Warner Research the Compelling Truth

Warner Research The Compelling Truth Behind Compelling Screen Fiction: The History Warner Brother's Studios From largely deserted nighttime streets with nefarious goings-on taking place in the shadows cast by street lamps to the bright and hyperactive bouncing around of Bugs Bunny, Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. And all of its various iterations and incarnations have been providing the world with almost anything it could ask for in television and film entertainment for nearly a century.

Founded in 1918 by four brothers -- Harry, Sam, Albert, and Jack -- Warner Brothers began making silent films, and showed great innovation (and despite the obvious success of modern cinema, great daring in the face of sever doubts and criticism) in releasing the first "talkie." They also branched out into cartoons, television production and even a television station, and the music industry. In short, Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. has become one of the most successful entertainment companies the world has ever seen, and they are still going strong today.

My interest in Warner Brothers did not begin until I realized that they had made many of my favorite old movies, including The Big Sleep (1946), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Strangers on a Train (1951), as well as many other classics of film noir. They made many other films in other genres, of course, but as film noir has always been one of my favorite film genres I set out to learn more about one of the biggest studios of the Golden Era of Hollywood films.

What I discovered was largely the typical story of a large company remaining successful and growing larger through their success, but there are also episodes in the history of Warner Brothers Studios that would be worthy of a movie themselves. The four brothers who started the company in 1918 were instrumental in its early and continued success, and have led to the company's current claim to be "the industry's preeminent creator and distributor of feature films, televisions programs, animation, [and] video and DVD" (Warner Bros. par. 2).

But the brother did not have an easy start, and worked hard to build the media empire now known as Warner Brother's Entertainment, Inc. The sons of Benjamin Warner, who provided for his family by repairing shoes, the brothers' modest beginnings did not deter them from dreaming big and working hard to get fulfill these dreams. In 1903, they entered the movie business y agreeing to independently distribute The Great Train Robbery to carnivals in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The experience ad them hooked, and in 1905 the brothers signed an official agreement binding them together in a film production and distribution enterprise -- the beginnings of an empire (BOS 1). The Internet is rife with misinformation, but a careful comparison of details on different sites can lead to reliable conclusions about past events, especially when simple facts are considered without the conjectured motivations of people not present (or even alive) when these events occurred.

This is primarily how I conducted my research into the history of Warner Brothers Studios and Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc. -- by using several websites (including the company's own official website and history), I was able to develop a clear, comprehensive, and accurate understanding of how Warner Brothers came to be the giant of the entertainment industry that it is today. In doing so, I also necessarily learned a great deal about Hollywood's studio era and the ways that filmmaking and business were conducted.

When Warner Brothers really got off the ground in 1918 with its first feature production (the intervening years having been spent solely -- and sporadically -- in distribution), it faced major competition from the already-established production studios of the time, including the still-familiar MGM, Universal, and Paramount.

Rin Tin, an enormously well-trained dog, helped to put Warner Brothers on the map as the most successful of the independent studios (without a nationwide chain of theatres or other distribution system in place for their won films), but they were still losing ground to their competitors who had a great deal more capital with which to both make and distribute their movies (BOS 1-2). It is somewhat surprising, though of course entirely obvious once it is pointed out, how important getting a film into theatres is for its success.

We tend only to hear about the films that make it to our local theatres, and in today's world the movie theatres are run separately from the production end and are free to show whatever films they want to purchase. This was not the case in the early days of film, however. Instead, the studios either owned or worked in close collaboration with movie theatres, the vast majority of which had only one screen at the time.

Instead of being able to choose which movie one wanted to see upon arriving at the theatre, choosing a movie meant choosing which studio's latest picture seemed most appealing, and going to that theatre. The Warner brothers did not have a lot of money to build theatres with; they managed to construct a few in major cities, but that was it until Harry Warner talked to independent theatre owners and convinced them to advertise Warner's films for a small price (BOS 2).

The boost that Warner Brothers Studios got from these advertisements allowed them to grow their business, and even obtain a large loan from Goldman Sachs that was used to build more studio-owned theatres and thus increase Warner Brother's distribution network and market share (BOS 2-3). They were now competing on almost even terms with the "Big Five" production studios -- Universal, Paramount, MGM, First National, and Producers Distributing -- but these other studios had a large head start.

The innovation of adding sound to films promised another leg up for the studio, which with more to gain than the established studios also had less to lose. The productions and release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 heralded the birth of a new era in film, and one that irrevocably and radically altered the very conception of cinema itself (Warner Bros par. 4). Though I set out to learn about how Warner Brothers Studios and Warner entertainment, Inc.

became so successful through their films, the more research I conducted the more I realized, somewhat dishearteningly, how little the actual quality of the films mattered, and how essential the business aspects of the enterprise were and are. This importance is highly visible today, as the company even proudly acknowledges its innovations in marketing and licensing, and the ability to derive profits from products based on its movies and other holdings (Warner Bros. par. 5).

It is also highly visible in the company's history; though the Rin Tin series and The Jazz Singer can be singled out as essential films and turning points for the company, the real trajectory of the company must be followed through its business decisions, and not through its artistic products. That being said, the company has still produced many culturally and artistically significant pieces,.