The 100th Anniversary of Warner Bros. Part Three

While arguably the company had existed in some form before, it was on April 4 1923 that Warner Bros. was formally organized. An independent studio throughout the Silent Era, Warner Bros. became a major studio with the advent of sound, which the studio pioneered. Throughout the Thirties and Forties, Warner Bros. remained one of the Big Five studios. It had some of the biggest stars of the era under contract, including Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, and yet others.

Like the other studios, the U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. dealt a severe blow to Warner Bros. Decided on May 3 1948, it forced Warner Bros. and the other studios to divest themselves of their theatres and to stop block booking (the practice of selling films to theatres in batches), among other things. The Fifties would see Warner Bros. struggling to survive.

Even so, Warner Bros. would see some successes in the Fifties. The late 1940s and early 1950s saw the return of the Warner Bros. musical. Starting with Romance on the High Seas in 1948, Warner Bros. released a series of successful musicals featuring singer Doris Day. Tea for Two (1950), Lullaby of Broadway (1951), April in Paris (1952),  and Calamity Jane (1953) all proved to be successful. The late Forties and early Fifties also saw Warner Bros. return to making swashbucklers, with such films as Adventures of Don Juan (1948), Captain Horatio Hornblower (1950), The Crimson Pirate (1952), and The Master of Ballantrae (1953). As might be expected, Warner Bros. continued to release crime dramas (many of them film noirs), including White Heat (1949), Storm Warning (1951),  Tomorrow is Another Day (1951), The Blue Gardenia (1953), and The System (1953).

In addition to dealing with the aftermath of United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., in the late Forties and early Fifties Warner Bros. also faced what they and the other studios regarded as a threat: the young medium of television. Initially, Warner Bros. sought to deal with the threat of television by diversifying into it. Warner Bros. applied for an application for television stations in Chicago and five other cities in April 1948. It was that same year that Warner Bros. sought approval from the FCC for the studio to buy Los Angeles television station KLAC and two radio stations owned by Dorothy Thackery, former publisher of The New York Post. The FCC took so long in coming to a decision that Warner Bros. dismissed its applications for television stations and Dorothy Thackery cancelled her deal with the studio.

As it was, Jack L. Warner was not particularly fond of the new medium. Not only did he forbid any Warner Bros. productions (even short subjects) from being used for television broadcasts, but he even forbid the appearance of any television sets in Warner Bros. motion pictures. Regardless, with the success of television it was inevitable that Warner Bros. would move into the new medium.

Leonard Goldstein was head of American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, Inc., the parent company of the American Broadcasting Company, better known simply as ABC. Leonard Goldstein had worked in Hollywood for twenty years and as a result had a good number of contacts in the film industry, among them Jack L. Warner. At the time ABC was struggling, so Leonard Goldstein wanted Warner Bros. to produce filmed television shows that would draw desperately needed viewers to the network. As for Warner Bros., they would receive publicity for their feature films. The negotiations between Warner Bros. and ABC did not always go smoothly. An offer from ABC to pay Warner Bros. the same amount they had paid Disney ($2 million), as well as a request to show recent Warner Bros. movies (among them Casablanca) was flatly rejected by the studio. Fortunately, ABC and Warner Bros. were eventually able to work out a deal.

Warner Bros.' initial foray into television was an umbrella title called Warner Bros. Presents. It rotated three series, two of which were based on popular Warner Bros. movies: Kings Row (based on the 1942 movie of the same name) and Casablanca (based on the 1942 movie of the same name). The third series aired under the Warner Bros. Presents umbrella was Cheyenne, which was historic as the first hour long Western television series. Unlike Kings Row and Casablanca, it was an original series not based on an existing property. Each edition of the show ended with a ten to fifteen minute segment entitled "Behind the Camera", hosted by Gig Young, that promoted such films as The Searchers (1956) and Giant (1956). Warner Bros. Presents debuted on ABC on September 20 1955.

Warner Bros. Presents  would not prove to be a success, with Kings Row cancelled at mid-season and Casablanca cancelled at the end of the season. Only Cheyenne survived. For the 1956-1957 season Cheyenne rotated with an anthology series entitled Conflict (the title having been chosen by ABC rather than Warner Brothers). Conflict proved to be a failure, but  Cheyenne continued to be a success.Conflict was cancelled at the end of the 1956-1957 season.

The success of Cheyenne would lead to Warner Bros. producing other Western television shows for ABC, including Sugarfoot, Maverick, Lawman, Colt .45, and Bronco. The most successful of the Western TV series would be Maverick, one of whose stars, James Garner, would go onto a successful film career. The Warner Bros. Western television shows all existed in the same shared universe, so that characters from Maverick might appear on Sugarfoot and so on. With 77 Sunset Strip in 1958 Warner Bros. began producing a number of detective shows as well, including Bourbon Street Beat, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside Six. Like their Westerns, Warner Bros.' detective shows also existed in the same shared universe.

Warner Bros. Television would continue to be successful into the early Sixties. The studio brought their animated cartoons made after 1948 to television with The Bugs Bunny Show in 1960 and produced such successful shows as F Troop and The F.B.I. There would be a lull in Warner Bros. Television's production from 1967 to 1971 when they only produced The F.B.I., but the Seventies would see the production of such shows as Kung Fu, Wonder Woman, and The Dukes of Hazzard. Since then Warner Bros. has produced several hit television shows, including Night Court, Murphy Brown, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Babylon 5, and ER.

Before their entry into television, Warner Bros. also sought ways to better compete with the new medium. Like the other studios, Warner Bros. embraced 3D, releasing their first 3D film House of Wax in 1953. The 3D fad soon faded, so that Warner Bros. had to look for other ways to compete with television. Harry Warner then made the decision to begin releasing films made in CienmaScope,

Unfortunately, 1956 saw Warner Bros.' profits decline significantly from previous years. Jack L. Warner even took the drastic measure of selling the studio's pre-1950 films to Associated Artists Productions in 1956. This angered Harry Warner, whose relationship with his brother was already tumultuous. It was then in May 1956 that the Warner brothers put Warner Bros. on the market. What the other brothers did not realize is that Jack L. Warner had organized a syndicate to buy 90% of Warner Bros.' stock. Jack L. Warner then sold his stocks, just like his brothers, only to buy them right back. In the end, Jack L. Warner was Warner Bros.' majority stockholder. He appointed himself president.

Warner Bros. would turn around in the late Fifties and early Sixties. The studio released a number of successful films based on plays, including Baby Doll (1956), The Bad Seed (1956), Damn Yankees (1958), The Music Man (1962), and Gypsy (1962). As the Sixties progressed, however, the film industry began to change. Film production was in decline by the mid-Sixties, as were the profits of Warner Bros. and the other major studios. The mid-Sixties saw the rise of New Hollywood, whereby a film's director played a more vital role than the studio producing the movie.

Warner Bros. itself would see major changes from the mid to late Sixties. Largely because of his wife persuading him to slow as well as feeling his age, Jack L. Warner sold his control of Warner Bros. to Seven Arts Productions in November 1966. The company was then renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. Jack Warner remained with Warner Bros. as a vice president and an independent producer.

As it turned out Warner Bros-Seven Arts. would soon have new owners.  Eliot and Kenneth Hyman (the founders of Seven Arts Productions) quickly grew tired of having to deal with Jack L. Warner. It was then in January 1969 that they sold Warner Bros.-Seven Arts to Kinney National Company. Kinney National Company promptly changed the studio's name back to "Warner Bros." The sale did not make Jack L. Warner happy and he made the move into independent production. He was the last of the Old Hollywood moguls.

Beyond Jack L. Warner moving into independent production, the acquisition of Warner Bros. by Kinney National Company would have another effect on Warner Bros. It was in 1967 that Kinney National Company bought National Periodical Publications, the comic book company then known informally as "DC Comics." This would provide Warner Bros. with a number of well-established popular characters. Starting with the failed television pilot Wonder Woman starring Cathy Lee Crosby and the  TV series Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter in 1975, Warner Bros.would either produce and/or distribute a number of projects based on DC Comics characters, including such classic films as Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), and Batman (1989). With the acquisition, Warner Bros.' fortunes also turned around. Starting with the documentary Woodstock (1970), Warner Bros. would have a number of hits in the Seventies, including Dirty Harry (1971), Enter the Dragon (1973), The Exorcist (1973), Blazing Saddles (1974), and others.

Warner Bros. ultimately made it out of the Golden Age of Hollywood and survived through the Fifties and Sixties. The coming years would see yet more changes at Warner Bros.