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One of the oldest and most recognizable studios in Hollywood, Warner Bros. is considered a juggernaut of the entertainment industry. Since its formation in the early twentieth century, the studio has been a constant presence in cinema history, responsible for the creation of acclaimed films, blockbuster brands, and iconic superstars.
These days, the studio is best known as a media conglomerate with a broad range of intellectual property, spanning movies, TV shows, and streaming content. Despite popular interest in the origins of this empire, the core of the Warner Bros. saga cannot be found in its commercial successes. It is the story of four brothers―Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack―whose vision for Hollywood helped shape the world of entertainment as we know it.
In The Warner Brothers, Chris Yogerst follows the siblings from their family's humble origins in Poland, through their young adulthood in the American Midwest, to the height of fame and fortune in Hollywood. With unwavering resolve, the brothers soldiered on against the backdrop of an America reeling from the aftereffects of domestic and global conflict. The Great Depression would not sink the brothers, who churned out competitive films that engaged audiences and kept their operations afloat―and even expanding. During World War II, they used their platform to push beyond the limits of the Production Code and create important films about real-world issues, openly criticizing radicalism and the evils of the Nazi regime. At every major cultural turning point in their lifetime, the Warners held a front-row seat.
Paying close attention to the brothers' identities as cultural and economic outsiders, Yogerst chronicles how the Warners built a global filmmaking powerhouse. Equal parts family history and cinematic journey, The Warner Brothers is an empowering story of the American dream and the legacy four brothers left behind for generations of filmmakers and film lovers to come.
The Warner Brothers sets out to be an epic, and it succeeds.
~Kevin Brownlow, film historian
The story of Harry, Jack, Sam and Albert Warner involves politics, idealism, empire building, superb filmmaking and, ultimately, fratricide. Chris Yogerst's marvelous book comprehensively narrates the story of a crucial component of Hollywood's empire.
~Scott Eyman, New York Times bestselling biographer
Chris Yogerst provides a wonderfully detailed, scrupulously researched, and compulsively readable account of the Warner brothers, reanimating their endlessly fascinating and instructive family story, widening the scope of previous scholarship, and securing for good their rightful place in the pantheon of motion-picture history.
~Noah Isenberg, author of We'll Always Have 'Casablanca': The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Movie
Christ Yogerst gets it right! This lively biography of the brothers Warner - Jack, Harry, Samuel and Albert - gives us the inside narrative: the brothers never tried to assimilate or erase their ethnicity. Instead, they made haste with what it gave them, chutzpah, seichel (meaning a head for business) and, culled from their long-standing Jewish heritage, a great respect for the written word. The Warners wooed the best writers and got the great scripts. They knew that life is a one-two punch and they brazenly put that up on the big screen: Yogerst's knowing bio seals the deal: it was chutzpah what made the movies!
~Marilyn Ann Moss, author of Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director and The Farrows of Hollywood: Their Dark Side of Paradise
A fascinating, up-close portrait of the Warner brothers, whose passionate commitment to film made their namesake studio one of the great cultural, social, and political forces during Hollywood's dazzling Golden Age. Surveying Warner Bros.' vast range of genres—from hard-bitten realism to uplifting entertainment to film noir to heart-wrenching romance—Yogerst unveils the behind-the-scenes drama of this tight-knit yet often combative family and spotlights the brothers' extraordinary sense of responsibility to reinforcing and repairing America's social fabric. The Warner Brothers explores weakness along with strength: the very human frailties that emerged especially when history turned against their generation of studio heads following World War II. Thoroughly researched, written in a lively and compelling style, this book adds a vital new dimension to film history.
~Vanda Kreeft, author of The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox
In his magisterial biography of a brotherhood, Chris Yogerst makes the case that the Warner Brothers were not merely shrewd businessmen or talented showmen, but essential sculptors of American myth. By examining the private lives of Harry, Jack, Sam, and Albert, Yogerst uncovers how personal experience, cultural identity, and family history shaped the values, anxieties, and dreams the Warner Brothers etched into the national psyche. This is a brilliant, revelatory book.
~Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of Mercury Pictures Presents
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