Warner Bros. is generally considered the most fondly remembered studio in the Golden Age of Hollywood by most critics and historians who have studied the studio system over the decades, as well as by film fans who’ve watched Warner films religiously in repertory houses, on broadcast TV, home video and eventually Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which has become the only reliable channel on cable where we can regularly find Warner films today. Other studios might have been seen as more prestigious once upon a time: MGM may have spent more lavishly and had “more stars than there are in Heaven” and 20th Century Fox may have had more high-profile literary-based productions and big-budget Technicolor musicals and historical dramas, but it’s the Warner films that regularly invigorated audiences with their crackling gangster thrillers, over-the-top musicals, sweeping melodramas, spectacular swashbucklers, detail-packed biopics, wartime displays of patriotism, hilarious animated cartoons, and topical themes. No other studio regularly connected so well to audiences and managed to find the stars and character actors who knew how to put over the urban rhythms and social concerns of the times. Indeed, “pulled from the headlines” was a phrase most associated with the company.
The studio, led by the three surviving Warner Brothers, Jack, Harry and Abe, after Sam had died on the eve of the groundbreaking success of the studio’s early sound feature, THE JAZZ SINGER (1927), also encouraged more innovation and creativity–within their budgets–among producers, writers, directors, stars, editors, and choreographers than the other studios seemed to. (Their stars also fought the most battles with their studio head, all part of a generally successful campaign to make better, more important movies.)
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