Warner Bros: The Making of an American Movie Studio (Jewish Lives)

Rick Ross said Five Stars. Great book very informative. Filled with great insights and historical information.. A major film studio that had such a "unique impact on our cultural dreams, on us, that is alarming because it is enormous" Robert Morris David Thomson examines – his words -- “the making of an American movie studio.” He explains how and why Warner Bros had "unique impact on our cultural dreams, on us, that is alarming because it is enormous." Its impact was also unique in ways and to an extent unlike any other of the major studios from the mid-1920s through the 1960s.As Thomson explains, from the beginning, there were East/West conflicts of various kinds in which Harry and Jack were the principal antagonists. In 1958, Harry died of a cerebral occlusion. At his funeral, wife Rea observed, "Harry didn’t di

  David Thomson provides fascinating and original interpretations of Warner Brothers pictures from the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer through black-and-white musicals, gangster movies, and such dramatic romances as Casablanca, East of Eden, and Bonnie and Clyde. Behind the scenes at the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where four immigrant brothers transformed themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasyWarner Bros charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings in the early twentieth century through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. The Warner brothers’ cultural impact was so profound, Thomson writes, that their studio became “one of the enterprises that helped us see there might be an American dream out there.”. The Warner Brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants, yet they founded a studio that became the smartest, toughest, and most radical in all of Hollywood. He recounts the storied exploits of the studio’s larger-than-life stars, among them Al Jolson, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Doris Day, and Bugs Bunny

Anything new from Thomson is worth taking notice of, and this book is no exception."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review. "A masterful look at one of early Hollywood’s preeminent families and the studio they built on their name. Thomson is just as at home writing biography as he is chronicling the institutional history of the Warner Bros. studio