By 1949, with the success of television threatening the film industry more and more, Harry Warner decided to emphasize television production. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would not permit it. After an unsuccessful attempt to convince other movie studio bosses to switch, Harry abandoned his television efforts. Jack had problems with Milton Berle's unsuccessful film "Always Leave Them Laughing" during the peak of Berle's television popularity. Warner felt that Berle was not strong enough to carry a film and that people would not pay to see the man they could see on television for free. However, Jack was pressured into using Berle, who replaced Danny Kaye.
Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. | Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. Records
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
what is the total length of the lord of the rings movies
user
Two hours each trilogy
assistant
what is it's story about?
user
It follows the hobbit Frodo Baggins as he and the Fellowship embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, to ensure the destruction of its maker, the Dark Lord Sauron.
assistant
when was the first movie in the series released?
user
2001
assistant
who produced it?
user
New Line Cinema with the co-production of WingNut Films
assistant
where is the first production company located?
user
New York City
assistant
did the company announce it's merger with any other company?
user
Yes, Warner Bros.
assistant
when did that happen?
user
June, 2014
assistant
did the group you just mentioned produce any other famous movie?
user
Yes, "Kings Row", "Casablanca" and "Cheyenne"
assistant
what is the genre of the first film?
user
In addition to the Oscar nomination for Best Picture, the film also earned a Best Director nomination for Sam Wood and Best Cinematographer, Black-and-White nomination for James Wong Howe. More than a decade later, Warner Bros Television chose its Best Picture nominees for 1942, "Kings Row" (the studio had one other nominee, "Yankee Doodle Dandy") and 1943, "Casablanca" (in addition to the winner, Warners had a second nominee, "Watch on the Rhine"), as television's initial two series to be directly derived from theatrical films. The third rotating element of "Warner Bros. Presents", "Cheyenne", the first of seven westerns produced for ABC, was a non-directly-derivative concept (Warners 1947 western, "Cheyenne" has no connection to the series) which also made history as TV's first hour-long western and also the first western series made for adults, rather than children, who had been watching such half-hour series as "The Lone Ranger" and "The Cisco Kid" since the earliest years of full-schedule TV programming.
Kings Row (TV series) | Background for the creation of the series
In 1927, Warner Bros. Pictures revolutionized the film industry when they released the first "talkie" "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. Unfortunately, founding member Sam Warner died prior to the premiere of the film. From 1923 to 1967, Warner Bros. was known as Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. as their main focus was entirely on the motion picture industry. When the company diversified over the years, it was eventually rebranded to its current umbrella name, but Warner Bros. Pictures continued to be used as the name of the film production arm of the company.
Warner Bros. Pictures | History
Thereafter, First National Pictures became a trade name for the distribution of a designated segment of Warner Bros. product. Forty-five of the 86 Warner Bros. feature films released in 1929 were branded as First National Pictures. Half of the 60 feature films Warner Bros. announced for release in 1933–34 were to be First National Pictures. Although both studios produced "A" and "B" budget pictures, generally the prestige productions, costume dramas, and musicals were made by Warner Bros., while First National specialized in modern comedies, dramas, and crime stories. Short subjects were made by yet another affiliated company, The Vitaphone Corporation (which took its name from the sound process).
First National Pictures | Acquisition by Warner Bros
The third rotating element of "Warner Brothers Presents", "Cheyenne", the first of seven westerns produced for ABC, was a non-directly-derivative concept (Warners 1947 western, "Cheyenne" has no connection to the series) which also made history as TV's first hour-long western and also the first western series made for adults, rather than children, who had been watching such half-hour series as "The Lone Ranger" and "The Cisco Kid" since the earliest years of full-schedule TV programming. Analogous to the abbreviated time allotted for 8 of "Casablanca's" 10 installments, the 48-minute episode length was also applicable to 8 of "Cheyenne's" 15 installments and all 7 installments of "Kings Row".
Casablanca (1955 TV series) | Background for the creation of the series
In 1930, this was the first film shown at the newly opened Warner Bros. Hollywood Theatre, a luxurious New York City movie palace specifically designed to showcase its then-revolutionary Vitaphone sound films. The theatre later became a legitimate Broadway venue, the Mark Hellinger Theatre, and is now the home of the Times Square Church.
Hold Everything (film) | Release
Warner Bros. Presents is the umbrella title for three series that were telecast as part of the 1955-56 season on ABC: "Cheyenne", a new Western series that originated on "Presents", and two based on classic Warner Bros motion picture properties, becoming "Casablanca (1955 TV series)" and "Kings Row (TV series)". While neither a critical nor popular success, this wheel series is an historically important program. Perhaps most significantly, it is the first television program of any kind made by Warner Bros. It was also the original home of "Cheyenne", the first hour-long television Western series and the first wholly original television series produced by a major Hollywood studio.
Warner Bros. Presents | Introduction
As a subsidiary of Warner Bros., First National Pictures, Inc., continued to be a copyright claimant and trademark on motion pictures until 1936. Notable examples of First National Pictures titles are listed below.
List of First National Pictures films | Films as a Warner Bros. subsidiary
In 1973, American International gave a shot to director Brian De Palma, whose previous movie, a Warner Bros. comedy, had flopped badly. Reviewing "Sisters", De Palma's first horror film, "New Yorker" critic Pauline Kael observed that its "limp technique doesn't seem to matter to the people who want their gratuitous gore. The movie supplies it, but why is there so much gratuitous dumbness too?... [H]e can't get two people talking in order to make a simple expository point without its sounding like the drabbest Republic picture of 1938." Many examples of the so-called blaxploitation genre of the early and middle part of the decade, featuring stereotype-filled stories revolving around drugs, violent crime, and prostitution, were the product of AIP.
B movies (exploitation boom) | Sleazeballs and slashers: 1970s
Berle's outrageous behavior on the set and the film's massive failure led to Jack banning television sets from film sets. On March 21, 1955, the studio was finally able to engage in television through the successful Warner Bros. Television unit run by William T. Orr, Jack Warner's son-in-law. Warner Bros. Television provided ABC with a weekly show, "Warner Bros. Presents." The show featured rotating shows based on three film successes, "Kings Row", "Casablanca" and "Cheyenne", followed by a promotion for a new film. It was not a success. The studio's next effort was to make a weekly series out of "Cheyenne".
Warner Bros. | Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. Records
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1940–1949. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1940–1949) | Introduction
Most of these motion pictures were variations on "Casablanca", including "Background to Danger" (1943, with George Raft); "Passage to Marseille" (1944), reuniting them with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains; "The Mask of Dimitrios" (1944); "The Conspirators" (1944, with Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid); "Hollywood Canteen" (1944); "Three Strangers" (1946), a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket, with third-billed Lorre cast against type by director Jean Negulesco as the romantic lead, also co-starring Geraldine Fitzgerald; and Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together, suspense thriller "The Verdict" (1946), director Don Siegel's first feature, with Greenstreet and Lorre finally billed first and second, respectively.
Peter Lorre | Mainly at Warner Bros. (1941–1946)
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1950–1959. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1950–1959) | Introduction
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1980–1989. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1980–1989) | Introduction
On October 6, 1927, Warner Bros. released "The Jazz Singer", starring Al Jolson, and a whole new era began, with "pictures that talked," bringing the Studio to the forefront of the film industry. "The Jazz Singer" played to standing-room-only crowds throughout the country and earned a special Academy Award for Technical Achievement. Fox, in the forefront of sound film along with Warners, was also acquiring a sizable circuit of movie theaters to exhibit its product.
Major film studios | The majors before the Golden Age
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1990–1999. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1990–1999) | Introduction
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1930–1939. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1930–1939) | Introduction
Midwest Street was built in 1939 for "Four Wives" and has since been used as River City in "The Music Man" (1962) and for "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "Gremlins" (1984). The Jungle set was built in 1955 for the film "Santiago" (1956) and has later been used for "The Goonies" (1985) and "The Waltons". In 1955, Warner Bros. Television was created and TV productions on the lot increased with some of the stages subdivided into two or three smaller stages. The Laramie Street set was built in 1957 used for westerns including "Blazing Saddles" (1974) and TV series "Cheyenne" and "Maverick".
Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank | History
"Cheyenne" was television's first hour-long Western. Two episodes were placed together for feature film release outside the United States. In the tradition of its B movies, the studio followed up with a series of rapidly produced popular Westerns, such as writer/producer Roy Huggins' critically lauded "Maverick" as well as "Sugarfoot", "Bronco", "Lawman", "The Alaskans" and "Colt .45". The success of these series helped to make up for losses in the film business. As a result, Jack Warner decided to emphasize television production. Warner's produced a series of popular private detective shows beginning with "77 Sunset Strip" (1958–1964) followed by "Hawaiian Eye" (1959–1963), "Bourbon Street Beat" (1960) and "Surfside 6" (1960–1962).
Warner Bros. | Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. Records
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1918–1929. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1918–1929) | Introduction
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1960–1969. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1960–1969) | Introduction
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and also its subsidiary First National Pictures for the years 1970–1979. From 1928 to 1936, films by First National continued to be credited solely to "First National Pictures". In July 1936, stockholders of First National Pictures, Inc. (primarily Warner Bros.) voted to dissolve the corporation and no further separate First National Pictures were made. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films Warner gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (1970–1979) | Introduction
This is a list of early pre-recorded sound and/or talking movies produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. and its subsidiary First National (FN) for the years 1927-1931.
List of early Warner Bros. sound and talking features | Introduction
The division was founded in 1992 to produce more family-friendly films. The first theatrical film released under the Family Entertainment label was "Dennis the Menace", released in the summer of 1993. The film proved to be a huge hit at the box office, grossing over $50 million at the domestic box office despite receiving negative reviews from critics. Following it was "Free Willy", which was also released in the summer of 1993 and would also be a huge box office hit, grossing over $75 million domestically. Other 1993 releases included a live-action film adaptation of the book "The Secret Garden," which didn't perform as well as the previous two films but still garnered over $30 million at the domestic box office, and "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker".
Warner Bros. Family Entertainment | History
It wasn't until 1987 that the Paramount returned to its true calling as a movie house, showing Buster Keaton's "The General" (1926), a silent film accompanied by the Wurlitzer. In 1988, "Casablanca" (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, launched the first movie series. The 2002 feature was Peter Sellers in "Dr. Strangelove" (1964). In 2002 it showed "Wizard of Oz" (1939), with Judy Garland, and in 2004 the Paramount showed several classic movies: "Harvey" (1950), starring James Stewart, "Viva Las Vegas" (1964) starring Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret, "The Graduate" (1967) with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, and "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952) starring Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner.
Paramount Theatre (Oakland, California) | Classic movie nights
"Don Juan" did not recoup its production cost and Lubitsch left for MGM. By April 1927, the Big Five studios (First National, Paramount, MGM, Universal, and Producers Distributing) had ruined Warner's, and Western Electric renewed Warner's Vitaphone contract with terms that allowed other film companies to test sound. As a result of their financial problems, Warner Bros. took the next step and released "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. This movie, which includes little sound dialogue, but did feature sound segments of Jolson singing, was a sensation. It signaled the beginning of the era of "talking pictures" and the twilight of the silent era.
Warner Bros. | 1925–1935: Sound, color, style
Although the standard length for episodes of hour-long filmed series had subsequently become established at 53 or 54 minutes, the first 23 episodes of "Warner Bros. Presents", including 8 of the 10 installments of "Casablanca", were timed to run 48 minutes, thus enabling Warner Bros Television to append 6-minute segments, hosted by Gig Young, promoting upcoming Warners films and chatting with stars under contract to the studio.
Casablanca (1955 TV series) | Series elements
A number of Warner Bros. films were thereafter branded First National Pictures until July 1936, when First National Pictures, Inc., was dissolved.
First National Pictures | Introduction
The division was started on March 21, 1955, with its first and most successful head being Jack L. Warner's son-in-law William T. Orr. ABC had major success against its competition with Walt Disney's "Disneyland" TV series and approached Warner Bros. initially with the idea of purchasing the studio's film library (WB eventually sold the rights to the negatives of pre-1950 films and pre-1948 cartoons and shorts to Associated Artists Productions, or a.a.p., in 1956). WB formally entered television production with the premiere of its self-titled anthology series "Warner Bros. Presents" on ABC. The one-hour weekly show featured rotating episodes of television series based on the WB films, "Casablanca" and "Kings Row", as well as an original series titled "Cheyenne" with Clint Walker.
Warner Bros. Television Studios | Beginning and saturation
Private screenings had preceded these by several months, with Latham's slightly predating the Lumière brothers'.
Film | First motion pictures
Mayer, and the Warner Brothers (Harry, Albert, Samuel, and Jack) had switched to the production side of the business. Soon they were the heads of a new kind of enterprise: the movie studio. (The US had at least one female director, producer and studio head in these early years: French-born director Alice Guy-Blaché.) They also set the stage for the industry's internationalism; the industry is often accused of Amero-centric provincialism. Other moviemakers arrived from Europe after World War I: directors like Ernst Lubitsch, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir; and actors like Rudolph Valentino, Marlene Dietrich, Ronald Colman, and Charles Boyer.
Cinema of the United States | Rise of Hollywood
William A. Wellman's "Wings" (1927) was the first film (in any genre), and the only silent film, to win an Oscar for best picture. Later films of varied genres that deal with the First World War include David Lean's "colossal epic", both war film and biopic "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), shot in the then unfamiliar and exciting 70mm Technicolor, and described by Steven Spielberg as "maybe the greatest screenplay ever written for the motion-picture medium"; Richard Attenborough's satirical anti-war musical comedy based on Joan Littlewood's play of the same name, "Oh! What a Lovely War" (1969); Spielberg's war drama "War Horse" (2011) based on Michael Morpurgo's children's novel of the same name; and the film "1917" (2019).
War film | First World War
Lasky Company to form Famous Players-Lasky. The combined studio acquired Paramount Pictures as a distribution arm and eventually adopted its name. That same year, William Fox relocated his Fox Film Corporation from Fort Lee, New Jersey to Hollywood and began expanding. In 1918, four brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner—founded the first Warner Brothers Studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. On April 4, 1923, the Warner Brothers incorporated their fledgling movie company as "Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc." The Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America and the Independent Producers' Association declared war in 1925 on what they termed a common enemy — the "film trust" of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, and First National, which they claimed dominated the industry by not only producing and distributing motion pictures, but by entering into exhibition as well.
Major film studios | The majors before the Golden Age
After considerable footage had been shot, studio executives decided the film should be the first Warner Brothers motion picture to use CinemaScope, necessitating everything be scrapped and filmed again.
A Star Is Born (1954 film) | Production
On July 29, 2008, Warner Premiere released "", a sequel to the 1987 horror film "The Lost Boys", on DVD and Blu-ray. Corey Feldman reprised his role of vampire hunter Edgar Frog; Corey Haim appeared in a cameo. In September 2008, Warner Premiere released the direct-to-DVD sequel of Hilary Duff's hit film "A Cinderella Story" titled "Another Cinderella Story", starring Selena Gomez. After the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, Warner Bros. announced through Warner Premiere that the film "Spring Breakdown" would be released straight-to-DVD on April 9 according to Home Media Magazine. A sub-label of Warner Premiere was Raw Feed, which released horror/thriller films and Warner Premiere Digital, which released original internet projects.
Warner Premiere | Later years (2008–2013)
On with the Show! is a 1929 American Pre-Code musical film released by Warner Bros. Filmed in Two-strip Technicolor, the film is noted as the first all-talking, all-color feature length film, and the second color film released by Warner Bros.; the first was the partly color, black-and-white musical "The Desert Song" (1929).
On with the Show! (1929 film) | Introduction
The head of production was Kenneth Hyman, son of Seven Arts co-founder Eliot Hyman. The first film of production and distribution was "Reflections in a Golden Eye". Cool Hand Luke was the final film produced by Warner Bros. Pictures before and after changing its name studio.
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts | History
Sixteen months after its New York premiere, "Casablanca" won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch. There were five additional nominations: Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart), Best Supporting Actor (Claude Rains), Best Cinematography, Black-and White (Arthur Edeson), Best Film Editing (Owen Marks) and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Max Steiner). More than a decade later, Warner Bros Television chose its Best Picture nominees for 1943, "Casablanca" (in addition to the winner, Warners had a second nominee, "Watch on the Rhine"), and 1942, "Kings Row" (the studio had one other nominee, "Yankee Doodle Dandy"), as television's initial two series to be directly derived from theatrical films.
Casablanca (1955 TV series) | Background for the creation of the series
The film received moderate and poor reviews upon its release. Although several venues granted free, or discounted, admission for moviegoers who graduated from high school in 1944, the film did not fare very well at the box office, mostly attributed to the film's breaking the "arty" format of the first film for a more standard approach, and the omission of any mention of the first film. The movie slipped into obscurity, and although "Summer of '42" has been on DVD for several years, where it has been a relative commercial success, Warner Brothers released "Class of '44" on made-to-order DVD in 2010.
Class of '44 | Reception
The following are lists of Warner Bros. films by decade:
Lists of Warner Bros. films | Introduction
At the beginning of the decade, films were silent and colorless. In 1922, the first all-color feature, "The Toll of the Sea", was released. In 1926, Warner Bros. released "Don Juan", the first feature with sound effects and music. In 1927, Warner released "The Jazz Singer", the first sound feature to include limited talking sequences. The public went wild for sound films, and movie studios converted to sound almost overnight. In 1928, Warner released "Lights of New York", the first all-talking feature film. In the same year, the first sound cartoon, "Dinner Time", was released. Warner ended the decade by unveiling "On with the Show" in 1929, the first all-color, all-talking feature film.
Roaring Twenties | Cinema
During late 1927, Warners released "The Jazz Singer", which was mostly silent but contained what is generally regarded as the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film; but this process was actually accomplished first by Charles Taze Russell in 1914 with the lengthy film "The Photo-Drama of Creation". This drama consisted of picture slides and moving pictures synchronized with phonograph records of talks and music. The early sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone were soon superseded by sound-on-film methods like Fox Movietone, DeForest Phonofilm, and RCA Photophone. The trend convinced the largely reluctant industrialists that "talking pictures", or "talkies", were the future.
History of film | Sound era
Eventually Warner dissolved the First National company and the site has often been referred to as simply Warner Bros. Studios since. The backlot has various sets including New York Street; Hennessy Street; Midwest Street and The Jungle. New York Street was built in 1930 and can be used to represent other cities and has been used for films including "42nd Street" (1933), "Blade Runner" (1982) and "The Dark Knight" (2008) and television series such as "Friends" (1994–2004). Hennessy Street was originally known as Tenement Street and was built in 1937. It was used for "My Fair Lady" (1964), "Annie" (1982) and "Spider-Man" (2002).
Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank | History
No further Silent Films with Synchronized Scores or Part-Talkies were made or released.
List of early Warner Bros. sound and talking features | Films released in 1930 and after are <a href="talkie">All-Talking</a>
Despite the success the brothers now had, they still could not compete with the "big three" studios (First National, Paramount, and MGM)
Albert Warner | Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc
WarnerMedia/Warner Bros. Sony/Sony Pictures Comcast/NBCUniversal
Lists of films by studio | Majors
Genre series were popular with "Dragnet" (1952) starring Jack Webb representing police procedural drama, British syndicated series "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1955) starring Richard Greene representing historical drama, and "Gunsmoke" (1955) with James Arness and Amanda Blake representing the western. Mid-decade, Warner Bros. produced a group of five westerns with "Maverick" starring James Garner and "Cheyenne" starring Clint Walker leading the group in popularity. Musical programs distinguished the decade. Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written for television, was performed on December 24, 1951, at the NBC studios in New York City, where it was telecast as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
United States in the 1950s | Television
The very first movie to be produced was Thomas Edison's kinetoscope of his assistant Fred Ott in Record of a Sneeze. This could also be considered the first to show a comedic element. During the era of silent films in the 1920s, comedic films began to appear in significant numbers. These were mainly focused on visual humor, including slapstick and burlesque. In America, prominent clown-style actors of the silent era include Charlie Chaplin (although he was born in England), Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Oliver Hardy (of Laurel and Hardy) (Stan Laurel being British), Fatty Arbuckle, the Marx Brothers and other names were significant in the first decades of American cinema humor.
American humor | Film
Paley, set terms including half the distributor's gross profits "plus ownership of the negative at the end of the contract." In 1963, the studio's net profit dropped to $3.7 million. By the mid-1960s, motion picture production was in decline, as the industry was in the midst of a painful transition from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the era now known as New Hollywood. Few studio films were made in favor of co-productions (for which Warner provided facilities, money and distribution), and pickups of independent pictures. With the success of the studio's 1964 film of Broadway play "My Fair Lady", as well as its soundtrack, Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. | New owners
In the conventional motion picture format, frames are four perforations tall, with an aspect ratio of 1.375:1, . This is a derivation of the aspect ratio and frame size designated by Thomas Edison () at the dawn of motion pictures, which was an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The first sound features were released in 1926–27, and while Warner Bros. was using synchronized phonograph discs (sound-on-disc), Fox placed the soundtrack in an optical record directly on the film (sound-on-film) on a strip between the sprocket holes and the image frame. "Sound-on-film" was soon adopted by the other Hollywood studios, resulting in an almost square image ratio of 0.860 in by 0.820 in.
35 mm movie film | Academy format
"These films consist of part-talking, part-silent with Vitaphone soundtrack, unless otherwise noted."
List of early Warner Bros. sound and talking features | Sound film
On June 7, 2012, "The Hollywood Reporter" had revealed that Cary Fukunaga was boarding the project as director and will co-write the script with Chase Palmer, while Roy Lee and Dan Lin are producing, as with Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions. On May 21, 2014, Warner Bros. was announced to have moved the film to its New Line Cinema division, with overseer duties conducting by New Line's Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter, along with Vice President of Production at Warner Bros., Niija Kuykendall. On December 5, 2014, in an interview with "Vulture", Dan Lin announced that the first film will be a coming-of-age story about the children tormented by It and the second will skip ahead in time as those same characters band together to continue the fight as adults.
It (film series) | Cary Fukunaga (2012–2015)
Opening attractions at Movie World focused on education about and involvement with the behind the scenes of filmmaking. Marketing slogans billed Movie World as "Hollywood on the Gold Coast" and its design was intended to capture the aesthetic of American theme parks such as Disneyland and Universal Studios. Beyond the Fountain of Fame opening plaza, Main Street featured replicas of buildings and facades from various Warner Bros. films, such as Rick's Café Américain from "Casablanca", the bank robbed during "Bonnie and Clyde" and the "Daily Planet" building from "Superman". A film studio tour included the Movie Magic Special Effects Show with audience participation on a live set.
Warner Bros. Movie World | Early attractions, the first 10 years
Though the word "horror" to describe the film genre would not be used until the 1930s (when Universal Pictures began releasing their initial monster films), earlier American productions often relied on horror and gothic themes. Many of these early films were considered dark melodramas because of their stock characters and emotion-heavy plots that focused on romance, violence, suspense, and sentimentality. In 1923, Universal Pictures started producing movies based on Gothic Horror literature from authors like Victor Hugo and Edgar Allan Poe. This series of pictures from Universal Pictures have retroactively become the first phase of the studio's Universal Classic Monsters series that would continue for three more decades.
Horror film | Universal Classic Monsters (Silent Era)
Bryan Foy joined Twentieth Century Fox. During the war era, the studio made "Casablanca", "Now, Voyager", "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (all 1942), "This Is the Army", and "Mission to Moscow" (both 1943); the last of these films became controversial a few years afterwards. At the premieres of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (in Los Angeles, New York, and London), audiences purchased $15.6 million in war bonds for the governments of England and the United States. By the middle of 1943, however, audiences had tired of war films, but Warner continued to produce them, losing money. In honor of the studio's contributions to the cause, the Navy named a Liberty ship after the brothers' father, Benjamin Warner.
Warner Bros. | World War II
On June 7, 2012, "The Hollywood Reporter" had revealed that Cary Fukunaga was boarding the project as director and will co-write the script with Chase Palmer, while Roy Lee and Dan Lin are producing, as with Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions. On May 21, 2014, Warner Bros. was announced to have moved the film to its New Line Cinema division, with overseer duties conducting by New Line's Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter, along with Vice President of Production at Warner Bros., Niija Kuykendall. On December 5, 2014, in an interview with "Vulture", Dan Lin announced that the first film will be a coming-of-age story about the children tormented by It and the second will skip ahead in time as those same characters band together to continue the fight as adults.
It (2017 film) | Cary Fukunaga (2012–2015)
In the 1920s to 1950s, genre films had clear conventions and iconography, such as the heavy coats worn by gangsters in films like "Little Caesar" (1931). The conventions in genre films enable filmmakers to generate them in an industrial, assembly-line fashion, an approach which can be seen in the James Bond spy-films, which all use a formula of "lots of action, fancy gadgets, beautiful woman and colourful villains", even though the actors, directors and screenwriters change.
Film genre | History
The 1974 Mel Brooks classic "Blazing Saddles" gives the viewer a brief glance behind the scenes as they literally break the fourth wall onto an adjacent stage, and through the Warner Bros. commissary before spilling out of the main studio gates and onto Olive Avenue.
Burbank, California | Cinema history
To others, the era began in 1929, when the silent age had definitively ended. Most Hollywood pictures from the late 1920s to 1960s adhered closely to a genre – Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, and biopic (biographical picture) – and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films; Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for twenty years; Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount Pictures; and director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth Century Fox. Similarly, actors were mostly contract players.
Classical Hollywood cinema | Classical Hollywood cinema in the sound era (late 1920s–1960s)
The basic genres of film can be regarded as drama, in the feature film and most cartoons, and documentary. Most dramatic feature films, especially from Hollywood fall fairly comfortably into one of a long list of film genres such as the Western, war film, horror film, romantic comedy film, musical, crime film, and many others. Many of these genres have a number of subgenres, for example by setting or subject, or a distinctive national style, for example in the Indian Bollywood musical.
Genre | Film
In 1927, Warner Bros. released the first feature-length film with sound, "The Jazz Singer", whose audio track was recorded with a proprietary technology called Vitaphone. The film's success persuaded other studios to go to the considerable expense of adding microphones to their sets, and scramble to start producing their own "talkies". One of the next major advancements made in movie production was color film. Even before color was a possibility in movies, early film makers were interested in how color could enhance their stories. Early techniques included hand tinting: painting each frame by hand. Cheaper and more widely used was toning: dying the film in a single color, used in many films in the 1920s.
Feature film | Technological developments
Warner Bros. promoted "On with the Show!" as being in "natural color." The pioneers of sound were the first to introduce full talking combined with full color. Adverts proclaimed 'Now color takes to the screen'. For Warner's this would be the first in a series of contracted films made in color. The film generated much interest in Hollywood and virtually overnight, most other major studios began films shot in the process. The film would be eclipsed by the far greater success of the second Technicolor film, "Gold Diggers of Broadway". ("Song of the West" was actually completed first but had its release delayed until March 1930).
On with the Show! (1929 film) | Production and promotion
The film was the first Warner Bros. film to be filmed in the improved Technicolor process which removed grain and improved both the color and clarity of the film. This improved process had first been used on "The Runaround" (1931) and resulted in an attempt at a color revival by the studios late in 1931. "Variety" praised the color work in this film, stating that "the coloring is easy on the eye and never harsh or confusing as the early color pictures were."
Manhattan Parade | Production
Also, since Warner Bros. owned the rights to the title of the film "Casablanca", Bogart knew there would be no lawsuit against him regarding the name Casablanca Records. The label's first signing was the rock group Kiss, however, the label's first single was Bill Amesbury's "Virginia (Touch Me Like You Do)" which became a minor hit on the US Hot 100. "Butter Boy" by Fanny and The Hudson Brothers' "So You Are a Star" proved to be Casablanca's first Billboard Top 40 hits. From the time of its inception, Casablanca did not quite fit within the Warner scope of music, especially with the signing of a then-new act known as Kiss.
Casablanca Records | History
This is a list of selected USAAF films produced by Warner Bros. prior to the formation of the FMPU: The growing demand for training films overwhelmed Warner Bros. and the USAAF established an inhouse film production unit. The FMPU released over 400 films between 1942 and 1945, many of which have been lost or destroyed. This list is representative of that output:
First Motion Picture Unit | Filmography
According to Warner Bros records the film only earned $322,000 in the US and Canada and $102,000 elsewhere.
First Lady (film) | Reception
Warner Bros. Family Entertainment was the family film and entertainment label of Warner Bros. Entertainment. It released numerous theatrical (or direct-to-video) family films and children and family television series.
Warner Bros. Family Entertainment | Introduction
The perceived genre of a film can change over time; for example, in the 21st century "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) classes as a key early Western film, but when released, marketing promoted it "for its relation to the then-popular genres of the chase film, the railroad film and the crime film". A key reason that the early Hollywood industrial system from the 1920s to the 1950s favoured genre films is that in "Hollywood's industrial mode of production, genre movies are dependable products" to market to audiences - they were easy to produce and it was easy for audiences to understand a genre film.
Film genre | History
One of the most iconic films in Hollywood history, "Casablanca" perfectly caught the present-day (1942) wartime spirit of the age, but the TV series set, as it was, during the latter-day (1955) present of the Cold War, with its spies and intrigue, could not compete. Its stories were molded into the style of standard TV drama of the era, omitting any mention of themes which would have been considered inappropriate for an early-evening audience. Actor Paul Stewart, assigned to direct the first episode of "WB Presents", an installment of "Kings Row", told columnist Bob Thomas that "the company will rehearse five days and shoot five days for the 48-minute dramas".
Casablanca (1955 TV series) | "Casablanca", the series
"The Love Parade" (Paramount 1929) starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton. Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, "The Desert Song" in 1929. They spared no expense and photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor. This was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature which was entitled "On with the Show" (1929). The most popular film of 1929 was the second all-color, all-talking feature which was entitled "Gold Diggers of Broadway" (1929). This film broke all box office records and remained the highest-grossing film ever produced until 1939. Suddenly, the market became flooded with musicals, revues, and operettas.
Musical film | The first musicals
"The New Yorker" rated it only "pretty tolerable" and said it was "not quite up to "Across the Pacific", Bogart's last spyfest".
Casablanca (film) | Initial response
Two studios in the middle—the "major-minors" Universal and Columbia, moving up in rank—had production lines roughly similar to the top Poverty Row concerns, if somewhat better endowed in general, and with a few up-market productions each year as well. They had few or no theaters, but they did have major-league-level distribution exchanges. In the model that would be standard during the Golden Age, the industry's top product, its A films, would premiere at a select number of deluxe first-run metropolitan cinemas, located in U.S. cities with populations in the range of 100,000 and above. There were fewer than 500 of these downtown movie palaces; in 1934, 77 percent of them were under the control of one or the other of the leading studios, the "Big Five." As a whole, the first-run circuit comprised the palaces and another 900 or so houses covering North America's 400 largest municipalities.
B movies (Hollywood Golden Age) | Rise of the double feature: 1930s
The studio's first live-action film was "My Four Years in Germany" (1918), their first animated film was "Gay Purr-ee" (1962). Animated films produced by Warner Bros. Animation, and the Warner Animation Group are also released by Warner Bros. Pictures. The studio has released twenty-five films that have received an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination: "Disraeli" (1929), "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932), "42nd Street" (1933), "Here Comes the Navy" (1934), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935), "Anthony Adverse" (1936), "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937), "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938), "Four Daughters" (1938), "Jezebel" (1938), "Dark Victory" (1939), to name a few.
Warner Bros. Pictures | Filmography
The studio emerged relatively unscathed from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and produced a broad range of films, including "backstage musicals," "crusading biopics," "swashbucklers," and "women's pictures." As Thomas Schatz observed, this repertoire was "a means of stabilizing marketing and sales, of bringing efficiency and economy into the production of some fifty feature films per year, and of distinguishing Warners' collective output from that of its competitors". Warner Bros. became best known, however, for its hard-hitting social dramas, whose production Jack Warner tended to support. These included gangster classics such as "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy" as well as the critically acclaimed "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang", starring Paul Muni.
Jack L. Warner | Depression era
In 1969, the United Artists Corporation presented to the Library of Congress the earliest surviving preprint material from the pre-1950 film library of Warner Bros. (including First National library). The collection contains 200 silent features (1918–29), 800 sound features (1926–50), 1,800 sound shorts (1926–48), and 337 "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" shorts (1931–48). While consisting largely of Warner Bros. releases, the collection includes nearly two hundred sound features released by Monogram Pictures Corporation between 1936 and 1946 and 231 "Popeye" cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios released between 1933 and 1957. Most motion pictures exist in the original black-and-white/Technicolor camera negatives.
Associated Artists Productions | Film archive
SMP(T)E'S first standard was to get everyone using 35 mm film width, four sprockets per frame, 1.37:1 picture ratio. Until then, there were competing film formats, now theaters could all run the same films.
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers | Film format
"silent film with Vitaphone track unless otherwise noted"
List of early Warner Bros. sound and talking features | Silent film
In 1926, Hollywood studio Warner Bros. introduced the "Vitaphone" system, producing short films of live entertainment acts and public figures and adding recorded sound effects and orchestral scores to some of its major features. During late 1927, Warners released "The Jazz Singer", which was mostly silent but contained what is generally regarded as the first synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film. The early sound-on-disc processes such as Vitaphone were soon superseded by sound-on-film methods such as Fox Movietone, DeForest Phonofilm, and RCA Photophone. The trend convinced the largely reluctant industrialists that "talking pictures", or "talkies", were the future.
History of film technology | Sound era
Types of fiction which may seem unrelated can also combine to form hybrid subgenres, such as the melding of horror and comedy in the "Evil Dead" films. Other popular combinations include the romantic comedy, some vampire films, and the action comedy film. Alan Williams distinguishes three main genre categories: narrative, avant-garde and documentary. Genre movies are "commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters and familiar situations". Genre affects how films are broadcast on television, advertised, and organized in video-rental stores. One can also classify films by the setting, theme, topic, mood, format, target audience or budget.
Film genre | Introduction
Negulesco went to Warner Brothers in 1940. He made his reputation at Warner Bros by directing short subjects, particularly a series of band shorts featuring unusual camera angles and dramatic use of shadows and silhouettes. Negulesco's first feature film as director was "Singapore Woman" (1941). In 1948, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing for "Johnny Belinda".
Jean Negulesco | Warner Brothers
Warner Bros. Pictures is an American film production and distribution studio owned by the WarnerMedia Studios & Networks Group. Headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, it is the flagship label of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group division of Warner Bros. Entertainment, itself a division of AT&T's WarnerMedia. Founded in 1923 by Harry Warner, Albert Warner, Sam Warner, and Jack L. Warner, in addition to producing its own films, it handles filmmaking operations, theatrical distribution, marketing and promotion for films produced and released by other Warner Bros. labels, including Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Animation Group, New Line Cinema, DC Films, and Castle Rock Entertainment, as well as various third-party producers.
Warner Bros. Pictures | Introduction
Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds. Western films were enormously popular in the silent film era (1894-1927). With the advent of sound in 1927-28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and producers. These smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in the 1930s. By the late 1930s, the Western film was widely regarded as a "pulp" genre in Hollywood, but its popularity was dramatically revived in 1939 by major studio productions such as "Dodge City" starring Errol Flynn, "Jesse James" with Tyrone Power, "Union Pacific" with Joel McCrea, "Destry Rides Again" featuring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, and the release of John Ford's landmark Western adventure "Stagecoach", which became one of the biggest hits of the year.
Western (genre) | Characteristics
"Love Without Question" was the first production of Jans Pictures, Inc. The young company produced its films at Peerless Picture Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and released them through States' Rights. It was also one of C. Wadsworth Camp (father of writer Madeleine L'Engle) and James W. Morrison's first works since returning from the front lines of World War I. During production of the film, Herman F. Jans and Fred C. Backer traveled throughout the western and southern United States securing contracts with film brokers and theaters to show their first movie. Production of the film completed on March 13, 1920.
Love Without Question | Production
Mason's knowledge led him to be assigned to Jack Warner's office to assist the Vice President of Worldwide Production.
Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood | First tours
On October 1, 1992, the first international release of "" arrived when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe and then domestically by Miramax Films on July 30, 1993, with future video and DVD releases that would be sold under Warner Bros., which, following Disney's acquisition of Miramax and Turner's subsequent merger with Time Warner, had acquired the film's distribution rights. Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman. The film was a musical with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, "The Wizard of Oz" and "Singin' in the Rain".
Tom and Jerry | Feature films
This is a list of films produced, co-produced, and/or distributed by Warner Bros. in 2000–2009. This list does not include direct-to-video releases or films from New Line Cinema prior to its merger with Warner Bros. in 2008, nor does it include third-party films or films WB gained the rights to as a result of mergers or acquisitions.
List of Warner Bros. films (2000–2009) | Introduction
According to Warner Bros records, the film earned $524,000 domestically and $245,000 foreign.
The Crowd Roars (1932 film) | Box office
The film was adapted into a 1955 television series, with Jack Kelly (who later portrayed Bart Maverick in "Maverick") in Cummings' role and Robert Horton (who subsequently played scout Flint McCullough in "Wagon Train") performing Reagan's part. The show appeared as one of three rotating series on the earliest William T. Orr production, "Warner Bros. Presents". The other two series were "Casablanca (1955 TV series)", another TV version of a renowned movie (featuring Charles McGraw in Humphrey Bogart's role), and "Cheyenne", starring Clint Walker, a Western later produced by Roy Huggins that went on to its own time slot for several years until it started rotating with "Bronco", another Warner Bros.
Kings Row | Television series
Warner Bros. often includes old animated shorts from its considerable library, connected only thematically, on the DVD releases of classic WB movies. In 2010 and 2012 Warner Bros. also released new "Looney Tunes" shorts before family films. Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures organize an annual release of Academy Award-nominated short films in theatres across the US, UK, Canada and Mexico throughout February and March.
Short film | Modern era
television until 2003. Goldenson's efforts paid off, and on October 27, 1954, the network launched a campaign ushering in the "New ABC", with productions from several studios, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros., and 20th Century Fox. Warner tried with mixed success to adapt some of its most successful films as ABC television series, and showcase these adaptations as part of the wheel series "Warner Bros. Presents", which aired during the 1955–56 season. It showcased television adaptations of the 1942 films "Kings Row" and "Casablanca"; "Cheyenne" (adapted from the 1947 film "Wyoming Kid"); "Sugarfoot" (a remake of the 1954 film "The Boy from Oklahoma"); and "Maverick".
History of the American Broadcasting Company | Hollywood begins to produce television series
Cohan biopic, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), starring James Cagney, and the immensely popular "Casablanca", with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart would star in 36 films between 1934 and 1942 including John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), one of the first films now considered a classic film noir. In 1941, RKO Pictures released "Citizen Kane" made by Orson Welles. It is often considered the greatest film of all time. It would set the stage for the modern motion picture, as it revolutionized film story telling. The strictures of wartime also brought an interest in more fantastical subjects. These included Britain's Gainsborough melodramas (including "The Man in Grey" and "The Wicked Lady"), and films like "Here Comes Mr.
History of film | World War II and its aftermath
According to Warner Bros records the film earned $101,000 domestic and $38,000 foreign.
Pay as You Enter | Box office
Martin Loop contends that Hollywood films are not pure genres because most Hollywood movies blend the love-oriented plot of the romance genre with other genres. Jim Colins claims that since the 1980s, Hollywood films have been influenced by the trend towards "ironic hybridization", in which directors combine elements from different genres, as with the Western/science fiction mix in "Back to the Future Part III". Many films cross into multiple genres. Susan Hayward states that spy films often cross genre boundaries with thriller films. Some genre films take genre elements from one genre and place them into the conventions of a second genre, such as with "The Band Wagon" (1953), which adds film noir and detective film elements into "The Girl Hunt" ballet.
Film genre | Pure and hybrid genres
The companies first film production and financing credits were the comedy-romance film Duane Hopwood and the dystopian political thriller film V for Vendetta in 2005. In 2006 they signed a deal to produce and finance films in association with Warner Bros.. Their next films (Poseidon, V for Vendetta, The Good German and 300) were all distributed by Warner Bros. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was their last film they co-produced for Warner Bros. and the deal was signed off. Their last film was Bangkok Dangerous and the company was left dormant after the film became a box-office flop.
Virtual Studios | Film Industry
The first writers assigned to the script were twins Julius and Philip Epstein who, against the wishes of Warner Bros., left at Frank Capra's request early in 1942 to work on the "Why We Fight" series in Washington, D.C. While they were gone, the other credited writer, Howard Koch, was assigned; he produced thirty to forty pages. When the Epstein brothers returned after about a month, they were reassigned to "Casablanca" and—contrary to what Koch claimed in two published books—his work was not used. The Epstein brothers and Koch never worked in the same room at the same time during the writing of the script.
Casablanca (film) | Writing
Classical Hollywood cinema, or the Golden Age of Hollywood, is defined as a technical and narrative style characteristic of American cinema from 1913 to 1969, during which thousands of movies were issued from the Hollywood studios. The Classical style began to emerge in 1913, was accelerated in 1917 after the U.S. entered World War I, and finally solidified when the film The Jazz Singer was released in 1927, ending the Silent Film era and increasing box-office profits for film industry by introducing sound to feature films. Most Hollywood pictures adhered closely to a formula – Western, Slapstick Comedy, Musical, Animated Cartoon, Biographical Film (biographical picture) – and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio.
Cinema of the United States | Classical Hollywood cinema and the Golden Age of Hollywood (1913–1969)
This is a list of the first films by country. This table shows the earliest known film productions by country, or successor state.
List of the first films by country | Introduction
From the earliest days of cinema in the 19th century the term "genre" (already in use in English with reference to works of art or literary production from at least 1770) was used to organize films according to type. By the 1950s André Bazin was discussing the concept of "genre" by using the Western film as an example; during this era, there was a debate over auteur theory versus genre. In the late 1960s the concept of genre became a significant part of film theory. Film genres draw on genres from other forms; Western novels existed before the Western film, and musical theatre pre-dated film musicals.
Film genre | History
In October 1927, Warner Bros. released "The Jazz Singer", the first feature-length talking picture. Its success prompted Hollywood to convert from silent to sound film production en masse. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) controlled an advanced optical sound-on-film system, Photophone, recently developed by General Electric, RCA's parent company. However, its hopes of joining in the anticipated boom in sound movies faced a major hurdle: Warner Bros. and Fox, Hollywood's other vanguard sound studio, were already financially and technologically aligned with ERPI, a subsidiary of AT&T's Western Electric division. The industry's two largest companies, Paramount and Loew's/MGM, with two other major studios, Universal and First National, were poised to contract with ERPI for sound conversion as well.
RKO Pictures | Origin of company
According to Warner Bros records, the film earned $2,506,000 domestically and $797,000 foreign.
Cheyenne (1947 film) | Box office
In other cases, strong-willed directors like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Capra battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as "Gone with the Wind", "The Wizard of Oz", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "Stagecoach", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", "Destry Rides Again", "Young Mr. Lincoln", "Wuthering Heights", "Only Angels Have Wings", "Ninotchka", "Beau Geste", "Babes in Arms", "Gunga Din", "The Women", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", and "The Roaring Twenties".
Classical Hollywood cinema | Classical Hollywood cinema in the sound era (late 1920s–1960s)