Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling

by Mark A. Vieira, Ben Mankiewicz (Foreword by)

Overview

In this official centennial history of the greatest studio in Hollywood, unforgettable stars, untold stories, and rare images from the Warner Bros. vault bring a century of entertainment to vivid life.

The history of Warner Bros. is not just the tale of a legendary film studio and its stars, but of classic Hollywood itself, as well as a portrait of America in the last century. It’s a family story of Polish-Jewish immigrants—the brothers Warner—who took advantage of new opportunities in the burgeoning film industry at a time when four mavericks could invent ways of operating, of warding off government regulation, and of keeping audiences coming back for more during some of the nation's darkest days.

Innovation was key to their early success. Four years after its founding, the studio revolutionized moviemaking by introducing sound in The Jazz Singer (1927). Stars and stories gave Warner Bros. its distinct identity as the studio where tough guys like Humphrey Bogart and strong women like Bette Davis kept people on the edge of their seats. Over the years, these acclaimed actors and countless others made magic on WB’s soundstages and were responsible for such diverse classics as Casablanca, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Star Is Born, Bonnie & Clyde, Malcolm X, Caddyshack, Purple Rain, and hundreds more.

It’s the studio that put noir in film with The Maltese Falcon and other classics of the genre, where the iconic Looney Tunes were unleashed on animation, and the studio that took an unpopular stance at the start of World War II by producing anti-Nazi films. Counter-culture hits like A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist carried the studio through the 1970s and '80s. Franchise phenomena like Harry Potter, the DC universe, and more continue to shape a cinematic vision and longevity that is unparalleled in the annals of film history. These stories and more are chronicled in this comprehensive and stunning volume.

Copyright © 2023 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762482375
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	05/30/2023
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	346,762
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Mark A. Vieira is a filmmaker, photographer, and writer. He has written seventeen previous books, including Cecil B. DeMille and Forbidden Hollywood. He has lectured at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, UCLA, and USC, and he has appeared in documentaries such as Turner Classic Movies’s Garbo. Vieira resides in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

04/03/2023

Film historian Vieira (Forbidden Hollywood) delivers a superficial history of Warner Bros. film studio, combining brief accounts of its development with unenlightening descriptions of its movies. The studio behind such classics as Casablanca, The Exorcist, and the Harry Potter series was founded by brothers Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, Polish Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1889. In 1903, Sam, still a teenager, came across an Edison Kinetoscope and became entranced by moving pictures. Soon after, he and his brothers began making and distributing movies, and in 1923 they launched the eponymous studio. Vieira covers the familiar difficulties faced by the film industry over the past century, discussing how Warner Bros. handled the rise of “talkies,” the introduction of color, and disruptions caused by TV, streaming, and Covid-19. Vieira’s decision to squeeze in as many movies as possible means that the Oscar-nominated L.A. Confidential gets the same brief coverage as another 1997 Warner release, the much-derided Batman & Robin, making for a shallow survey that doesn’t include many surprises for those familiar with the outlines of film history. Movie buffs interested in a more substantial account of Warner Bros. would be better off with David Thomson’s or Steven Bingen’s takes on the studio. Photos. (May)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2023

Presented as an official centennial history, this book by Vieira (Forbidden Hollywood) gives each decade of Warner Bros. history its own chapter that discusses key elements, players, and economic factors. The essays are understandably compressed, covering 10 years in five or six pages, but readers may find them uninspiring. There's also a yearly list of the studio's Oscar wins and nominations and pages of beautiful, well-captioned photographs. The book opens with a brief but fascinating biography of the four Warner brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—and how their distinct personalities combined to make one impressive force in cinema, starting in the 1920s. Their gangster films shifted to detective stories after the passage of the 1934 moralistic Production Code, and the 1930s introduced Bette Davis and Bugs Bunny. Humphrey Bogart dominated the '40s, and TV financially impacted the '50s. The mid-1960s marked the arrival of the daring New Hollywood ethos and the increased need to win over a younger demographic, which led to films like The Exorcist, Batman, The Matrix, and the Harry Potter franchise. The book excels in its images alone. VERDICT A visual treat for movie lovers everywhere.—Peter Thornell

Library Journal