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PBS profiles the Warner brothers
The film does justice to the legendary movie moguls.
It’s Warner Bros. week on PBS, with a five-part series and an intimate short film from a family member.
The Warner brothers — Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack — are the siblings from Youngstown who opened a movie house in New Castle, Pa., and soon after moved to Hollywood, where they started a movie studio that shaped the film industry.
First up is “You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story,” an expansive look at the Warner Bros. Studio and the progressive vision it represented. The five-hour “American Masters” miniseries airs from 9 to 11 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and 10 to 11 p.m. Thursday. Filmmaker and film critic Richard Schickel is the director-writer-producer, and Clint Eastwood the executive producer and narrator.
Serving as an addendum to the miniseries is “The Brothers Warner,” a one-hour documentary narrated by filmmaker-author Cass Warner Sperling, who is the granddaughter of Harry Warner. It airs at 11 p.m. Thursday, immediately after “You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story” comes to an end. Sperling produced, wrote and directed “The Brothers Warner.”
PBS provided The Vindicator with a review copy of “The Brothers Warner,” which gives an insider’s look at the brothers.
Sperling makes her intentions clear: She is intrigued by her famous forebears and wants to share their story. She does so in a loving remembrance that makes it clear she is family, referring to Harry Warner as “Grandpa.”
It starts with the brothers’ purchase of a movie projector and a film, which they showed on a bedsheet in a New Castle storefront for a nickel a customer. But it does not linger on their days in the Mahoning or Shenango valleys.
It was here that the brothers recognized that they had to go into the movie business. But it was in California that they made history.
Sperling peppers the film with insightful interviews with Hollywood insiders — Norman Lear, Roy Disney Jr., Dennis Hopper, Debbie Reynolds, George Segal and Angie Dickinson — and family members and employees. With endless footage, family photos and personal documents, she paints a picture of the brothers and their disparate personalities: the patriarchal Harry, who ran the show; the “Honest Abe” Albert; Sam, the visionary; and Jack, the volatile youngest sibling whose rift with Harry continued to the grave.
The immigrant children of Russian Jews, the Warner boys had no formal education but shared a vision that could not be denied. Their guiding principle, according to Sperling, was “when told they couldn’t do something, they knew they were on the right track.”
As filmmakers, the brothers had a social conscience and tried to enlighten and educate in their films. Unlike today’s Hollywood, they were not motivated solely by profit.
As Nazism rose in Europe, the then-isolationist America preferred to look the other way. Harry Warner wouldn’t let them, making documentaries about Germany. When called on the carpet by Congress for his “propaganda,” he said, “The only crime we are guilty of is accurately portraying reality.”
A few weeks later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the inquest into the Warners was dropped. Soon after, the Warners released “Casablanca,” the classic film with a message about not bowing to Nazi power.
“The Brothers Warner” reveals insights about the early film industry, which one historian says was “run by Jews, censored by Catholics, and watched by Protestants.”
It ends with a segment in which the brothers’ real name — Warner was given to the family by immigration officials — is revealed.