Warner Bros

Warner Brothers, name commonly applied to Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., an American motion-picture production company, the first to use sequences of synchronized sound in a silent feature film (see Motion Pictures, History of: Sound Films). The founders were four American brothers: Harry M(orris) Warner (1881-1958), Albert Warner (1884-1967), Samuel L(ewis) Warner (1887-1927), and Jack L(eonard) Warner (1892-1978).

The three oldest brothers were born in Poland and the youngest was born in Canada in London, Ontario. By 1903 the Warners had opened a nickelodeon (early movie theater so named for its nickel admission price) in New Castle, Pennsylvania. In 1912 they began to produce films in New York City. They opened their own studio in Hollywood, California, in 1918, and five years later they founded Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.

In the mid-1920s the brothers acquired the Vitagraph Company, which enabled them to distribute their films directly to theaters. In 1926 they formed Vitaphone to develop a sound-on-disk process by which a recording could be played alongside a film and synchronized with it. They first used the Vitaphone system in a feature-length film during several musical numbers in The Jazz Singer (1927), thus revolutionizing the film industry. Their first all-talking picture was Lights of New York (1928). Early in the 1930s the brothers purchased the Stanley Company, owner of 250 theaters, and First National Pictures, which had large studios in Burbank, California.

During Warner Bros.'s first decade, its typical motion picture—often a musical, a gangster film, or a film biography—was characterized by a relatively low budget, extremely fast pacing, and a working-class setting. Later, as success seemed secure, the studio gained more confidence and expertise, earned a firmer reputation, and hired bigger stars. During the 1940s the studio produced an impressive roster of films featuring popular performers. Among the stars developed in the more than 1500 pictures produced at Burbank were James Cagney, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, Paul Muni, and Humphrey Bogart. Warner Bros. films of this period range from topical melodrama to elaborate musicals, stylish film noir, and large-scale historical epics. The studio's classic films include Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), 42nd Street (1933), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Dark Victory (1939), Casablanca (1942), Life With Father (1947), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and Deliverance (1972). The company is now part of Time Warner Inc.

(source Encarta)