Harry Warner - Business Career in Films

Business Career in Films

In 1903, Harry's brothers, Abe and Sam, began to exhibit The Great Train Robbery at carnivals across Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1905, Harry sold his bicycle shop and joined his brothers in their fledgling film business. With the money Harry made from selling the bicycle shop, the three brothers were able to purchase a building in New Castle, Pennsylvania. They would use this building to establish their first theater, the Cascade. The Cascade was so successful that the brothers were able to purchase a second theater in New Castle. This makeshift theatre, called the Bijou, was furnished with chairs borrowed from a local undertaker.

In 1907, the Warners expanded the business further and purchased fifteen theaters in Pennsylvania. Harry, Sam, and Albert then formed a new film exchange company, The Duquesne Amusement Supply Company, and rented an office in the Bakewell building in downtown Pittsburgh. Harry sent Sam to New York to purchase, and ship, films for their Pittsburgh exchange company, while he and Albert remained in Pittsburgh to run the business. In 1909, the brothers sold the Cascade Theater and established a second film exchange company in Norfolk, Virginia. Harry agreed to let younger brother Jack be a part of the company, sending him to Norfolk to serve as Sam's assistant. A serious problem threatened the Warners' film company with the advent of Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company (also known as the Edison Trust), which charged distributors exorbitant fees. In 1910, the Warners sold the family business to the General Film Company for "$10,000 in cash, $12,000 in preferred stock, and payments over a four-year period for a total of $52,000".

After they sold their business, Harry and his three brothers joined forces with Independent filmmaker Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Picture Company, and began distributing films from his Pittsburgh film exchange division. In 1912, the brothers earned a $1,500 profit with the film Dante's Inferno. In the wake of this success, Harry and the brothers broke with Laemmle and established their own film production company. They named their new company Warner Features. Once Warner Features was established, Harry acquired an office in New York with his brother Albert, sending Sam and Jack to run the new corporation's film exchange divisions in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1917, Harry won more capital for the studio when he was able to negotiate a deal with Ambassador James W. Gerald to make Gerald's book My Four Years In Germany into a film.

In 1918, after the success of My Four Years In Germany, the brothers were able to establish a studio near Hollywood, California. In the new Hollywood studio, Sam became co-head of production along with his younger brother, Jack. They were convinced that they would have to make movies themselves if they were to ever generate a profit. Between the years 1919 and 1920, the studio did not turn a profit. During this time, banker Motley Flint, who was, unlike most bankers at the time, not anti-semitic, helped the brothers pay off their debts. The four brothers then decided to relocate their studio from Culver City, California to the Sunset Boulevard section of Hollywood.

During this time, Warner decided to focus on making only dramas for the studio. The studio rebounded in 1921 with the success of the studio's film Why Girls Leave Home; The film's director, Harry Rapf, became the studio's new head producer. On April 4, 1923, following the success of the studio's film The Gold Diggers, Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. was officially established, with help from a loan given to Harry by Montly Flint. Harry became company president, with Albert as treasurer and Jack and Sam as co-heads of production. Harry and his family moved to Hollywood.