The Warner Brothers - Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack - were Jewish immigrants who began in the film business in 1903 exhibiting films. They eventually opened their first theater and began producing films in 1918. Warner Bros. pioneered talking pictures and the first feature-length talking film in 1927. The studio produced many iconic films in the 1930s-1940s and had financial success. Though the brothers sold the company in the 1950s, Warner Bros. remains a major Hollywood studio today under new ownership.

1. Oscar Vaca
Warner Bros.

6. Warner Bros. Motto
"Educate, Entertain, and Enlighten."

7. Harry , Albert , Sam, and Jack
The Warner Brothers

8. Albert Warner
July 23, 1884-November 26, 1967
Samuel L. Warner
August 10, 1887-October 5, 1927
Harry Warner
December 12, 1881-July 25, 1958
Jack Warner
August 2, 1892-September 9, 1978

9. Their parents were Jewish immigrants from
Krasnosielc, Poland and mainly spoke Yiddish.

10. Harry M. Warner
“It is not the challenge of dollars ... it is the challenge of ideals and
ideas! If the producers of pictures, see only the dollar - then I
believe those production efforts will fail.”
The Company's President

11. Sam Warner
"The Father of Talking Pictures"
(CEO) Chief Executive Officer

12. Albert Warner
Treasurer of Warner Bros.

13. Jack L. Warner
Studio's Executive in Charge of Production
One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

14. 1903
In 1903, they bought a kinetoscope made by Thomas Edison.The brothers began in the
film business as traveling exhibitors, moving throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania. One
of the first pictures they showed was Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, the
first motion picture to tell a definite story. By 1907, they were operating from a
converted store in New Castle, Pennsylvania, which they named the Cascade Theatre.
With Albert and Harry selling tickets, Sam ran the hand-crank projector while Jack sang
“illustrated” songs during the intermissions to sister Rose's piano accompaniment.
Within the year, they had opened two more theaters in New Castle.

15. They opened their first theater, The Cascade, in New Castle,
Pennsylvania
1907

16. • By 1918, they built their first studio in Los
Angeles, in Culver City. Two years later, they
moved to a site in Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd.,

17. • March 10, 1918 My Four Years in Germany was Warner's first
film. Their first full-scale picture, My Four Years in Germany,
based on the best-selling book by America's ambassador to
the court of Kaiser Wilhelm, premiered in 1918 and grossed
an amazing (for that time) $1.5 million.

18. • The studio's first major star was a German shepherd, Rin Tin
Tin. The dog appeared in 27 movies and was Warners' biggest
asset of the silent era.

19. • Warner Bros. was a pioneer of films with
synchronized sound "talkies” In May 1925,
Sam and Harry heard the first sounds of
“talking pictures” in the New York offices of
Western Electric. Sam, self-taught in
mechanics, instantly recognized the
groundbreaking potential of this new
technology

20. They installed the new sound equipment in their
just-acquired Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn.
1925

21. Don Juan opens Warners' Theatre NYC

22. • As a result of their financial problems, Warner Bros. took the next step
and released The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson. This movie, which
has very little sound dialogue but includes sound segments of Jolson
singing, was a sensation. It signaled the beginning of the era of
"talking pictures". The first feature-length part-talkie
1927

23. Lights of New York
is the first all-talking
full length feature film
1928

24. 1929
the first all-talking color film. The enormous financial success
of these early sound films enabled Warner Brothers to
become a major motion-picture studio.

25. Purchased First National Pictures therefor acquiring a newly built
studio in Burbank California, which today remains the home of Warner
Bros. Studios. The Warners invested heavily into converting the new
studio into the finest movie sound facility in the world. Stages were
soundproofed and ready for talking films
1928

26. 1930s
Among the major films produced during the
1930s were The Petrified Forest, Little Caesar
,The Public Enemy, Black Legion ,42nd Street,
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, a film that
led to prison reform.

27. 1936

28. With the collapse of the market for musicals, Warner
Bros.turned to more socially realistic storylines. For its many
films about gangsters Warner Bros. soon became known as a
"gangster studio”. The studio's first gangster film, Little
Caesar, was a great box office success

29. 1940s
• in the 1940s, the Studio produced such
classics as The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York,
King's Row, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca,
Mildred Pierce, The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre and Johnny Belinda.

30. The Warner animation division was founded in

31. Jack Warner had been the effective head of the studio since
the 1920s, often clashing with his brothers. In the 1956, the
brothers agreed to sell their interest in the studio, but Jack
secretly bought his brothers shares. Soon, he was the sole
head of the studio. The brothers never spoke to him again.

32. In 1967, Seven Arts acquired a controlling interest in Warner
Bros. from Jack Warner For $32 million. Merged as Warner
Bros.-Seven Arts, then being acquired in 1969 by Kinney
National Company and renamed simply "Warner Bros.

33. Warners created the blueprint for the
modern-day superhero movie with 1978's
"Superman" (with Christopher Reeve) and
1989's "Batman" (with Michael Keaton),
both based on caped-hero titles published
by DC Comics, which was a division of
Warner Bros.

34. Virtually every movie Clint Eastwood
has directed or starred in for the past
45 years has been for Warner Bros., a
partnership that has included about 40
films.

35. Warner Bros. Today

36. • Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara
• Says he wants to be the king of content.
• Fifth leader in the 90-year history of Warner
Bros.

37. Warners Bros has 10 Best Picture Oscar winners

38. Citation
The Brothers Warner. Dir. Cass Warner. Perf. Cass Warner Sperling. Warner Bros., 2007. DVD
Hirschhorn, Clive. The Warner Bros. Story. New York: Crown, 1979. Print.
"Company Overview,Company Overview." Company Overview. Ed. W. B. WARNER BROS.
ENTERTAINMENT INC., 08 July 2014. Web. 03 June 2015.
"Warner Brothers | American Film Studio." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica,
n.d. Web. 04 June 2015.
Takacs, Bill. "Biography." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 04 June 2015.
<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0912491/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bth_nm>.
"Gangster Film | Motion-picture Genre." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica,
n.d. Web. 05 June 2015<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/225426/gangster-film>
Vitaphone, 8/22/10 7:27 Pm. Vitaphone (n.d.): n. pag. Sbcc.edu. Santa Barbara City College, 10 Aug.
2010. Web. 04 June 2015.
<soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/filmpro_181/FILMPRO_181_History/Vitaphone/>
Epstein, Leslie. ""Jack Warner and the Epstein Boys | Leslie Epstein | TEDxBeaconStreet" Video at
TEDxTalks." TEDxTalks. TED Talks, 10 Feb. 2015. Web. 07 June 2015.
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Jack-Warner-and-the-Epstein-Boy
Giannetti, Louis D., and Scott Eyman. Flashback: A Brief History of Film. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1996. Print.