Harry Warner

At 76 years old, Harry Warner physical status not available right now. We will update Harry Warner's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In 1903, Harry's brothers, Abe and Sam, began to exhibit The Great Train Robbery at carnivals across Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1905, Harry sold his bicycle shop and joined his brothers in their fledgling film business. With the money Harry made from selling the bicycle shop, the three brothers were able to purchase a building in New Castle, Pennsylvania. They would use this building to establish their first theater, the Cascade. The Cascade was so successful that the brothers were able to purchase a second theater in New Castle. This makeshift theatre, called the Bijou, was furnished with chairs borrowed from a local undertaker.

In 1907, the Warners expanded the business further and purchased fifteen theaters in Pennsylvania. Harry, Sam, and Albert then formed a new film exchange company, The Duquesne Amusement Supply Company, and rented an office in the Bakewell building in downtown Pittsburgh. Harry sent Sam to New York to purchase, and ship, films for their Pittsburgh exchange company, while he and Albert remained in Pittsburgh to run the business. In 1909, the brothers sold the Cascade Theater and established a second film exchange company in Norfolk, Virginia. Harry agreed to let younger brother Jack be a part of the company, sending him to Norfolk to serve as Sam's assistant. A serious problem threatened the Warners' film company with the advent of Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company (also known as the Edison Trust), which charged distributors exorbitant fees. In 1910, the Warners sold the family business to the General Film Company for "$10,000 in cash, $12,000 in preferred stock, and payments over a four-year period for a total of $52,000".

After they sold their business, Harry and his three brothers joined forces with independent filmmaker Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Picture Company, and began distributing films from his Pittsburgh film exchange division. In 1912, the brothers earned a $1,500 profit with the film Dante's Inferno. In the wake of this success, Harry and the brothers broke with Laemmle and established their own film production company. They named their new company Warner Features. Once Warner Features was established, Harry acquired an office in New York with his brother Albert, sending Sam and Jack to run the new corporation's film exchange divisions in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1917, Harry won more capital for the studio when he was able to negotiate a deal with Ambassador James W. Gerard to make Gerard's book My Four Years In Germany into a film.

In 1918, after the success of My Four Years In Germany, the brothers were able to establish a studio near Hollywood, California. In the new Hollywood studio, Sam became co-head of production along with his younger brother, Jack. They were convinced that they would have to make movies themselves if they were to ever generate a profit. Between the years 1919 and 1920, the studio did not turn a profit. During this time, banker Motley Flint, who was, unlike most bankers at the time, not anti-semitic, helped the brothers pay off their debts. The four brothers then decided to relocate their studio from Culver City, California to the Sunset Boulevard section of Hollywood.

During this time, Warner decided to focus on making only dramas for the studio. The studio rebounded in 1921 with the success of the studio's film Why Girls Leave Home; The film's director, Harry Rapf, became the studio's new head producer. On April 4, 1923, following the success of the studio's film The Gold Diggers, Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. was officially established, with help from a loan given to Harry by Montly Flint. Harry became company president, with Albert as treasurer and Jack and Sam as co-heads of production. Harry and his family moved to Hollywood.

The studio discovered a trained German Shepherd named Rin Tin Tin in 1923. The canine made his starring debut in Where the North Begins, a film about an abandoned pup who is raised by wolves and befriends a fur trapper. According to one biographer, Jack Warner's initial doubts about the project were quelled when he met Rin Tin Tin, "who seemed to display more intelligence than some of the Warner comics." The trained dog proved to be the studio's most important commercial asset until the introduction of sound. Prolific screenwriter Darryl F. Zanuck produced several scripts for Rin Tin Tin vehicles and, during one year, wrote more than half of the studio's features. Between 1928 and 1933, Zanuck served as the studio's executive producer, a position whose responsibilities included the day-to-day production of films; while Warner's younger brother Jack and Zanuck were able to obtain a close friendship, Warner never really accepted Zanuck as a friend.

After establishing Warner Bros., the studio had unfortunately overdrawn $1 million (the amount which Warner had loaned from Flint) and Warner decided to pay off the debt by expanding the studio's operations further. In the process, Warner acquired forty theaters in the state of Pennsylvania. In 1924, Warner Bros. would produce two more successful films, The Marriage Circle and Beau Brummell. In 1924, after Rapf departed the studio to accept an offer at MGM, Ernst Lubitsch, the successful director of The Marriage Circle, was also given the title of head producer; Lubitsch would add additional success for the studio's profits. The film Beau Brummel also made John Barrymore a top star at the studio as well. Despite the success the studio now, the brothers were still unable to compete with The Big Three (Paramount, Universal, and First National).

In 1925, Harry and a large group of independent film-makers assembled in Milwaukee to challenge the monopoly the Big Three had over the film industry. Harry and the other independent film-makers at the Milwaukee convention agreed to spend $500,000 in newspaper advertisements; this action would help benefit Warner Bros. profits. With help from a loan supplied by Goldman, Sachs head banker Waddill Catchings, Warner would find a way to successfully respond to the growing concern the Big Three Studios further induced to Warner Bros., and expanded the company's operations further by purchasing the Brooklyn theater company Vitagraph. Because of this, Warner Pictures now owned theaters in the New York area. Around this time, Warner purchased a home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park, where he remained until 1929.

In the later part of 1925, Harry's younger brother Sam had also acquired a radio station, KWBC. After acquiring his radio station, Sam decided to make an attempt to use synchronized sound in future Warner Bros. Pictures. Harry had initial reservations about the idea; when Sam first made this suggestion, Harry wanted to focus on background music before delving into people talking on screen. Harry responded, "We could ultimately develop sound to the point where people ask for talking pictures" The company also began acquiring theaters. Eventually, Warner Bros. came to own and operate some 250 theaters. By February 1926, however, the brothers' radio business had failed, and the studio was facing a net loss of $333,413.00.

After a long period of refusing to accept the usage of sound in the company's films, Warner now agreed to use synchronized sound in Warner Bros. shorts, as long as it was used only for background music, Harry then made a visit to Western Electric's Bell Laboratories in New York, (which younger brother Sam had earlier visited) and was impressed. One problem that occurred for the Warners, though, was the fact that the high-ups at Western Electric were anti-Semitic. Sam, though, was able to convince the high-ups to sign with the studio after his wife Lina wore a gold cross at a dinner he attended with Western Electric brass. After this, Harry signed a partnership agreement with Western Electric to use Bell Laboratories to test the sound-on-film process.

The success of Warner Bros.' early talkie films (The Jazz Singer, The Lights of New York, The Singing Fool and The Terror) catapulted the studio into the ranks of the major studios. Flush with cash, the Warners abandoned their old location in the Poverty Row section of Hollywood and acquired a big studio in Burbank, California. As a result of this success, Warner was able to acquire the Stanley Company of America (founded by Jules E. Mastbaum), which controlled most of the first-run theaters on the East Coast. This purchase gave them a share in rival First National Pictures, of which Stanley owned one-third. After this purchase, Warner was soon able to acquire William Fox’s one third remaining share in First National and was now officially the majority stockholder of the company. After success of the studio's 1929 First National film Noah's Ark, Harry Warner also agreed to make Michael Curtiz a major director at the Burbank studio as well.

Warner, after purchasing a string of music publishers, was even able to establish a music subsidiary-Warner Bros. Music- and buy out additional radio companies, foreign sound patents, and a lithograph company as well; he even was able to produce a Broadway musical Fifty Million Frenchmen. By the time the 1st Academy Awards took place, Warner was recognized as the second most powerful figure in the movie industry, just behind MGM head Nicholas Schenck. In the wake of the success of Gold Diggers of Broadway, journalists had dubbed Warner "the godfather of the talking screen." The studio's net profit was now over $14,000,000.00. During this time, Warner soon also grew tired of the Hollywood atmosphere and acquired a twenty-two acre ranch in Mount Vernon, New York. Once Warner returned to New York, he and Albert found work together once again.

Following Albert's advice, Jack and Harry Warner acquired three Paramount stars (William Powell, Kay Francis and Ruth Chatterton) for salaries doubled from their previous ones. This move proved to be a success, and stockholders maintained confidence in the Warners. The first year of the Great Depression, 1930, did not damage the studio badly, and Warner was even able to acquire more theaters for the studio in Atlantic City. During this time, Warner was also engaged in a lawsuit with a Boston stockholder who accused him of trying use money from the studio's profitable businesses to try to purchase his vast 300 shares of stock about declare monopoly. The company would, however, suffer a minor financial blow during the year after Motley Flint, the longtime banker for the studio, and by now also a close friend of the Warners, was murdered by an angry investor.

In the latter part of 1929, much to Harry's dismay, younger brother Jack would hire sixty-one-year-old actor George Arliss to star in the studio's film Disraeli. To Warner's surprise, the film Disraeli would go to be a success at the box office, and Warner was convinced to make Arliss a top star for the studio as well. During the Depression era, the studio also produced a series of gangster films; Warner Bros. soon became known as "gangster studio." The studio's first gangster film Little Caesar was a great success at the box office. Following Little Caesar, the studio agreed to cast Edward Robinson in a wave of gangster pictures. The studio's second gangster film, The Public Enemy, would also make James Cagney arguably the studio's new top star, and the Warners were now further convinced to make more gangster films as well. Another gangster film the studio released during the Depression era was the critically acclaimed I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. The film made Paul Muni a top studio star, and also got audiences in the United States to question the legal system as well.

However, they would begin to feel the effects of the Depression in 1931. As ticket prices became unaffordable, the studio would lose money. By the end of 1931, the studio suffered a net loss of reportedly $8,000,000.00, During this time, Warner rented the Teddington Studio in London, England. To help fight off the financial problems the Depression gave the studio, Warner Bros was now focused on making films for the London market and Irving Asher was appointed as the Teddington Studio's head producer. Unfortunately, the Teddington studio could not bring in additional profit to the Warners, and the Burbank studio would lose an additional $14,000,000 in 1932 as well. In 1934, Warner officially bought out the struggling Teddington Studio.

However, relief would also come for the studio after Franklin Roosevelt became US president in 1933 and the New Deal revived the US Economy. Movie tickets became affordable once again. During the year, the studio was able to make a very profitable musical, 42nd Street. which revived the studio's musical films. However, in 1933, a blow would also occur as the studio's longtime head producer Darryl F. Zanuck would quit, because: (1) Harry was strongly against allowing his film Baby Face to step outside the Hays Code boundaries; and 2) the studio reduced his salary as a result of the financial woes the studio temporarily faced from President Roosevelt's bank holiday, and Harry still refused to raise his salary in the wake of the New Deal's economic rebound. Following Zanuck's resignation, studio director Hal B. Wallis took his place as the studio's executive producer, and Harry—who, along with his brother Jack, was a notable "penny-pincher"— finally agreed to bring salaries back up to government expectations once again.

In 1933, the studio was also able to bring newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan films into the Warner Bros. fold. Hearst had previously been signed with MGM, but he ended his ties with the company after a dispute with the company's head producer Irving Thalberg over the treatment of Marion Davies; Davies was a longtime mistress of Hearst, and was now struggling to draw box office success. Through the studio's partnership with Hearst, Harry's younger brother Jack was also able to sign Davies to a studio contract as well. However, Hearst's company and Davies' films could not increase the studio's net profits.

In 1934, the studio had a net loss of over $2,500,000. $500,000 of this loss was the result of physical damage to the Warner Bros. Burbank studio that occurred after a massive fire that broke out in the studio around the end of 1934, and destroyed twenty years' worth of early Warner Bros. films. The following year, Hearst's film adaption of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream would fail at the box office and the studio's net loss increased. During this time, Warner was also indicted, along with six other Hollywood studio figures who owned movie theaters, of conspiracy to violate the Sherman Antitrust Act, through an attempt to gain a monopoly over theaters in the St. Louis area. In 1935, Warner, along with executives at RKO and Paramount, were put on trial for this charge. After a mistrial occurred, Warner sold the company's movie theaters, at least for a short time, and the case was never reopened. One problem that remained for Warner, however, was the studio's projectionist labor union, which was now controlled by the Mafia.

In 1935, the studio's revived musicals would also suffer a major blow after director Busby Berkeley was arrested after killing three people while driving drunk one night. During the studio's union crisis, Warner received a threatening phone call from a union member, stating that he would seize Warner's daughter Betty and adopted daughter Lita within a forty-eight-hour period. Warner then agreed to accept the union's demands, and the kidnapping threat ended. However, 1935 also saw some relief for Harry as the studio rebounded with a year-end net profit of $674,158.00. Around this time, a depressed Warner—seeing that the newly rebounded Warner studio no longer needed loans to pay off debts—decided to move to California, and acquired 3,000 acres (12 km2) of ranch land just northwest of Hollywood in Calabasas, California. He later moved into a 1,100-acre ranch in the San Fernando Valley.

During 1936, the studio's film The Story of Louis Pasteur was a success at the box office. In addition to the film's box office success, Paul Muni won the Oscar for Best Actor in March 1937 for his performance as the title role. The studio's film The Life of Emile Zola (1937) gave the studio its first Oscar for Best Picture.

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