Warner Brothers In the 1920’s
To date, Warner Bro’s has over 6,500 feature films and around 3,000 television series that contains more than 10,000 episodes (“Company” par 5). Every great movie company has a background story to their success. What were then four brothers traveling with a movie projector turned into a successful movie company that has entertained crowds for generations (“Company” par 7). The vitaphone, the talkie, and the first four-legged movie star were introduced during the 1920’s, and helped define the Warner Brother company (Company par 6). Warner Brothers, a company created by four brothers during the 1920’s, revolutionized the film industry by modernizing the concept of cinematography (Company par 6).
The four creative minds behind the beginning of Warner Bros. were Jack, Harry, Sam, and Albert Warner (Company par 3). Their parents’ names were Benjamin and Pearl Lean Eichelbaum, and together they had twelve children (Warner par 2). Jack Warner was born on August 2, 1892 in London, Ontario; Jack’s actual name was Jacob, but it was soon changed after his birth (Jack Leonard par 2). When Jack was two years old, his family moved to Youngstown, Ohio, and in 1907 the family’s last name was changed to Warner (Warner par 2). Jack inspired to be an actor since he was young boy; Jack even selected Leonard to be his middle name after a minstrel he adored (Jack Leonard par 3). He began to sing and tell jokes before and after shows and operettas, and he was used to clear audiences from the showing so people could start to move in for the next (Jack Leonard par 3). Jack joined the Air Force during WWII and was ranked as a Lieutenant Colonel (Jack Leonard par 4). In 1914, Jack married Irma Solomon (Jack Leonard par 7)....
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Beginning the mid 1920s, Hollywood’s ostensibly all-powerful film studios controlled the American film industry, creating a period of film history now recognized as “Classical Hollywood”. Distinguished by a practical, workmanlike, “invisible” method of filmmaking- whose purpose was to demand as little attention to the camera as possible, Classical Hollywood cinema supported undeviating storylines (with the occasional flashback being an exception), an observance of a the three act structure, frontality, and visibly identified goals for the “hero” to work toward and well-defined conflict/story resolution, most commonly illustrated with the employment of the “happy ending”. Studios understood precisely what an audience desired, and accommodated their wants and needs, resulting in films that were generally all the same, starring similar (sometimes the same) actors, crafted in a similar manner. It became the principal style throughout the western world against which all other styles were judged. While there have been some deviations and experiments with the format in the past 50 plus ye...
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MGM’s name was derived from the three subsumed companies: Goldwyn Pictures, Metro Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions (Hanson para 2). MGM was formed under the finance of Marcus Loew (Collins para 1). Marcus Loew merged Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures on April 17, 1924. After he bought the two companies he went after Louis B. Mayer Productions; he bought the company for $75,000 (Hay 15). Louis B. Mayer was chosen to be the vice president-general manager of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Collins para 1). The new studio resided in Culver City, California on Goldwyn Pictures’ old lot (Collins para 3).
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After four hard years of fighting, Canadians celebrated the end of the Great War. Many returned to the country early in 1919, only to be brought down by the lack of employment and other disappointments. However, slowly, good times returned back to Canada, as the country ushered into a new era known as the “Roaring Twenties”. Many Canadians participated in the good life as the wealthy, as well as average families had more money to spend. Economic prosperity and technological advances brought Canadians pleasure to their lives. Canadians tuned in to their radios, used the automobile, cheered for their home sports teams, followed new fashion trends, listened to the same music and did the same dances. In addition, the 1920s marked the growth of movies as Canadians packed theatres to watch their favourite stars. The 1920s were one of the most important and revolutionary times for the film industry.
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The Studio System Key point about the studio system could be: Despite being one of the biggest industries in the United States, indeed the World, the internal workings of the 'dream factory' that is Hollywood is little understood outside the business. The Hollywood Studio System: A History is the first book to describe and analyse the complete development, classic operation, and reinvention of the global corporate entities which produce and distribute most of the films we watch. Starting in 1920, Adolph Zukor, head of Paramount Pictures, over the decade of the 1920s helped to fashion Hollywood into a vertically integrated system, a set of economic innovations which was firmly in place by 1930.
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