dream

no matter how crazy it is.

The brothers' dream came to them

on a flickering beam of electric light.

They're in Pittsburgh, working in a clothing store.

Sam heard about nickelodeons

grabs Harry, they go and watch

The Great Train Robbery.

They sit and watch it three times, until they're asked to leave.

They go outside, they look at people putting their nickels on the plate.

And they shake hands and they go, "We're in the business."

The Warners' road from to PA to LA was paved with risky bets.

They bought a movie projector and parlayed it into a theater.

They borrowed money to get into distribution

and used that success to start making films.

Harry was the financial wizard.

Abe was in charge of exhibition and distribution.

Sam was the visionary.

And Jack was in charge of production.

Jack was the baby of the siblings.

And Harry was the eldest.

And so he sort of took a leadership position early on.

And that set the stage for many fireworks to come.

But initially, it seems they worked very well together.

In 1923, they incorporated as Warner Brothers Studios.

The gang of outsiders

finally had a place in Hollywood to call their own.

But they were on the cusp of something even bigger.

You have to understand talkies at the time

were a disaster.

Okay.

Sound on film

which had only been attempted for newsreels and shorts...

was plagued with problems.

People were going to the theater and throwing tomatoes at the screen

because, you know, the people's mouths

weren't moving in sync with the sound coming out of it.

Sam Warner was quite passionate about sound.

He really believed that this sound technology

could revolutionize cinema.

And he felt that it was integral

to creating a really immersive cinematic experience

and to get Warner Brothers out ahead of its competitors.

Sam was the one who saw the possibilities of sound.

No one else was looking for sound.

Everybody was very happy showing and watching silent films.

The Warners' first attempt at synchronized sound

featured a full orchestral score and sound effects.

A landmark achievement

but only a taste of things to come.

Wonderful pals Are always hard to find

Next, they upped the ante with a story

that was already a hit on Broadway.

And a performer who was famous around the world.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain't heard nothing yet.

Al Jolson was

probably the most popular entertainer in America at that time.

Jolson's own life had inspired The Jazz Singer

the tale of a Jewish cantor's son

who goes against the traditions of his family

to perform the music he loves.

Well, when people see The Jazz Singer now

they're often shocked and appalled

to see that Al Jolson performs in blackface.

It was not unusual

certainly not shocking at the time to any Al Jolson fans

because that's the mode of performance

that he was engaged in.

Mammy

Blackface on stage was incredibly common.

It was always controversial.

Black audiences had problems many times

with the ways that blackface caricatured

their identities and cultural practices.

But this is a more complex story than I think people recognize

when they decontextualize it.

In fact, there are posters that show

Jackie Rubin in his normal face

and then the character that he plays in blackface.

Because that signified the split

between his real identity as a cantor's son

and the emotional trajectory that he had in trying to decide

what to do with his life.

And then this stage persona.

By featuring blackface in their riskiest bet to date

the Warners profited from the popularity of racial caricature.

In the light of today, The Jazz Singer is problematic.

But it doesn't mean that at the time, it wasn't revolutionary.

Didn't do a whole lot of good for the respect of black people.

In fact, the damage

that the storytelling of the era did

to cultures and culture around the world

is pretty embarrassing.

Despite its deeply troubling content

The Jazz Singer also established the Warner brothers as innovators

whose vision and courage would change moviemaking forever.

With Jolson on the marquee

the brothers knew they would sell tickets.

Everything else was riding on the tech

which was expensive and finicky.

Western Electric corporation were developing a technique

for putting sound and film together

named Vitaphone.

The person that really pioneered sound on disc

was Sam Warner.

And he worked almost to the point of exhaustion.

To pull off Sam's dream

the Warners had leveraged themselves to the teeth.

Sam got excited about the technology.

And Harry raised the money.

He mortgaged the house on Rossmore to pay for the production.

These guys were gamblers.

They gambled everything.

Ladies and gentlemen, Warner Brothers' supreme triumph

Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

Warner Brothers' Theatre is sold out for many weeks in advance.

On opening night

Sam's labors bore fruit.

How do you like that?

Well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

The brothers had made history.

But none of the Warners attended the premiere.

Sam had died the night before.

Sam was so consumed

by wanting to perfect the Vitaphone process

and wanting to make sure The Jazz Singer

was as good as it could be.

But he drove himself, and drove himself

into an early grave.

Sam Warner was the great Warner.

He was the one who got the Warners

into the movie business.

And it's too bad he died so soon.

Jack's lowest low when his brother, Sam, died

who was his closest friend.

The fact that Sam died

the night before the film premiered, it's a tragedy.

But it also seems as though these brothers

really understood the project that they were engaged in

as being bigger than themselves.

They were really invested in a larger mission.

Sam's death left a hole in the family.

But his legacy was plain to see.

Al Jolson, whose picture The Jazz Singer

had started the Talkie Revolution

brings bride, Ruby Keeler, to Hollywood.

The Jazz Singer cost $500,000 to make

and raked in three million.

catapulting Warner Brothers firmly into the majors.

The rush begins.

As more and more theaters become wired for sound

frantically, producers struggle to finish

silent films still in production

before it is too late.

In 1928 alone, they made 36 movies with sync sound.

Leaving the other studios gasping to keep up.

The idea of bringing sound to movies

was as big as introducing the Internet to our society.

It caused Hollywood to have to almost reinvent itself.

Cameramen and technicians had to relearn their business

to accommodate a microphone.

Actors whose voices didn't match their looks

found themselves out on their ears.

What took their place was talent from the stage.

Vital, brash personas.

What kind of a break have you ever given us?

Outside of kicking us around every chance you could get.

If I find that I've got a chance

to crash my way outta here

and I have to rub somebody out to do it

I'd just as soon rub you out as the next guy.

You're gonna be in on this, and you'll like it.

Ever since I was 14, what's it been?

Nothing but men. Dirty rotten men!

As well as writers who could write dialogue.

Sharp, snappy dialogue.

Outside, Countess.

As long as they have sidewalks

you've got a job.

Oh, of course, I know for some women

men are a household necessity.

Myself? I'd rather have a canary.

Awash in cash, the brothers went on a spending spree

snapping up theater chains and acquiring a rival.

First National Studios

and its giant movie lot, in Burbank.

But competition for top talent was fierce

because of the pressure to build brand loyalty

a devoted audience who would keep coming back

for more of their favorite stars.

To control labor costs

Jack Warner and execs from the other studios

devised the contract system.

A golden handcuff that locked actors, writers, and directors

to studios for exclusive seven-year stints.

People in the '30s and '40s that went to movies

they didn't look at reviews for the plot.

It was like, "I want to see a Humphrey Bogart picture."

"I went to see a Clark Gable picture."

Warner Brothers really understood the star system.

Though some may have chafed at the restrictions

no one wanted to be out of work, especially after 1929.

October 29th. Black Tuesday.

Stocks collapse in 16 million share day.

You know, this was a seminal decade

in American history.

Something I don't think any of us can relate to now.

The extent of the economic destruction

that most families faced in the 1930s.

At the beginning of the Great Depression

the pictures remained relatively cheap entertainment

and a welcome break from the misery for the masses.

But to the Warners, who knew poverty personally

movies were also a way to connect with viewers' lives.

The thing about Warner Brothers, it was like the working class studio.

That's not to say that other studios were

staying away from working class life

but at Warner Brothers, it was the banner that they waved.

It was their identity.

Well, it's bad news for you.

We're cutting down

and the new men will have to go.

I took to walking the ties when my Rolls Royce broke down.

At least we don't have

to wait in line for a bowl of soup

like they do outside.

Why do we stay in this racket?

We ain't gonna make enough out of it

to buy ourselves decent coffins.

To write and produce, the Warners turned to Darryl F. Zanuck.

A working class upstart like themselves

whose sharp story instincts

had made him the brothers' chief lieutenant

for more than a decade.

Darryl Zanuck had his ear to the ground, so to speak

about what would motivate an audience

to go and spend their ten cents, 25 cents for a movie ticket

when money was scarce.

Business is pretty good, huh?

Yeah, pretty good.

How good?

Get up.

Warner Brothers came up making controversial pictures.

And they were willing to go outside the norm.

And they just started with gangster films.

Very gutsy movies that, let's say

MGM would never touch.

I wish you was a wishin' well.

So that I could tie a bucket to ya and sink ya.

The gangster as hero.

People vicariously want to see the rise

but they also want to see the fall.

The Public Enemy had no sentimentality.

It was the most uncompromising ending I'd ever seen.

It's just as truthful as possible to that world.

The flamboyance, the swagger

the exhilaration of accumulating so much power and money

and then things fall apart, which it always does.

The Warner Brothers films

became more daring than anyone had ever envisioned.

They dealt with drugs

they dealt with prostitution

domestic abuse.

Warner Brothers wasn't just making movies.

They were changing them.

In contrast with the glossy musicals coming out of the other big studios

they introduced a brash new form.

A mash-up of their trademark tough guys

and a heady dose of spectacle and song.

Naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty

42nd Street

The legendary backstage drama 42nd Street

set behind-the-scenes intrigue at a Broadway show

against a picture of New York ripped from the city crime sheets.

- All right, I'll tell him. - Yeah, well...

You take a film, like 42nd Street.

I mean, they're a bit gangster-ish

you know, in their DNA, the brothers

you know, like, whatever it takes

let's smash some walls down.

And hit the audience between the eyes.

I was really inspired by a lot of those early musicals.

Gatsby is a very musicalized gangster movie.

Like, a lot of that theatrical cinematic language

comes from that period, comes from the golden era

of where Warners was doing both musicals and gangster movies.

Warner Brothers would continue to explode and remake the musical form

through the end of the 1930s.

The studio's not-so-secret weapon

was choreographer and director, Busby Berkeley.

Let's look in on one of the stages and see a chorus in rehearsal.

Here's Busby Berkeley, famous dance director

and creator of some of the screen's greatest dance spectacles.

The moment you start to see those Busby Berkeley things

you go like, "What the? How do you achieve that?"

The kind of layering, and the scale, and the precision

like, how do you do it?

Born in Los Angeles to a pair of Vaudeville actors

Berkeley honed his craft

in an entirely different kind of theater.

Beginning on April 25, 1915

the battle for Gallipoli and the Dardanelles

had begun in earnest.

As an infantry lieutenant in World War I

he ran drills with a thousand soldiers at a time

practicing intricately synchronized maneuvers.

The thing about Bus was that

he had the gift of both being, a great choreographer, of course

but he's a really great mathematician.

So his ability to work out the mathematical equation

of both how the dancers move

and the mechanics of the camera?

Like, that was on another level.

To show off shapely legs

Berkeley patented a revolving stage.

In picture after picture

he one-upped himself with kaleidoscopic feats

engineered to make a splash.

I rehearse very meticulously

so that everything suits me

and I know that they've got it just right.

Then I tell them I'm going to start to shoot tomorrow.

And I used to have to think

and think and think and think

and try to create something

that would be better than what I had done before.

And I'd done some pretty good things before.

But while Warner musicals wowed audiences

the strain on performers mounted.

Say, Mr. Marsh, they've been going all night long.

I'll keep them here till they get it if it takes a week.

Do you know, in those days, the dancers would sleep on the set.

They had cots on the set, like, in your soundstages.

They'd do the numbers

and they'd go over and they'd sleep for like three hours on cots

because that's how hard it was to do that.

I mean, that's the level of physical demand it took

to getting that right, take after take

working that out.

Still, not all talent was easy to keep in line.

George!

Bette Davis was a relative newcomer.

Churning her way through B-grade roles

when she first rebelled against working conditions at the studio.

I've never taken orders from anyone.

As long as I live, I'll never take orders from anyone.

I'd like to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.

Bye!

Decades later, well into her reign as Hollywood royalty

she described her early battles with Jack Warner

to director Ron Howard.

As I got to know Bette Davis

you know, I talked about how much I yearned

for the studio contract days.

Because a director could be under contract

and make two or three movies a year.

And there was something that I romanticized about that.

And she said, "Don't be foolish.

Independence is something to be cherished.

It took me 14 years

to work off my seven-year contract

because they kept putting me on probation

because I was refusing to do roles

that Jack Warner would insist that I should take."

I know all the angles

and I think I'm smart enough to keep one step ahead of them.

She said, "One day, they threatened suspension

if I passed on the movie.

So I went to Jack Warner's office

and I stopped at secretary's desk, and she said

'Oh, no, Jack... Mr. Warner's busy.

We'll have to set an appointment, Miss Davis.'"

She said, "Nonsense."

And went bursting by the secretary, went into the office

and pulled the door open on his private bathroom.

And he was sitting there on the toilet

pants down, reading the newspaper.

And she said

"I need to talk to you about this lousy script that you want me to do."

And he just said

"Suspended!"

There's only one kind of a break we want from you.

And that's to leave us alone.

And let us make our living in our own way.

Or is that asking too much?

Jack Warner's fights with his stars

made for juicy tidbits in the Hollywood trades.

Morning.

But there was a lighter side to life on the lot.

Hey, you, come back here!

Oh, hello.

Who do you think you are, driving through here like that?

Why, I'm Porky Pig.

Since their earliest days in the business

the Warners' strategy for dealing with economic dry spells

was cross-marketing.

They had purchased a record company in 1930

then launched an animation department to help sell hit songs.

I love to sing-a

About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a

I love to sing-a

And promote Warner movies at the same time.

I love to sing-a

About the moon-a and the June-a

And the spring-a

I love to sing-a

How about a little celebration

To the jingle of a wedding bell?

You get service

In the Honeymoon Hotel

But when they saw Walt Disney's success across town

I am a wabbit!

Warner animators got serious about the funny business.

They took out full page, double page ads in the trades.

Hyping that this is the funniest thing.

The greatest music.

Strangely enough, they weren't lying.

Cartoons employed not just an army of visual artists

but entire symphony orchestras.

These guys knew what they were doing.

There's not just an amazing craft in there.

There's... There's art in it.

There's so much anarchy in this music, and so much wit

and, at the same time, so much knowledge.

I mean, encyclopedic knowledge of classical music.

For me, Warner Brothers cartoons were the thing.

I mean, they were the more irreverent.

They were funnier. They just had a much more

of an anarchic sort of feel to them.

Looney Tunes kept America laughing to keep from crying

as the Great Depression deepened.

The hard times hit Hollywood in 1933

with a wave of theater closings

that knocked out movie screens across the country.

The big five studios, including Warners

announced a 50% pay cut across all departments.

Pushback from top talent was swift.

James Cagney helped form the Screen Actors Guild.

Darryl Zanuck, the Warners' right-hand man

learned the pay cuts didn't extend to the brothers themselves

and left to found a new competitor.

Soon to be known as 20th Century Fox.

Then, on a breezy evening in March 1934

a spark got loose

in a machine shop on the Warner back lot.

A lot of the vaults were stocked

with nitrate elements

which, of course

are incredibly flammable.

And before the fire even got to the film vaults

the nitrate elements inside started to catch fire and burn

just from the heat.

The blaze took the life of the Warner lot's Fire Chief

and consumed more than 20 years of silent era films.

Of Rin Tin Tin and the Warners' earliest work

only fragments remained.

But across the globe

a catastrophe was underway

that would put the brothers and all of Hollywood to the test.

Harry was the spokesperson

for the company.

So he traveled to Europe.

He witnessed the evolution of Hitler.

Concentration camps were beginning

and they were calling them labor camps.

Germany had changed the rules to say that

no American film company

can do business in Germany

if there were any German Jews in the film studio.

Jack Warner and Harry made the decision

that they were going to pull out of Germany.

At the time, the other moguls, including Louis B. Mayer

did not wanna lose the German market.

And Harry Warner said

"There's things that are more important than money."

Jack's new second in command, producer Hal Wallis

set out to deliver well-crafted stories in many genres.

And wake Americans up to the danger rising abroad

and at home.

Wallis cast an almost boyish Humphrey Bogart

as a factory worker

seduced by the violent rhetoric

of white nationalist thugs.

You don't have to be pushed around by no foreigners.

There are a lot of guys in this town.

Americans who feel just like you and me.

There was a lot of hate for people that were black in America

for people that were Jewish in America

for a lot of the immigrants that had come to this country.

But they fought through it, and they fought against it

to try and stand up for the values of America.

All right, my hearties, follow me!

Even in their so-called escapist swashbucklers

they always had a social edge to them.

Captain Blood deals with slavery. It deals with tyranny.

It deals with bandits and pirates overthrowing corrupt places.

Break out those sails

and watch them fill with the wind

that's carrying us all to freedom!

Warner movies were pulling in audiences

but Americans seemed reluctant to act on the underlying message.

We believe that the security of our country

lies in the strength and character

of our own people

and not in fighting foreign wars.

To say that the majority of Americans

were isolationist is an understatement.

Most people who read the paper

knew that there was an obvious aggressor in Europe.

Still, most Americans are unmoved.

The other studios placated Germany

which had a council here in Los Angeles

who demanded to read scripts

and make sure there was nothing unflattering said

about Hitler or Nazism in general.

Germany's inside man reported directly to Joseph Goebbels

giving the Nazi Minister

of Propaganda

final cut on Hollywood movies.

Well, the Warner brothers weren't gonna have it.

And so in 1939, they went ahead and did a film called

Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

Warner Brothers was so secretive about that script

that they wouldn't send it to the actor

or give it to him on the set.

No, he had to come to the studio

read the script in the office of the producer.

It was turned down by several actors

who didn't have

the courage to do that.

But why?

Why? Because it was anti-Germany.

And they had reason to be afraid.

It is only by knowing

who our enemies are

do we know whom to destroy.

Actor, Edward G. Robinson

Director Anatole Litvak

and the Warners themselves were all targets of death threats

during and after production.

When they opened that film within the same few weeks

Madison Square Garden was sold out

with over 20,000 American Nazis.

German influence reached all the way to the Senate floor.

Harry was accused of making movies

that incited Americans to go to war.

His statement back to this accusation was

"No one will ever accuse me of being anti-American.

I am definitely anti-Nazi.

And no one's gonna tell me what movies I can make."

On December 8, 1941

the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor

a script analyst in Hal Wallis's office

picked up a story about a pair of lovers

reunited by chance

in a city full of refugees.

In November 1942

less than a year later, the Warners released a film

that captured the fundamental question of its time.

My dear, Rick. When will you realize that in this world today

isolationism is no longer a practical policy?

Casablanca it's the greatest studio film ever made.

It's not close. There's no... second place is way behind.

Here's looking at you, kid.

I always looked upon Casablanca a little mystically

that it had its own reason for being.

It was a picture the audiences needed.

What it said was that there were values

that were worth making sacrifices for.

And it said it in a very entertaining way.

You despise me, don't you?

Well, if I gave you any thought I probably would.

Fresh from High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon

and after years of playing hard-boiled detectives

and hard-bitten gangsters

Humphrey Bogart was not the obvious screen partner

for the divine Ingrid Bergman.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world

she walks into mine.

But the biggest gamble was the script itself.

It's remarkable because when we did it

we had no faith in it at all.

Because the script was so bad

and it was written day by day.

There was nothing clear about it.

And I didn't know which man I was supposed to really love.

So they say, "Can't you do the love scenes

just little in between?

Don't put too much seriousness in it.

Because we really don't know

with which man you're going to end up."

In the end, I said, "We're going to shoot it both ways."

You're saying this only to make me go.

I'm saying it because it's true.

Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble.

But it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people

don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

If Casablanca had ended

with Bogart going off with Bergman

the romantic ending

there wouldn't be any legend today.

I think that people go back again and again

to find values they don't find very easily today.

Are you ready, Ilsa?

Yes, I'm ready.

But for director, Michael Curtiz

and many actors on the set

the story was personal.

When you see that opening scene

and there's this wonderful tracking shot

where you can see the waiters

moving around in the cigarette smoke.

This kind of choreography of bustle...

To America.

To America.

To America.

The people who played all those parts were Jewish refugees.

Dan Seymour, the really massive actor

who played the doorman

he was on set when Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo

tells the band to play "La Marseillaise."

Play "La Marseillaise," play it.

And all the French sing it to drown out the Germans.

And he looked, and the people were crying

and it was real tears, they were really refugees.

To me, Casablanca...

Get away from that phone.

I would advise you not to interfere.

I was willing to shoot Captain Renault

and I'm willing to shoot you.

...really epitomized what it meant to be on the right side

in a world so distinctly divided between good and evil.

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Hal Wallis and Michael Curtiz

turned out other popular patriotic movies

throughout the war.

But none garnered more glory

than Casablanca.

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

Proving the brothers had arrived at Hollywood immortality.

Commercial success was not enough

for the Warner brothers.

They also wanted prestige.

And that came in the form of Academy Awards

and other citations.

But Curtiz and the cast

credited Hal Wallis for the film's success.

Rankling Jack Warner's pride.

And this whole thing reached critical mass

at the 1944 Oscars, when Casablanca

won the Best Picture Oscar.

Hal Wallis goes to accept his Oscar

and he's sitting in a row with the Warners

and they put their legs out

and blocked him from going up there.

And Jack Warner ran up, and took the Oscar from Jack Benny.

Hal Wallis said, 25 years later, he could still feel the rage.

Jack really should've let Hal Wallis

accept the Oscar.

And you know what Hal Wallis would have done?

He would've thanked his boss

Jack Warner.

The youngest Warner was fixated on promoting the family brand

specifically his own.

Jack Warner is my step-grandfather.

He was a grandfather to me.

I never used the word step-grandfather.

And I knew him till he died

when I was about 24.

He was a ringmaster.

Whenever you were around him, he would hold court

and take up all the oxygen.

Are you interested in the men who make your films?

Well, here's a whole plane full of them arriving from America.

Mr. Clifford Worth of Universal

Mr. Harry Cohn of Columbia

and Mr. Jack Warner being emphatic at the end of the line.

On top of his medal from the Academy

Jack got his stripes as a lieutenant colonel

after Warner Brothers trained and launched

the first US Army Motion Picture Unit.

And in the darkest days of the war

Colonel Warner and his brother Harry were summoned to Washington

where President Roosevelt himself

tasked them with a serious mission.

Make a movie that would help Americans trust their Soviet allies.

Here, Russian soldiers keep up the year-old fight

against the despised Nazi.

Based closely on the memoir of former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies

Mission to Moscow painted a flattering picture

of life in Russia.

What do you think of today's demonstration?

Tell you how I feel.

That at least one European nation

with no aggressive intentions

is ready for anything that comes.

And I say thank God for it.

Hear, hear.

Jack Warner looked at it as

"Hey, this is just a pro-Allied, pro-America movie

that we're making here because we wanna win the war."

Service to their country became the official Warner brand in 1944

with the new company motto

"Combining good citizenship with good picture making."

But just a few years later

Mission to Moscow would prove to be a political landmine.

The growing menace of communism

arouses the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee.

In October of 1947

with a new administration in the White House

the Warners were again called to Washington.

Meeting will come to order.

This time to testify

before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

When the Red Scare started

Mission to Moscow was used as exhibit number one

that Hollywood is infiltrated by Communists.

Harry Warner rejected the committee's claims

and refused to appear.

While Warner stars gathered outside to protest the proceedings

Jack Warner cooperated.

My brothers and I will be happy to subscribe generously

to a pest removal fund.

We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia

the people who don't like our American system of government.

Now, the other thing about HUAC

is you had people on that committee, like Representative Rankin

who were out-and-out anti-Semites.

And many of the studio heads

such as the Warners, were Jewish.

And so there was a fear factor.

The government could take away everything that we built.

Jack's reaction to that was

I think, politely put, cowardly.

Among the writers Jack named

were Philip and Julius Epstein

and Howard Koch

authors of Casablanca.

Blacklisted in Hollywood

and unable to find work in America

Koch moved to England

where he wrote under a pseudonym for the next five years.

That was an ugly, ugly time.

The golden years of Hollywood kind of disappeared after that

because people couldn't trust each other.

Jack's reputation was already in the dirt

with many in the industry.

Jack Warner was the dictator

and he wanted actors to be in the movies

that he wanted them to be in.

Years before

Bette Davis had sued the studio for breach of contract

and lost.

But another icon

had Jack in her sights.

Now, Olivia de Havilland was so depressed

at batting her eyes at Errol Flynn all the time.

She wanted to do more meaningful work

she couldn't.

So she sued Warner Brothers

on the basis that she had signed a seven-year contract.

But every time she refused a picture

and didn't go to work

they added that amount of time onto the seven years.

How did you fight?

I went to court.

And I got free from the contract.

That was the first thing.

She won the case I had in England

in America

and she is totally responsible

for the seven-year limitation

on every actor's contract today.

Olivia did this in America.

The De Havilland case ended mandatory contract extensions

and would lead to an exodus of top stars from the lot.

Among them, Lauren Bacall.

Thanks.

And Humphrey Bogart.

At the same time

the Justice Department struck at the architecture

of the Hollywood system itself.

What really cracked the studio system

was the lawsuit predicated on the Sherman Antitrust Act

where the studios were controlling the making of movies

and also the exhibition of movies with their theater chains.

Forced to spin off more than 1,000 theaters

and confronted with a widening hole in their revenue

the Warners could not hide from the grim truth.

Their studio was no longer on top.

The difference between what Warner Brothers made

between 1946 and 1952 is stunning.

The brothers were increasingly at odds.

I mean, Harry was 11 years older than Jack

which is almost a generation difference.

Jack liked wine, women, and song.

Harry was, "You need to stay home at night

and be with your family. Family's everything."

The two of them could not coexist.

And they were face to face with a competitor

that could break the world as they knew it.

One day, through television

the entire world will stream into our living rooms

with the velocity of light.

In 1950

3.8 million American families had television sets.

Well, it's quite a story. The story of television.

By 1955, the number had grown to 30 million.

When TV came, they tried to pretend the TV didn't exist.

Mr. Warner, you're quoted as saying

the cinema industry has nothing to fear from television.

Now, do you still hold that view?

Yes, I positively do.

He hated television so much

he refused to have a TV in his own house

or in his office.

Television was a threat.

And now I'd like to show you several scenes

from our CinemaScope picture already completed.

They tried every means imaginable

to lure people back into movie theaters.

CinemaScope. Stereophonic sound.

3D.

Warner Brothers tested new talent, too.

With better results.

I'm in love, I'm in love I'm in love, I'm in love

Hey, Stella!

Brando was real, and you felt a real feeling from him.

He had tapped into something personal.

You could connect to it more.

It looks to me like you've been swindled, baby.

And when you get swindled, under Napoleonic code

I get swindled too, and I don't like to get swindled.

When he came along, everybody thought...

he was the cat's rear end.

And he was. He was good.

Produced for television by Warner Brothers.

Though Jack would eventually give in to TV

and find a lucrative income stream

with serialized westerns

the brothers still believed in the magic of the big screen.

Their hopes rested on a blazing young actor

who touched a nerve to a growing generational divide

in the mid-'50s.

- Eight. - You have no repentance!

You're bad! Through and through bad!

James Dean, widescreen color.

The struggle between the father and the sons.

The mother.

- I was very beautiful once. - Yes, ma'am.

East of Eden was a film that I revisited constantly

and lived through because I was living through it myself.

I can't keep it to myself anymore.

Will you just get it off your chest, son?

That's it. That is not what I mean.

East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause

left indelible marks on the cinema.

But Dean would die tragically

before his third Warner movie was complete.

Box office hits were few and far between.

To the elder Warners

it seemed the time had come to move on.

Jack did not wanna retire.

And it was Harry and Albert

who were getting older.

And people were always coming to the studio, saying

"We wanna buy out your stock."

And so Harry and Albert were happy to retire

if all of them retired.

Jack knew he could not be president. Harry would not allow that.

I think it was a family thing.

They grew up with a mandate.

"All for one and one for all."

Harry was very dedicated to that.

And Jack didn't like it.

My brothers and I have been in the cinema industry

for about 50 years.

Jack devised a very clever way

to finally gain complete control of Warner Brothers.

If the Lehman Brothers or Louis Louis are listening

we're still open for an offer. But this time, with money.

He found an outfit that he could sell the studio to.

I think I'll blow by this.

It's something to do with selling the joints.

He told Harry, "Let's get out. We're done.

The business is changing," and so forth.

Then they said, "Well, we'll do that

as long as you sell your shares as well."

Not unless you wanna break your neck.

So they were all gonna sell and get out.

But Jack betrayed them

by making a deal with the buyer.

Under the table, he gave the guy a million bucks.

And the guy sold the studio back to him.

Next thing Harry knew was that he read in the trades

that Jack was gonna be president.

Him reading that in the trades

gave him a heart attack and a stroke.

It literally, it broke his heart.

Because he trusted Jack so much.

Jack's name was mud.

You could not talk about Jack.

What can you say about that transaction?

The ultimate shell game

that not only betrays your older brother

but sends him to an early grave.

Jack didn't attend the funeral.

Albert Warner never spoke to Jack again.

In the end, the family fell apart.

Everything's possible in Hollywood here.

And they had incredible success.

And sometimes it can be corrupting, that kind of success.

Jack, he got a chance to be the guy that got to run it all.

But he broke his promise to his dad.

It was 1958

and Jack had all the power.

But the lot was a ghost of its former self.

In a bid to recapture better days

and refill the company coffers

he put his faith in an old Warner standby.

- Ya got trouble - Oh, we got trouble

Right here in River City

- Musicals. - Let a woman in your life

And your serenity is through

She'll redecorate your home From the cellar to the dome

Then go on to the enthralling fun Of overhauling you

How goes the final hour? As he sees the bridal bower

Everything's coming up roses

For me and for you

There were some notable high points.

The best picture of the year is My Fair Lady.

Jack L. Warner.

I'm indeed gratified to be here tonight

to accept this high award.

It's something we will always be proud of.

Thank you.

The last flowering of the old studio system

was happening with these big budget musicals.

And some of these pictures were very beautifully made.

But they had a kind of decorum

that was a holdover from an earlier era.

Have you jousted with humility lately?

Our films are great

they still are great

and they'll be greater.

I think the American producers have learned to stop aping

the Italian, and the French, and the Spanish

and other undesirable films

that have art and all that hokey pokey.

All alone at the top

Jack felt the ground shifting underneath him.

The country was really changing.

I mean, you're talking mid-'60s

Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War

student opposition, the growing presence of rock music.

This kind of moviemaking looked old

and past its time.

Jack's without the support he had in the '30s and '40s.

He doesn't have the great production executives

who ran the place for him.

He doesn't have the movie stars under contract like he had before.

He makes deals with these independent producers

who come to him

but he doesn't have the same involvement or the power

to oversee it.

When a hungry young actor-producer named Warren Beatty came to the lot

to shoot a rags-to-riches gangster film set in the 1930s

Jack could not relate.

When he got wind of Bonnie and Clyde

and the level of violence...

he was not happy.

Okay.

You just read about

how difficult it was for them to get it to the screen.

But when they finally do

it became this cultural phenomenon.

You're a 12-year-old kid

and it's just everywhere.

I mean, it's... It's not just the Mad magazine parody.

It's on the cover of everything, and every girl at school

is trying to look like Faye Dunaway.

It just was everywhere.

The movie was the stuff

the Warners' dreams were once made of.

But Jack could not see himself

in the renegades on screen

or the rebels behind the camera.

The memos from Jack Warner

in his later years are full of frustration.

"No one ever listens to me." "I told you not to do it this way."

"Don't go off the lot." "Don't do this. Don't do that."

And people just shrug

and keep doing what they're doing

'cause they're trying to make their movie.

In 1967, he struck a deal to sell his shares

to an ambitious production company

trying to make it to the big leagues.

Seven Arts.

The story of the studio had rolled past the family

that founded it.

The day my grandfather's leaving the studio

Francis Ford Coppola was on the lot

shooting Finian's Rainbow.

And standing with them

was a young guy named George Lucas helping him.

So it really was a transfer of generational moviemaking.

You almost wonder

if they figuratively or literally

passed each other in the gate

like two big ships.

One going off into the sunset

and one going into the sunrise.

It was kind of the end of the first act of Hollywood history

and the beginning of the second.

The old power structure had crumbled.

What took its place

would decide the fate of the company...

Action!

...and the future of the industry.