Warner Bros. offering tour to commemorate
They are phrases that have become part of America’s lexicon: “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “Go ahead, make my day.” “I don’t have to show no stinkin’ badges.” “He-e-e-re’s Johnny!” “Made it, Ma! Top of the world.” “What we got here is a failure to communicate.” “We rob banks.” “Win just one for the Gipper.”
All those quotes we hold dear share one thing in common: They originated in movies from Warner Bros. The little studio that began in 1923 by four brothers, the sons of Polish Jews who immigrated to the United States, is still producing hit TV shows and movies.
The oldest Warner brother was born in Poland, while two of the younger boys were born in the U.S. and Jack – the baby of the family – was born in Canada. The quartet, which had only a grade-school education, first established a nickelodeon in Philadelphia and gradually expanded the business.
But Los Angeles’ 284 days of sunshine a year average beckoned the fledgling filmmakers, and they first built a little studio in Culver City, later moving 20 miles north to Burbank, where the studio sits to this day.
To celebrate the 95th year of Warner The trench coat that Humphrey Bogart wore in “Casablanca” is part of the special “Classics Made Here” tour at Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood.
Bros., Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood is offering a special “Classics Made Here” tour. Here you can view Humphrey Bogart’s trench coat from “Casablanca,” the street corner where gangsters like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson met their match and the theater façade where Busby Berkeley put his hoofers through their geometric paces.
The special champagne tour (you must be 21 to imbibe) takes you through the 110-acre lot where shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” “The Ellen Degeneres Show,” “Mom” and “The Fosters” are still produced.
A savvy tour guide leads the way of the 3 1/2-hour trek, which transports visitors from the little café in Paris where Rick, Ilsa and Sam await the arrival of German troops in “Casablanca” to the high school in Iowa where Harold Hill tries to con the townsfolk in “The Music Man.”
It wasn’t exactly green acres when the Warner brothers first started their studio. They struggled mightily at first. But four years later, they scaled new heights with the very first movie to feature synchronized sound and dialogue. It was “The Jazz Singer,” starring vaudeville star Al Jolson.
But Jolson didn’t turn out to be the studio’s biggest star. No, that was a fourlegged German shepherd who’d been rescued from a German trench during World War I and brought to America by his savior, Capt. Lee Duncan.
The furry Rin Tin Tin went on the make 25 movies (mostly silent films) for the Warner brothers, his salary escalating to $6,000 a week. It is said that he rode in his own limo, ate only T-bone steaks and listened to on-set music to put him in the right mood.
Warner Bros. also had a two-legged star in those early days, in the form of John Barrymore, a famous theater actor with a fondness for alcohol. Barrymore starred in “Don Juan” in 1926 with sound effects and a music score, but no dialogue. That would come with “The Jazz Singer,” which put the studio on the map.
Still, it was the shadowy gangster movies of the ’30s that personified the early Warner Bros. With hardnosed actors like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, the grim movies often reflected the mood of the country, stunned by the Great Depression.
Subsequently the brothers managed to corral a cadre of great actors, including Bette Davis, who made more than 50 movies on the lot, Errol Flynn and Joan Crawford.
At the dawn of World War II came maybe the greatest film of all, “Casablanca,” written hurriedly by identical twins Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch.