WARNER BROTHERS @ 100

The fabled movie studio, Warner Bros. will be celebrating one hundred years of creating motion pictures this year. Still located in Burbank, CA, this dream factory has been behind some of the greatest works of cinema since the birth of the commercial motion picture industry. The studio would later expand into music and television with even further success.

Founded in New Castle, PA by brothers Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack L. Warner as Warner Features Company, their first motion picture release was "the Peril of the Plains" in 1912. They soon headed west by 1915 and the brothers had their first major box office hit with "My Four Years in Germany" three years later.

On April 4, 1923, Warner Bros. Pictures was officially established as a motion picture studio. Their very first movie star was a dog: a trained German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin who went on to appear in a series of popular movies, twenty-seven in all, becoming an international sensation. But the studio would find their greatest success by taking a chance on a new innovation: sound. With "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, Al Jolson was "heard" actually singing in sync in the musical-drama which this box-office smash effectively helped bring an end to silent movies and "the talkies" went on to revolutionize the industry. Sadly, Sam Warner passed away suddenly the day before this film's premiere on October 5th from pneumonia caused by sinusitis.

The surviving brothers would carry on, leading Warner Bros. to become one of the most successful and highly influential of the movie studios. Since their early days, the studio produced a broad range of movie styles ranging from backstage musicals, gangster flicks, swashbucklers, and women's pictures. Some of these now classic films include "The Public Enemy", "Casablanca", "The Maltese Falcon", "Dark Victory", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "My Fair Lady", "Bonnie and Clyde", "Blazing Saddles", "A Clockwork Orange", "The Exorcist", "Unforgiven", "The Matrix" and the "Looney Tunes" series of cartoon shorts.

But Jack would have serious conflicts with his brothers and by 1956 he had secretly purchased their shares in the business after convincing them to participate in a joint sale of stocks, gaining full control of the studio. He would continue to run the studio with an iron fist before retiring from the studio in 1969. The studio would soon be sold to investment companies a few times and merged with others over the following years, currently part of AT&T and now known as Warner Bros. Discovery.

And during the month of April, Turner Classic Movies will be honoring this legendary movie studio by screening some of the movies made throughout their storied history with programming highlights that will include pre-code classics, gangster films, Busby Berkeley musicals and their star-contract players. TCM will also showcase ten newly restored films in partnership with Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation that will feature "The Strawberry Blonde"(1941), "East of Eden"(1955), "Rio Grande"(1959) and "Rachel, Rachel"(1969).