[17] Following the advice of a friend, Benjamin relocated the family to Canada, where he attempted to make a living by bartering tin wares to trappers in exchange for furs.

[18] In 1896, the family relocated to Youngstown, Ohio, following the lead of Harry Warner, who established a shoe repair shop in the heart of the emerging industrial town.

[19] Benjamin worked with his son 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 the early 1900s, he formed a business partnership with another Youngstown resident and "took over" the city's Old Grand Opera House, which he used as a venue for "cheap vaudeville and photoplays".

[26] Warner's interest in film came after seeing Thomas Edison's The Great Train Robbery while working as an employee at Cedar Point Pleasure Resort in Sandusky, Ohio.

[35] In 1910, the Warners would sell 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".

[42] After this occurred, Harry Warner, who now had an office in New York with brother Albert,[43] sent Sam and Jack to establish film exchanges in Los Angeles and San Francisco;[40] Sam would run the company's Los Angeles division while Jack ran the company's San Francisco division.

[57] Despite the studio's success, the Warners were unable to compete with Paramount, Universal, and First National (The Big Three),[58] and were soon threatened to be bought out by the end of 1924.

[61] After acquiring the radio station, Sam decided to make an attempt to use synchronized sound in future Warner Bros.

[62] After a visit to Western Electric's Bell Laboratories headquarters,[63] Sam Warner urged his brother, Harry, to sign an agreement with Western Electric to develop a series of "talking" shorts using the newly upgraded sound-on-film technology, a sound-on-disc system for motion pictures.

[68] Sam Warner, however, was able to convince the high-ups to sign with the studio after his wife Lina, who was not Jewish, wore a gold cross at a dinner they attended with the Western Electric brass.

[68] Harry Warner then signed a partnership agreement with Western Electric to use Bell Laboratories to test the sound-on-film process.

[69] Warner and younger brother Jack then decided to take a big step forward and make Don Juan.

[72] Through Vitaphone, the studio released a series of musical shorts and the feature-length Don Juan (which had a synchronized music track); upon establishing Vitaphone, Sam was also made Vice President of Warner Bros.[71] Despite the money Don Juan was able to draw at the box office, it still could not match the expensive budget the brothers put into the film's production.

Around this time, Paramount head Adolph Zukor offered Sam a deal as an executive producer for his studio if he brought Vitaphone with him;[74] during the year, Harry had also become the company president.

[77] The Warner brothers pushed ahead with The Jazz Singer, a new Vitaphone feature based on a Broadway play and starring Al Jolson.

The Jazz Singer broke box-office records, establishing Warner Bros. as a major player in Hollywood and single-handedly launching the talkie revolution.

In 1925, after years of bachelorhood,[78] Warner met eighteen-year-old Ziegfeld Follies performer and actress Lina Basquette while spending time in New York visiting the Bell Laboratories.

[82] After Sam Warner's death in 1927, brother Harry asked Lina Basquette to give up custody of the couple's daughter Lita.

Harry Warner and his wife offered Lina Basquette large amounts of money to relinquish custody of her daughter but she refused.

He died of pneumonia caused by sinusitis, osteomyelitis and epidural and subdural abscesses on October 5, 1927, the day before the premiere of The Jazz Singer.

[90] This allegation, leveled in 1977, was never corroborated, and Demarest's reliability was questioned because of his long dependence on alcohol;[90] the last time that Sam would meet with his entire family was at his parents' wedding anniversary in 1926.

[93] Hollywood's five major studios, which controlled most of the nation's movie theaters, initially attempted to block the growth of "talking pictures".

[93] The following year, the newly formed Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences recognized Warner Bros. for "revolutionizing the industry with sound".

The HOA buildings, with the exception of Warner Gym, were demolished in 1956 to make way for the Jacob H. Schiff Park.