[8] An opponent of communism, after the war Warner appeared as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee, voluntarily naming screenwriters who had been fired at the time as suspected communists or sympathizers.

[21] In the early 1890s, Benjamin Warner decided to move to Canada, following a friend's advice that he could make an excellent living bartering tin wares with trappers in exchange for furs.

In the early 20th century, Sam formed a business partnership with another local resident and took over the city's Old Grand Opera House as a venue for "cheap vaudeville and photoplays".

[39] Later that year, the Warners sold their 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"[40] (equivalent to $1,800,000 today).

That same year, the studio was less successful in its efforts to promote Open Your Eyes, a film on the dangers of venereal disease that featured Jack's sole screen appearance.

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".

[71] In 1929, Jack persuaded British stage and screen actor George Arliss to play the title role in a remake of the 1921 United Artists film Disraeli, which turned out to be a box-office hit.

[75][76] According to a 1937 Fortune magazine article, Jack's most intense contract disputes involved Cagney, "who got sick of being typed as a girl-hitting mick and of making five pictures a year instead of four.

[81] Although Warner Bros. maintained a high rate of production throughout the 1930s, some pictures showed an uneven quality that reflected "not only the difficulty of shifting to a supervisory system but also the consequences of dispersing authority into the creative ranks".

In 1917, while it was still in distribution, the Warners had secured the rights for War Brides, a movie that featured Alla Nazimova as "a woman who kills herself rather than breed children for an unidentified country whose army looks suspiciously Teutonic.

[89] Despite legal ramifications preventing the use of actual names, the studio aimed for an "aura of authenticity" and Wallis initially recommended eliminating credits to give the film "the appearance of a newsreel.

[113] Accustomed to dealing with actors in a high-handed manner, within a few years Jack provoked hostility among emerging TV stars such as James Garner, who filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. over a contract dispute.

[123] Shortly after the deal was closed, he announced that the company and its subsidiaries would be "directed more vigorously to the acquisition of the most important story properties, talents, and to the production of the finest motion pictures possible".

The previous owner, CBS director William S. Paley set terms that included fifty percent of the distributor's gross profits "plus ownership of the negative at the end of the contract.

[131] Jack Valenti, who had just assumed leadership of the Motion Picture Association of America, recalled that a meeting with Warner and studio aide Ben Kalmenson left him "uneasy".

He had already survived the dislocations of the 1950s, when other studio heads – including Mayer, David O. Selznick, and Samuel Goldwyn – were pushed out by stockholders who "sought scapegoats for dwindling profits".

[140] Structural changes that occurred in the industry during this period ensured that studios would become "more important as backers of independent producers than as creators of their own films", a situation that left little room for the traditional movie mogul.

Evidence of his eroding control at Warner Bros. included his failure to block production of the controversial but highly influential film Bonnie and Clyde, a project he initially "hated".

[141] Similarly, as producer of the film adaptation of Camelot, he was unable to persuade director Joshua Logan to cast Richard Burton and Julie Andrews in the leading roles.

[142] Another factor was that Logan was able to manipulate Warner's ego to persuade him from cutting the screenplay's length, despite the fact that the studio executives had already agreed with the film's unofficial producer, Joel Freeman, that it was overlong.

[146] Before the film's release, Warner showed a preview cut to President Richard Nixon, who recommended substantial changes, including the removal of the song 'Cool, Cool, Considerate Men' that struck him as veiled criticisms of the ongoing Vietnam War.

[148] Warner's efforts to promote the film were sometimes counterproductive; during an interview with talk show host Merv Griffin, the elderly producer engaged in a lengthy tirade against "pinko communists".

On August 5, 1958, after an evening of baccarat at the Palm Beach Casino in Cannes, his Alfa Romeo roadster swerved into the path of a coal truck on a stretch of road located near the seaside villa of Prince Aly Khan.

In a note to author Dean Jennings, who assisted Jack on his 1964 autobiography, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood, Ann wrote: "He is extremely sensitive, but there are few who know that because he covers it with a cloak.

[175] As one biographer observed, Warner "was furious when Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Paul Henreid and John Huston joined other members of the stellar Committee for the First Amendment in a flight to Washington to preach against the threat to free expression".

[174] Lester D. Friedman noted that Warner's response to the HUAC hearings was similar to other Jewish studio heads who "feared that a blanket equation of Communists with Jews would destroy them and their industry".

[186] In the days following his death, newspaper obituaries recounted the familiar story of "the four brothers who left the family butcher shop for nickelodeons" and went on to revolutionize American cinema.

[187] The event, called "The Colonel: An Affectionate Remembrance of Jack L. Warner", drew Hollywood notables such as entertainers Olivia de Havilland and Debbie Reynolds, and cartoon voice actor Mel Blanc.

[190] Warner is portrayed by Richard Dysart in Bogie (1980), Michael Lerner in This Year's Blonde (1980), Jason Wingreen in Malice in Wonderland (1985), Mike Connors in James Dean: Race with Destiny (1997), Tim Woodward in RKO 281 (1999), Len Kaserman in The Three Stooges (2000), Richard M. Davidson in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001), Mark Rydell in James Dean (2001), Danny Wells in Gleason (2002), Barry Langrishe in The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004), Ben Kingsley in Life (2015), Stanley Tucci in Feud (2017) and Kevin Dillon in Reagan (2024).