Harry Warner
Harry Morris Warner was an American studio executive, one of the founders of Warner Bros., and a major contributor to the development of the film industry. Along with his three younger brothers, Warner played a crucial role in the film business and establishing Warner Bros., serving as the company president until 1956.
Early life
Warner was born Hirsz Mojżesz "Wonsal" or "Wonskolaser" to a family of Ashkenazi Jews from the village of Krasnosielc, Poland. He was the son of Benjamin Wonsal, a shoemaker born in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum. His given name was Mojżesz, however, he was called Hirsz in the United States. In October 1889, he came to Baltimore, Maryland with his mother and siblings on the steamship Hermann from Bremen, Germany. Their father had preceded them, immigrating to Baltimore in 1888 to pursue his trade in shoes and shoe repair. At that time that he changed the family name to Warner which was used thereafter. As in many Jewish immigrant families, some of the children gradually acquired anglicized versions of their Yiddish-sounding names. Hirsz became Harry, and his middle name Morris was likely a version of Mojżesz.In Baltimore, the money Benjamin Warner earned in the shoe repair business was not enough to provide for his growing household. He and Pearl had another daughter, Fannie, not long after they arrived. Benjamin moved the family to Canada, inspired by a friend's advice that he could make an excellent living bartering tin wares with trappers in exchange for furs. Sons Jacob and David Warner were born in London, Ontario. After two arduous years living in Canada, the Warners returned to Baltimore. Two more children, Sadie and Milton, were added to the household there. In 1896, the family moved to Youngstown, Ohio, following the lead of Harry, who had established a shoe repair shop in the heart of the emerging industrial town. Benjamin worked with Harry in the shoe repair shop until he secured a loan to open a meat counter and grocery store in the city's downtown area.
In 1899, Harry opened a bicycle shop in Youngstown, Ohio with his brother, Abraham. Eventually, Harry and Abe also opened a bowling alley together. The bowling alley failed and closed shortly after it opened. Harry eventually accepted an offer to become a salesman for a local meat franchise, and sold meat in Ohio and Pennsylvania. However, by his nineteenth birthday, Harry was reduced to living in his parents' crowded household.
Business career in films
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 used the 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. The 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 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, 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 their 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 that 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 move their studio from Culver City, California, to the Sunset Boulevard section of Hollywood.
Warner decided to focus on making only dramas for the studio during that time. 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.
Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.
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 a 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 was 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 develop a close friendship, Warner never really accepted Zanuck as a friend.After establishing Warner Bros., the studio had unfortunately overdrawn $1 million and Warner decided to pay off the debt by expanding the studio's operations further. In the process, Warner acquired forty theaters in Pennsylvania. In 1924, Warner Bros. produced two more successful films, The Marriage Circle and Beau Brummell. In 1924, after Rapf left 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 added additional success to the studio's profits. The film Beau Brummel also made John Barrymore a top star at the studio as well. Although the studio now had success, the brothers were still unable to compete with The Big Three.
In 1925, Harry and a large group of independent film-makers assembled in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 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 that, Warner Pictures now owned theaters in the New York area. Around the time, Warner purchased a home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park, where he stayed until 1929.
In the later part of 1925, Harry's younger brother Sam had also acquired a radio station, KFWB. 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 agreed to use synchronized sound in Warner Bros. shorts, as long as it was only used for background music, Harry then made a visit to Western Electric's Bell Laboratories in New York, and was impressed. One problem that occurred for the Warners, though, was the fact that the high-ups at Western Electric were perceived as 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 that, Harry signed a partnership agreement with Western Electric to use Bell Laboratories to test the sound-on-film process.