WEBVTT - The Messy Origins of WarnerMedia 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.640 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.680 Jonathan strick Lind. I'm an executive producer with I Heart 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:21.040 Radio and I love all things tech. And recently I 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.880 covered in a tech News episode that A T and 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.319 T is looking to jettison Warner Media and have it 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:32.720 merged with Discovery Communications. And in that episode, I talked 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.320 about how the Warner Media group of companies has a 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:40.640 pretty complicated lineage. Well, today I thought we'd start down 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.919 the road to talk about the various companies that make 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:47.519 up Warner Media kind of unravel at all. And this 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:49.199 is gonna be a heck of a story because it 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:53.599 includes several influential media companies that had their own distinct 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.920 histories before coalescing into Warner Media. But it also includes 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:01.520 companies that are not media companies at all, like funeral 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:07.520 homes for real. Now, when I say complicated, I'm not kidding. 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:13.360 Our story includes a window washing company, parking company, and 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:19.360 online service provider company, UM, few magazine publishers and more. 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:24.600 There are mergers, there are acquisitions, there are spinoffs, there's 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:29.040 family betrayal, and lots of other stuff. So where the 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.200 heck do I get started? Well, I suppose I should 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:34.959 talk about the core components and then work to the 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.120 point where they all come together. And I could start 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.600 pretty much anywhere, because there's so many different pieces to 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.119 the story, But I'm going to begin with Time because 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:49.880 it's on my side, Yes it is. Henry Loose and 0:01:49.960 --> 0:01:54.000 Britton Haddn't had a lot in common. They both attended 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:58.680 Yale University, they both worked as reporters for the Baltimore News, 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.840 and both of them were in their early twenties back 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:05.200 in nineteen twenty two, and they also both wanted to 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:09.880 try something that was a new idea. Newspapers were a thing, obviously, 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.200 but Luce and Haddn't had the idea for a news magazine. 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.400 They decided to try and create one because no one 0:02:18.400 --> 0:02:21.679 had really done it before, and they raised more than 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.600 eighty thousand dollars, which was a princely sum in nineteen 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:28.000 twenty two, and they quit their jobs to found a 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:32.720 company called Time Incorporated and a magazine called Time. It 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.680 would publish weekly starting in March of nineteen twenty three. 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:41.080 Luce served as the business manager for the young publishing 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.960 company and Hadden was editor in chief, and together they 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.840 found success with this weekly magazine format. Seven years later, 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:54.560 haddn't passed away suddenly after an illness had developed into sepsis. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.680 Loose pressed on becoming editor in chief and launching other 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.919 magazines like Fortune, which launched just as the Great Depression 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:07.040 was settling in. So that's kind of ironic timing. He 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:11.560 also published Life, which I think already existed as a 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:15.240 as a different kind of publication, but he essentially acquired 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.359 it and then relaunched it under a new format, effectively 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:22.480 making a new magazine, and then much much later magazines 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:27.160 like Sports Illustrated. He also, according to some accounts, essentially 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:32.440 erased Hadden's contributions to the company time Inc. Was becoming 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:38.040 a giant publisher. Moreover, Loose oversaw the launch of other 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:42.160 forms of media content. In nineteen thirty one, the company 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.960 sponsored a radio news series that aired on CBS Radio, 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:50.840 and in nineteen thirty five the company expanded this to newsreels, 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.120 which were these things that we play in movie theaters 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.520 between pictures. So instead of you know, just watching a movie, 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.640 you might actually see a ten or fifteen that segment 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:04.560 about the latest news or kind of a documentary or 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.360 a highlight of something. The newsreels were slightly different from 0:04:08.480 --> 0:04:11.840 others at the time. They had a longer format and 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:15.680 the inclusion of stuff like re enactments. The concept was 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:19.840 to make a newsreel that was the cinematic sibling of 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:24.919 Time magazine or Life Magazine, something that was akin to those. 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.520 The March of Time series would end up receiving several awards, 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:35.240 including an Honorary Academy Award. This made Time Incorporated a 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:40.960 multimedia company, publishing and newsreels and radio. It was one 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.160 of the earliest examples of such a thing. Luce was 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.800 editor in chief until nineteen sixty four, and he passed 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.960 away just three years after that. But the publisher, the 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:55.400 company that is continued to grow over the years, and 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:57.880 by the late nineteen eighties it was poised to play 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.400 a bigger part in our story. But now we're going 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.800 to switch over to another company. Because really, when you 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:08.479 get to it, Times story is really one of publishing 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.359 and growing a company over time. Uh. It doesn't have 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:14.520 a whole lot to do with with tech, apart from 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:18.800 the fact that obviously technological advancements can mean smoothing out 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:24.240 the processes of a company's operations like from printing to distribution. 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.440 But I don't really think that that's worthy of us 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.400 really diving into here. So we're gonna switch over to 0:05:30.920 --> 0:05:35.800 Warner Brothers Entertainment Incorporated, or the old w B. Now, 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.159 the Warner family immigrated to the United States from Poland 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.839 in the early eighties, and in fact, three of the 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:47.479 four Warner brothers referenced in the name of the company 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:51.120 We're born in Poland, those being Harry, who was the eldest, 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.520 and then Albert and Sam. Now some sources ice I've 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.840 seen suggest that Albert and Sam were born in North America. 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:02.520 But a to a guy who was hired by Warner 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:04.520 Brothers to come in and do research on this kind 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.960 of stuff, that wasn't the case. Jack, the youngest of 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.520 the four Warner brothers, was born in North America. He 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:16.080 was born in Canada. And they also had other siblings 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:18.000 as well. This was a big family. I think there 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.560 were nine of them total, so that wasn't all of them, 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:26.080 but those were the four brothers of the Warner Brothers fame. Now, 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.520 this family wasn't exactly impoverished, but it was a lot 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.440 of work to make ends meet. So the brothers worked 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:34.920 in all sorts of lines of work in the Midwest. 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.880 They worked in the meat industry, they worked at bowling alleys, 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.240 They did all sorts of stuff, and they were all 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.360 looking for ways to be a success, and gradually they 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:48.200 built up a little money. In nineteen o three, the 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:52.920 four brothers rented a vacant store in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, and 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.960 they wanted to turn it into a film exchange in 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.799 a movie theater that they had also acquired a film 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:02.000 projector now obvious sleeve. This was in the extremely early 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.800 days of cinema. The brothers mainly focused on getting hold 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.000 of films and making them available to other theaters in 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:13.400 the region, thus the film exchange business. They were kind 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:16.760 of a go between between the movie studios and the 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:21.080 movie theaters. And it turned out that motion pictures weren't 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:22.960 just a fad. Also turned out that it was a 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:28.320 really shady business. There were a lot of um criminal 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.280 types who got interested in stuff like film exchanges. I 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:37.200 have no idea how involved the Warners were, if at all, 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.200 in that side of life, but it was definitely a 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:43.240 thing that was going on. Not turned out that since 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:45.720 motion pictures were so popular, you know, I feel pretty 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:49.800 confident saying motion pictures were a success, you know, from 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:54.440 the perspective of one the brothers business was also successful, 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.520 and they began to, you know, use the money that 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:01.280 they made to open more theaters and expand by n 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.480 they decided that they would branch out from the business 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:08.280 of exhibiting films and get into the business of making them, 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.400 because one of the downsides of this is that you 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.080 couldn't guarantee the quality of the movies that were being 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.000 sent to you, and a lot of the movies were 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.600 on the not so great side, like either they were 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:25.880 just poorly made or they frequently involved material that was 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:31.440 considered risk a or worse. So movies had a really 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.199 bad reputation in the early days, and the brothers kind 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.480 of wanted to have more control over the whole process, 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.840 so they decided to create their own movie studio. Jack 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.240 Warner would be in charge of movie production. He oversaw 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.480 the film operations side of things. Harry handled all the 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.600 business operations for the company. He was effectively the head 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:57.080 of Warner Brothers, and Sam was in charge of securing 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:01.640 and maintaining technical equipment, and Alb would work with other 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.760 theaters to handle distribution of the Warner Films. The four 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:10.840 opened up Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood, California, in nineteen eighteen, 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.760 originally on Sunset Boulevard, which at the time was considered 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.880 a seedy part of of Hollywood. Um, I don't know 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.960 if it still is. I actually kind of like Sunset Boulevard, 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.480 but maybe it's because I'm a seedy guy. Anyway. They 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.319 incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures in nineteen twenty three. By 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.680 that time, they had already produced several films, and the 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:38.400 first really big success for them was a series of pictures, 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:42.680 that is, movies that started a four legged actor that 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:47.080 being rentin Tin. Uh. That's a dog for those of 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.199 you who have never seen a rentin Tin picture. And 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.600 the dog was learning like a thousand bucks a week, 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.920 which was, you know, quite the princely pooch. I would 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:58.280 imagine that's a lot of money back in those days, 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.880 not a not a small shake of these days. Warner 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:05.680 Brothers was an independent studio back then and was facing 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.239 off against three much more established companies. There was Paramount, 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:12.640 there was MGM, and there was a company called First National. 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:17.640 Warner Brothers was scrappy compared to those three and Sam 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.040 had a vision for what could help set the studio 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:24.880 apart and change the industry forever. See this was again 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.800 the era of the silent film. Movies would play in 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:30.120 movie houses and typically you would have like a house 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.520 musician who would play along with the film on on 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.040 an oregon or something, and all dialogue would be represented 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.840 in little interstitial cards that would pop up, which created 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:42.600 a certain interesting style of cinema, like you could make 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.679 really compelling movies this way, but it also clearly limited 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.800 the actors range. Sam wanted to synchronize sound with the 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:53.720 images on screen, and he wanted the company to pioneer 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.400 the technologies and the installations that would allow for talking pictures. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.960 He initially met with some resistance from Harry, who was like, 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:04.480 why the heck do we need to hear the actors talk? 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.360 But the studio hit a bit of a rough patch, 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:10.400 and maybe in desperation, Harry ended up giving Sam the 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:14.000 green light. Warner Brothers then purchased a company that had 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.719 spun off from Western Electric. This company was called the 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:23.080 Vitograph Company. The Vitogram system was a film sound recording system, 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.840 but it wasn't recording sound to film the way we 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:31.760 do it today. Instead, this system used sixteen inch discs 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.000 like records, they had a groove recorded in them, representing 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:38.960 a soundtrack. So this is like a vinyl album, and 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:43.000 it included everything like music and sound effects and eventually 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:47.440 dialogue and vocals, though originally Harry did not want that included. 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:51.880 He just wanted, you know, music and sound effects on there. Uh. 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:54.840 A side of a desk would run for about eleven 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.800 minutes when played back at an RPM of thirty three 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.880 and a third. Eleven minutes was about the same amount 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.080 of time it took to project through a thousand feet 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.280 of film. And you know, in those early days you 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:10.040 would end up just having about a thousand feet per 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.440 real of film, and so one side of the record 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:15.720 would typically have a groove on it, the other side 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.600 would be blank, and each record would go with a 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.880 single reel of film, and you were just supposed to 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.120 keep them two of them together. So with a setup, 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:27.920 you would have a projectionist who would use a special 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.960 piece of equipment that was part projector part record turntable, 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:35.400 and they would feed the film into the projector they 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.360 would set the little needle or stylus of the record 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.360 player on the beginning of the recording, which from what 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:44.360 I understand, was actually at the center of the disk. 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.320 And you know most records, you know, you put the 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.800 needle on the outside of the record and it follows 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:55.559 the groove gradually all the way to the inside. Apparently, 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.959 with the vitaphone system, you would put the needle at 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.120 the center of it, and because the way that the 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:04.920 record turned and the way the groove was laid out, 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:09.120 it would actually go outward to the outer edge starting 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:12.760 the projector would mean that the film and soundtrack playback 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:16.959 would be synchronized at least, you know, theoretically. The first 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.840 Warner Brothers film using a vitophone soundtrack was Don Juan, 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.480 but the piece had already been filmed. The soundtrack included 0:13:25.520 --> 0:13:28.240 the score for the movie and some sound effects, but 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:33.360 no dialogue, so Don Juan was still largely a silent film. 0:13:33.400 --> 0:13:37.400 The first talkie was The Jazz Singer, a film with 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:40.440 a recorded sound all the way through, so there was 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:44.280 dialogue and singing within the film itself. Now I'm going 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:47.280 to leave it to film historians to talk about the movie, 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:49.720 which has elements in it that I think are, you know, 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:54.480 to put it charitably, challenging, but from a technical perspective, 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:57.720 it was marking a new era, and this was also 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:02.199 an era that would go without it's early champion. Sam Warner, 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.640 who had pushed so hard to incorporate sound into movies, 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.800 died the night before the premiere of The Jazz Singer. 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.280 The narrative goes that he worked himself to death, though 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.480 author David Thompson suggests that perhaps there were some other 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.600 underlying health conditions that contributed to his early demise. But 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.240 now the Warner Brothers were three. Now Warner Brothers, the 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:30.160 company would stick with vitaphone for a few years, but 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.080 even when The Jazz Singer came out, the writing was 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.200 already on the wall. The future of sound on film 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:40.160 wasn't with separate recorded discs, but a methodology that would 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.920 allow filmmakers to actually record sound directly onto film itself. 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:48.240 I've covered how this works in previous episodes of Tech Stuff, 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:50.920 so I'm not going to go into it here. But 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:53.800 what it really meant for Warner Brothers was that the 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:56.840 company would eventually have to come around to adopting the 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:01.720 industry standard and abandoning the vitaphone of coach. The Jazz 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.880 Singer was a huge hit for Warner Brothers, and the 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.520 company was able to afford new digs, so they relocated 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:12.280 off of Sunset Boulevard and they purchased land to build 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.960 a studio in Burbank, California, setting out a whole new 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:19.640 studio there, and the company also acquired the Stanley Company 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.000 of America, a business that owned more than two hundred 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.160 movie theaters across the United States. This gave the Warner 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:30.040 Brothers a distribution channel for the company's movies, and it 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:32.000 would also be one of the big elements that would 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.280 prompt the US government to take a closer look at 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.160 the film industry. So to be clear, I should really 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.280 point out this was something that every major movie studio 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.840 was doing. It was pretty much common practice for companies 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.520 like MGM and Paramount to have their own movie houses 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:51.120 across the US, and it created a pretty rough environment 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:55.760 for independent theater owners. In the nineteen thirties, Warner Brothers 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.160 began to produce cartoons for movie theaters, and that's when 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.920 we got the Loon It Tunes, characters like Bugs, Bunny, 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:07.160 you know, they rabbit in space, Jam, Filthy Young People. 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.080 It's also when Warner Brothers turned to producing a lot 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:16.080 of gangster movies, like a lot of them. These were 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:19.680 the studio days when companies would sign directors and stars 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.520 to long term contracts which made them exclusive talent for 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.480 that studio. Same was true for film cruise too, so 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.960 people would go in day after day working with the 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:33.520 same group of folks. Sometimes from one picture to the other. 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:35.200 You might not even really be able to tell what 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:38.240 movie you're working on, just because you're always around the 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.680 same people in the same studios. James Cagney became the 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.760 top star for the company, and Humphrey Bogart, who was 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.840 on the company payroll, was held back because Harry Warner 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.920 wasn't convinced that Bogart was star material. Talk about a 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:58.080 a wrong take anyway. Warner Brothers also acquired another company 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:03.239 called Cosmopolitan Films, which was formerly owned by the newspaper 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:07.600 giant William Randolph Hurst, who perhaps has the tackiest home 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.679 I've ever seen. The Hearst Castle is just a monument 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:16.720 to gaudiness. Anyway, the company kept on growing. In nine four, 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:20.600 most movie studios, including Warner Brothers, signed onto the Motion 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:25.040 Picture Production Code also known as the Haze Code, after 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.440 the then president of the Motion Picture producers and distributors 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:32.359 of America Will h Code. Now I'm just kidding. It 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.639 was Will H. Hayes. That was his name, and the 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:38.840 Haze Code was meant to perform triage on Hollywood's image. 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:42.200 Like I said, the movie business was seen as something 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.000 of a seedy thing, especially because around this time there 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:51.040 were some really nasty scandals that were surrounding Hollywood. Uh, 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:54.199 scandals that involved stuff like sex and death. It was 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:58.280 not a not a good thing too to have if 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.800 you're trying to put forth the the aura of respectability. 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.400 So the movie business was no stranger to scandal, both 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.280 on and off screen, and the US government was kind 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:10.760 of starting to think about ways that they might censor 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.800 the film industry. So rather than have the government come 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:16.359 in and regulate the movies, the goal was to create 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.000 a code of standards of what was and wasn't suitable 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.320 to show in movie theaters and head off the US 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.399 government at the past and have movie studios sign on 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.719 to you know, produce films under this code. For the record, 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.639 this is something that has happened numerous times in American 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:38.199 history with industries that range from comic books to film 0:18:38.400 --> 0:18:41.359 to video games. We've seen it happen again and again. 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:47.000 The Haze Code was extremely restrictive. Movie studios weren't forced 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.879 to comply to the Haze Code, but generally speaking, it 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:51.560 was best to play the game if you wanted your 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.639 films to get played in theaters. Warner Brothers scrapped the 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.720 gangster film genre pretty much, as it would be pretty 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:01.359 challenging to make a compel in gangster movie while still 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.560 holding true to the restrictions of the Haze Code. And 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:07.680 that's where we're going to leave off for our first break. 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:09.919 When we come back, we're going to skip forward a 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:12.119 little bit in time to talk about some other changes 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.520 at Warner Brothers that lead up to the birth of 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.240 Warner Media. We still got a long way to go, 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:20.880 so let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.200 So the Haze Code would hold true in Hollywood until 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.680 the late nineteen sixties. Warner Brothers continue to make lots 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.200 of movies and cartoons in that time. And this isn't 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.280 a pop culture podcast, so I'm not going to go 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:45.080 into all of them here. It would just be, you know, ridiculous. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.359 But Warner Brothers continued to make films in the nineteen 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.639 forties during World War Two. They didn't stop, and after 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.960 the war, television, which had been development for decades but 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:59.480 had largely been paused during the war, debuted in earnest. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:02.919 The movie industry as a whole was not too happy 0:20:02.960 --> 0:20:06.080 about television. They were fearing that people would purchase a 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:09.160 TV set and then just elect to stay home rather 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.080 than head out for a night at the movies. Now, gradually, studios, 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:17.719 including Warner Brothers, would expand their operations to include TV productions, 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.840 but at first it was as if you had like 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.879 one giant predator suddenly spotting a totally different predator in 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:27.800 its home turf and things get real tense. That was 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.720 kind of how it was between movie studios and television 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:34.640 at the time. In the late nineteen fifties, Warners established 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:38.400 a subsidiary company called Warner Brothers Records, later known as 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:42.000 just Warner Records and then later still Warner Music Group. 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.760 This was the recorded music division of the movie studio 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:49.640 business and largely focused on producing recordings of the various 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:54.000 soundtracks to Warner Brothers movies, as well as securing their talent. 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:57.600 One of the things that Warner Brothers executives were upset 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.000 about was that Occasionally, an actor in one of their 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.080 films would record a song and it would get released 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.200 on some other record label, and that meant that Warner 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:10.879 Brothers suddenly didn't have total control over the talent that 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:15.040 was signed to them, and they hated that. They wanted 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:18.040 to make sure that if if that person who was 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.040 signed to a contract was gonna make money by gully, 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.159 Warner Brothers was gonna get a cut of it. So 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.640 that was really the reason why they created a records division. 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.280 Also in the nineteen fifties, Warner Brothers was forced to 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:34.280 divest itself of its theater chains. This was the consequence 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:37.199 of a legal battle between the US government and the 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:40.239 film industry in the United States, and the issue at 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:43.280 the heart of all this was anti competitiveness. So movie 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:47.320 studios had been buying up all aspects related to movie production, 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:50.679 from the actual companies that would process film to the 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:54.320 content creation side, you know, the actual movie studios, to 0:21:54.720 --> 0:22:00.720 the movie theater side, so everything from production, processing and distribution. 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.560 This was not necessarily great for the average consumer who 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:06.760 might find themselves with no way to see the latest 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.520 pictures from movie studio A because the one theater in 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:13.280 their town happened to be owned by movie studio B 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:16.639 and for actors and directors, there was the issue of 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:20.879 getting locked into contracts that made them exclusive talent, and 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:22.879 it meant that the actors wouldn't really have much of 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:26.120 a say about what projects they pursued. And in addition, 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:29.720 studios would sometimes barter with other studios and use talent 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:33.080 as a kind of you know, bargaining chip. It wasn't 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:36.360 super cool. Uh. There were a lot of other considerations 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.040 too that would into this, but ultimately the important point 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:41.480 is that the big movie studios all had to spin 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:44.720 off their movie theater holdings. They couldn't keep them any longer. 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:47.520 They also weren't allowed to have talent agencies and stuff 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:50.439 like that, and so this was sort of the beginning 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:53.320 of the end of the big studio era, although studio 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:56.000 contracts would still be kind of a thing for a bit. 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.919 And yet another development in the nineteen fifties, Jack more 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:02.199 Or saw an opportunity, but it would mean doing some 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:06.280 underhanded stuff. So you see, Harry Warner was technically in 0:23:06.359 --> 0:23:09.480 charge of the company, but Jack Warner was the guy 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.040 who was kind of making stuff happen on the studio level. 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:16.360 Also not very well liked Mr Jack Warner. A lot 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:21.439 of his stars positively hated the man. Jack wanted to 0:23:21.760 --> 0:23:25.439 lead the company, but Harry essentially said, over my dead body. 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:30.520 So Jack one day approaches his brothers, Harry and Albert, 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:33.160 and he essentially says, Hey, you know what we're all 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:36.400 getting on in years, we're all getting older. We should 0:23:36.440 --> 0:23:39.880 sell our company off. We had a great run. Let's 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:42.280 sell it off while we're still on top. We'll make 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:45.040 a ton of money and we can retire in comfort. 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:48.360 And the elder brothers agreed, and the studio was quote 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:51.480 unquote sold but low and behold. A couple of weeks later, 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:54.360 Jack Warner is revealed as the new president of this 0:23:54.480 --> 0:23:58.600 new Warner Brothers company, which was kind of only new 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:02.879 on paper. Really, Harry would not last very long. He 0:24:02.920 --> 0:24:05.840 actually died not too long after this happened. And of 0:24:05.840 --> 0:24:09.640 course that narrative is that Jack Warner broke his brother's 0:24:09.680 --> 0:24:13.320 heart and that's what killed Harry Warner. There was definitely 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:16.720 a schism in the Warner family at this point. This 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:19.320 was also around the same time that Warner actually created 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:23.840 its television division called Warner Brothers Television Studios in nineteen 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:28.080 fifty five, Jack Warner's son in law, William t Or, 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:31.520