Harry Warner

Harry Morris Warner (born Hirsz Mojżesz Wonsal; December 12, 1881 – July 25, 1958) was an American studio executive, one of the founders of Warner Bros., and a major contributor to the development of the film industry. Along with his three younger brothers (Albert, Sam and Jack), Warner played a crucial role in the film business and establishing Warner Bros., serving as the company president until 1956.

Warner was born Hirsz Mojżesz "Wonsal" or "Wonskolaser" to a family of Ashkenazi Jews from the village of Krasnosielc, Poland (then part of Congress Poland in the Russian Empire). He was the son of Benjamin Wonsal, a shoemaker born in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum. His given name was Mojżesz (Moses), however, he was called Hirsz (Anglicized to Hirsch) in the United States. In October 1889, he came to Baltimore, Maryland with his mother and siblings on the steamship Hermann from Bremen, Germany. Their father had preceded them, immigrating to Baltimore in 1888 to pursue his trade in shoes and shoe repair. At that time that he changed the family name to Warner which was used thereafter. As in many Jewish immigrant families, some of the children gradually acquired anglicized versions of their Yiddish-sounding names. Hirsz became Harry, and his middle name Morris was likely a version of Mojżesz.

In Baltimore, the money Benjamin Warner earned in the shoe repair business was not enough to provide for his growing household. He and Pearl had another daughter, Fannie, not long after they arrived. Benjamin moved the family to Canada, inspired by a friend's advice that he could make an excellent living bartering tin wares with trappers in exchange for furs. Sons Jacob and David Warner were born in London, Ontario. After two arduous years living in Canada, the Warners returned to Baltimore. Two more children, Sadie and Milton, were added to the household there. In 1896, the family moved to Youngstown, Ohio, following the lead of Harry, who had established a shoe repair shop in the heart of the emerging industrial town. Benjamin worked with Harry in the shoe repair shop until he secured a loan to open a meat counter and grocery store in the city's downtown area.

In 1899, Harry opened a bicycle shop in Youngstown, Ohio with his brother, Abraham. Eventually, Harry and Abe also opened a bowling alley together. The bowling alley failed and closed shortly after it opened. Harry eventually accepted an offer to become a salesman for a local meat franchise, and sold meat in Ohio and Pennsylvania. However, by his nineteenth birthday, Harry was reduced to living in his parents' crowded household.

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 used the 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. The 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 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 their 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. Gerard to make Gerard'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 that 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 move their studio from Culver City, California, to the Sunset Boulevard section of Hollywood.

Warner decided to focus on making only dramas for the studio during that time. 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 Bros. 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.

Warner occupied a central place in the Hollywood-Washington wartime propaganda effort during the Second World War, and by the end of 1942, served as a frequent, anti-Axis spokesman for the movie industry. Despite his conservative viewpoint and longtime affiliation with the Republican Party, Warner was also a close friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and supported him during the early 1930s. During Roosevelt's fight for the Democratic nomination in early 1932, the Warners made an effort to make his name known throughout the state of California. After Roosevelt was nominated, the three brothers asked their friends to contribute to his campaign. Jack Warner even staged a "Motion Picture and Electrical Parade Sports Pageant" at L.A. Stadium in Roosevelt's honor in 1932. During Roosevelt's 1932 campaign, Warner and the studio also contributed $10,000.00 to the Democratic National Committee. In the wake of Nazi Germany's rise to power, Warner became a key proponent of US intervention in Europe.

Prior to the beginning of the war in Europe, Warner had produced a series of film shorts which glorified America's fight against Germany during World War I; Warner later received an honorary award for producing the shorts. By the fall of 1938, Warner had gradually helped block the distribution of Warner Bros. films in Nazi Germany and its ally Italy. Prior to the war's beginning in Europe, Warner supervised the production of two anti-German feature films, The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). He spent large sums of money to get many of his relatives and employees out of Germany when the war officially began in the latter part of 1939. Before the U.S. officially entered World War II, Warner supervised the production of three more anti-German films: The Sea Hawk (1940), which portrayed Spain's King Phillip II as an equivalent to Adolf Hitler; Sergeant York (1941), and You're in the Army Now (1941).

After America's entry into the war, Warner decided to focus on making just war films. During the duration of the war these included Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, This Is the Army, and the controversial film Mission to Moscow. At the premieres of Yankee Doodle Dandy (in Los Angeles, New York, and London), audiences for the film purchased a total of $15,600,000.00 in war bonds for the governments of England and the United States. By the middle of 1943, however, it became clear that audiences were tired of war films. Despite the growing pressure to abandon the topic, Warner continued to produce them, losing money in the process. Eventually, in honor of studio contributions to the war cause, the United States Government would name a Liberty Ship after the brothers' father, Benjamin Warner, and Warner would be given the honor of christening the ship. By the time the war ended, $20,000,000.00 worth of war bonds would be purchased through the studio, the Red Cross collected 5,200 pints of plasma from studio employees, and 763 studio employees, including Warner's son-in-law Milton Sperling and nephew Jack Warner Jr., served in the U.S. armed forces.

After a dispute over ownership of Casablanca's Oscar for Best Picture, head producer Hal B. Wallis broke with Warner and resigned from the studio. After Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart became arguably the studio's top star. In 1943, Olivia de Havilland (whom Warner was now loaning to different companies) sued Jack Warner for breach of contract. De Havilland cited that the government laws only required employee contracts to reach a maximum of seven years; When de Havilland won her case many of the studio's longtime actors were freed of their contracts. To help retain them, Harry decided to eliminate the studio's suspension policy.

In 1947, Warner, who was by now exhausted from all his years of arguing with his brother Jack, decided to spend more time at his San Fernando Valley ranch and to expand his interest in horse racing. Along with brother Jack, in 1938, Harry Warner became one of the founders of Hollywood Park Racetrack. In partnership with Mervyn Le Roy, he created the W-L Ranch Co. Thoroughbred racing stable. In 1947, the Warner-LeRoy stable was able to acquire a valuable racehorse named "Stepfather." Warner had a bitter rivalry with his brother Jack over the years, particularly due to Jack's longtime infidelities (as Jack had been engaged in affairs with a wide range of various women since Warner Bros. Inc. was established in 1923) and waste of the Burbank studio's money. In the 1930s Harry, like most of his relatives, also refused to accept Jack's second wife, actress Ann Paige - with whom Jack had an affair while still married to his first wife Irma Solomon - as a member of the Warner clan. When Jack and Ann officially got married in January 1936, Harry and the rest of the Warner family refused to attend the ceremony. In a letter Harry sent to Jack on his wedding day to Ann, Harry said "the only thing that could come from this day was that our parents didn't live to see this."

Throughout the early years of the studio's existence, various people, including Warner's younger brother Sam, were buffers between Harry and Jack. The last person to serve as a buffer between the two, father Benjamin Warner, died on November 5, 1935. After Benjamin's death, Jack and Harry were now barely on speaking terms, and were merely just business partners to one another. Jack's marriage to Ann was also arguably a huge turning point in the two brothers' fragile relationship as well; Harry's arguments with Jack were now practically on a daily basis.

By the early 1950s, the brothers' long-simmering feud had risen to new heights, as Jack began spending a lot of his time in France, occasionally ignored managing the studio in favor of vacationing, gambling, and socializing with royalty, and spent studio money lavishly on 3-D films. On one occasion during that time, studio employees claimed they saw Harry Warner who was very furious at his brother Jack chase him through the studio with a lead pipe, shouting "I'll get you for this, you son of a b_".

The studio prospered post-war time, and by 1946, company payroll had reached $600,000 a week for studio employees, and the studio's net profit would reach $19,424,650.00 by the end of the year as well. During that time, Warner hired his son-in-law, Milton Sperling, to head an independent film production company for the studio. In 1947, Harry also tried to move Warner Bros. headquarters from the longtime New York building to the Burbank area, but was unsuccessful. By the end of 1947, the studio had a record net profit of $22,000,000.00, although the following year, the studio profits would decrease by 50%.

During that time, the studio was a party to the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. antitrust case. The suit, brought by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, claimed that the five integrated studio-theater chain combinations restrained competition. The Supreme Court heard the case in 1948, and ruled for the government. As a result, Warner and four other major studios were forced to separate production from exhibition. In early 1953, the brothers finally fulfilled their end of the bargain and sold their theater chain to Fabian Enterprises. In 1948, Bette Davis, now fed up with Jack Warner, was a big problem for Harry after she and a number of her colleagues, departed from the studio after finishing the film Beyond the Forest. By 1949, the studio's net profit had fallen to $10,000,000.00, and the studio would soon suffer more losses with the rise of television.

In May 1956, the brothers announced they were putting Warner Bros. on the market. Jack, however, had secretly organized a syndicate, headed by Boston banker Serge Semenenko, which purchased 90% (800,000 shares) of the company's stock; At first Harry rejected Semenenko's earlier offer to purchase his stock in February 1956, but later accepted the offer after Semenenko increased his bid and agreed to make Simon Fabian—the head of Fabian Enterprises who had also become a friend of the Warners—president of Warner Bros. After the three brothers sold their stock, Jack (through his under-the-table deal with Sememenko) joined Semenenko's syndicate and bought back all his stock, which consisted of 200,000 shares. The deal was completed in July 1956. Jack, who was now the company's largest stockholder, named himself president.

Warner found out about Jack's dealing while reading an article in Variety on May 31, 1956 and collapsed after reading the news. The next day, he checked into Cedars of Lebanon Hospital and doctors told him he had a suffered a minor heart attack the previous day. While at the hospital, Warner had a stroke that impaired his walking ability and forced him to use a cane for the rest of his life. Six days after his stroke, he left the hospital and decided to sell 42 of his thoroughbred racehorses. The subterfuge proved too much for Warner and he and his family never spoke to Jack again; when Jack made a surprise appearance at Harry's San Fernando ranch, to attend Harry's 1957 wedding anniversary to Rea Levinson, nobody in the Warner family attending the event spoke to Jack. All Warner was now dedicated to doing was raising horses.

Shortly after that when Jack was away one day, Warner made one last visit to the studio to take US$6,000,000 (equivalent to about $66,955,020 in 2025) out of his old studio account. He gave $3 million to his wife Rea, and $1.5 million each to his two daughters Doris and Betty. In the meantime, he sold a large portion of the remaining studio stock he had to Semenenko and made sure he never came near the Burbank studio ever again.

On August 23, 1907, Warner married his girlfriend, Rea Levinson. It has been reported by family members that Harry dedicated a huge chunk of his life to make Rea happy. Harry and Rea had three children: Lewis Ethan (b. October 10, 1908), Doris (b. September 13, 1913), and Betty Leah (b. May 4, 1920). Harry and his family were also very faithful to Jewish customs and traditions.

On April 5, 1931, Warner's son Lewis, whom he appointed as head of Warner Bros. Music, died after he had an infected, impacted wisdom tooth extracted, which led to sepsis and then double pneumonia. After Lewis' death, Warner, who was now left without a recognized heir to his empire, descended into an extreme state of depression. In 1932, the Warners donated a theater in Lewis' honor to Worcester Academy, Lewis' alma mater. Warner also felt his brother Sam's widow, actress Lina Basquette, was a tramp and not worthy of raising a child with the last name Warner. While Jack didn't mind that Lina was Catholic, Harry and the rest of the Warner family did. They refused to have any part in Lina's life, and did not acknowledge her as being a member of the Warner clan.

Warner died on July 25, 1958, from a cerebral occlusion. Some people close to Harry, however, believed he died of a broken heart; Harry's wife Rea even stated, after Harry's funeral took place, that "he didn't die, Jack killed him." He left an estate valued at $6,000,000 with 50% bequeathed to his wife and 25% to each of his daughters, Doris and Betty (married to producer Milton Sperling). For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Harry Warner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6441 Hollywood Boulevard.