Jack L. Warner

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Jack Warner in the film magazine Moving Picture World (1919)

Jack Leonard Warner (born August 2, 1892 in London , Ontario , Canada , † September 9, 1978 in Los Angeles , United States ) was a Canadian-American film producer , screenwriter , director and actor . The co-founder of what would later become Warner Bros. -Studios led the company with an iron hand for four decades and was one of the most successful in the industry.

Life

Jack Leonard Warner's original first name was Jacob. His parents were Benjamin Warner and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum, Jews who immigrated to the United States from Poland . After Warner's birth, the ninth of the couple's twelve children, the family moved to Baltimore and then to Youngstown , Ohio , where Benjamin Warner opened a grocery store. Warner turned to the entertainment industry at an early age, for example performing at local theaters. Three of his older brothers Harry M. , Albert and Sam Warner also made tentative attempts to gain a foothold in show business. After the brothers were successful in business, they bought several small theaters and a little later started their own sales company, the "Duquesne Leisure Company", which they sold again in 1909 for $ 52,000. Then they started their careers as producers. In 1918 the brothers bought the film rights to the bestselling novel My Four Years in Germany by the US ambassador to Germany. James W. Gerard worked in Berlin from 1913 to 1917 and, when he was recalled, drew up a résumé and included British propaganda about alleged German war atrocities. Warner's film was shot in a short time and came on March 10, 1918 for distribution to reinforce the American war effort. The film adaptation was her first success.

In 1923 Jack Warner founded together with his brothers Harry, Albert and Sam the "Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc." (today's " Warner Bros. "). They started off with a series of low budget comedies and films that addressed social grievances that were unsuccessful and nearly bankrupt. The first major success came when they discovered a trained German Shepherd named Rin Tin Tin and made adventure films with him. The animal quickly became a "star". Some of the films were written by Darryl F. Zanuck , a producer who later became Jack L. Warner's right-hand man. In 1927, the company released the first commercially successful full-length sound film , The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson . After Sam Warner died before the world premiere of the film, Jack L. Warner took over the management of the company and changed his brother's business policy fundamentally. With little consideration for others, he has earned a reputation as one of Hollywood's most uncomfortable business partners.

Unlike many other film studios, Warner Bros. survived the stock market crash in 1929 and continued to produce a wide range of films. Among the biggest successes of the studio at this time the movies were Little Caesar ( Little Caesar , 1931) with Edward G. Robinson and The Public Enemy ( The Public Enemy , 1931) with the Warner personally discovered actor James Cagney , the most Was to become the star of the studio in the 1930s and early 1940s. Warner was the only studio boss who ceased business relations with Nazi Germany immediately after the seizure of power . With films such as Sergeant York (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), the studio drew attention to the growing threat posed by National Socialism in Europe. The turn to social and political drama reflected Warner's personal political views.

When it came to money, Warner was a relentless business associate with a tendency to stubbornness, and some of his employees even said that he was a sadist in that regard . Well-known stars such as Bette Davis , Errol Flynn , George Raft , Paul Muni or James Cagney , Edward G. Robinson , Olivia de Havilland and Humphrey Bogart were not excluded.

Jack L. Warner was also one of the 36 founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which awards the Oscar each year . In 1956 he was honored at the Golden Globes with the Cecil B. DeMille Award for his life's work . In 1965 Warner received an Oscar for his production, My Fair Lady . In 1959 he had already received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award . In 1960 he was honored with a star on the Walk of Fame .

For actress Ann Page, who was also known as Ann Boyar, Warner left his wife Irma Solomon and his son in 1935, whom he later even had security guards denied access to his studio. Page had a daughter from a previous marriage (actress Joy Page ), and together the couple also adopted a two-year-old girl. During World War II, Jack L. Warner served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Air Forces , where he organized the first film unit.

Warner had a particularly problematic connection with his brother Harry. Their decades-long animosity escalated in 1956 when Warner sold the rights to his studio and related film rights to films produced before 1950 to Associated Artists Production for $ 21 million. Further scuffles on the part of Warner, at the end of which he was the largest shareholder in the studio, meant that at the end of the argument, Jack never spoke a word to his brothers Harry and Albert again. Jack L. Warner also did not attend his brother's funeral in 1958.

Warner viewed the development of television as a medium with skepticism. While many studios found themselves in dire straits from competition from television, Warner managed to get the rights to the Broadway plays My Fair Lady (1964) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) by Edward Albee and thus to score both financially and artistically. These were the last two major films made by the studio under Warner's direction. In 1969, the entertainment industry dinosaur retired.

However, he could never leave Warner Bros. completely and continued to provide advice and support behind the scenes. From 1973 onwards, the signs of senility increased. An incident is known that Warner got lost in his own office building. In 1974 he suffered a stroke that left him blind in one eye. He died on September 9, 1978.

Selection of Warner Bros. films under Warner's direction

Also the groundbreaking 3D film The Cabinet of Professor Bondi ( House of Wax ) from 1953 and Howard Hawks ' Rio Bravo (1959) and ... because they don't know what they're doing ( Rebel Without a Cause , 1955) and Giants ( Giant , 1956), which helped make James Dean legend, are among the productions of Warner Bros.

Honors

Documentary film

  • Jack L. Warner, a mogul in Hollywood. The fascinating rise of a film producer . Documentation by Gregory Orr, USA 1993

literature

  • Warner, Jack Leonard: Gale Columbia Encyclopedia of US Economic History , 2000 6th ed.
  • Behlmer, Rudy, ed. Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951). New York: Viking, 1985.
  • Spellng, Cass Warner Hollywood Be Thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story . Rollin, California: Great, 1994.
  • Thomas, Bob. Clown Prince of Hollywood: The Antic Life and Times of Jack L. Warner . New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.
  • Warner, Jack L. Jack of All Trades: An Autobiography . London: WH Allen, 1975.
  • Warner, Jack L. My First Hundred Years in Hollywood . New York: Random House, 1965.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Jack L. Warner Biography at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English)
  2. ↑ a b Warner, Jack Leonard at Encyclopedia.com (English). Retrieved November 27, 2013.
  3. ↑ My Four Years in Germany at imdb.com
  4. ↑ Susan Vahabzadeh: Down-to-earth paradise - The liberal film industry demonstrates violently against inequality and exclusion . Ed .: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 23rd January 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Warner, Jack L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Warner, Jacob (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian-American film producer, director, and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH London (Ontario) , Canada
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1978
Place of death Los Angeles , California, United States