The Extras - The Last Movie Mogul: Remembering Jack L. Warner

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Filmmaker Gregory Orr joins the podcast to discuss the new updated release of his documentary film JACK L. WARNER: THE LAST MOGUL which has been remastered in HD for an all-new digital and DVD release with extras.We start our discussion with Greg's remembrances of his step-grandfather and the origins of the documentary back in 1992.  Greg then details his family history, including how Jack met his grandmother, his silent film star great-grandfather,  his parents acting careers, and his father's time as the head of Warner Bros Television. We conclude our discussion with a review of the updates to this new version of the documentary, some of the new content that has been added, and the extras available on the new DVD.Purchase links on Amazon:Jack L. Warner: The Last Mogul DVDJack L. Warner: The Last Mogul On DemandOfficial Facebook Page: Jack L. Warner: The Last Mogul on FacebookThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host.

As many of you know, we talk a lot about Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers Films and Television on this podcast, and that's mainly because I worked at Warner Brothers for nearly 14 years. But with this year's celebration of the 100th anniversary of the studio, we've also had a chance to dive into the history of the studio. And a few of you have asked on our Facebook page if we could ever hear from any members of the Warner family. Well, I'm happy to say that today we have the good fortune to have filmmaker Gregory Orr as our guest to talk about the update for a new generation of viewers of his documentary, Jack L. Warner, The Last Mogul. Greg, welcome to The Extras.

Thank you, Tim. It's great to be here. It's great to be with your listeners. Well, as I just mentioned, many people have asked, like, is there anybody still associated with the studio who is from the original family? And I never had an answer to that, but I knew that there were documentaries out there and that you had done one, obviously, a few years back. So it was great to hear from you and that you would be willing to come on the podcast. So I'm very happy about that. But before we dive into a discussion of the documentary, I just wanted to ask you, it's obviously the 100th year anniversary of the studio. Just how do you feel about that, knowing that the studio, with your family name on it,

has achieved that centennial mark? Well, I am proud and touched that a series of administrations since my grandfather left and his brothers sold their shares, and it's moved into a new generation of, uh, of executives and filmmakers and, uh, innovation has continued to be, uh, their, uh, their premature. They want to keep up with audience needs and demands pushing the envelope. So, uh, you know, it's, it's a tough road. The movie business has always been difficult. It's always been catch up or try to get ahead of the audience as the Warner Brothers did with the jazz singer and subsequent films where they push the boundaries.

So watching new administrations do that, it's impressive. And I know the movie industry is in the middle of a tight spot now. You know, I just wish new administration well, and let's keep movies here for another hundred years and Warner Brothers, especially. Right, right. Well, I know that a lot of our listeners are big Warner Brothers fans and they buy a lot of Warner Brothers movies and Warner Archive movies. And I'm sure that many of them

have seen the original documentary that released back in 93 for the, I guess I would have been for the 70th anniversary year. And that's titled Jack O'Warner, The Last Mogul. I rewatched it, been a few years and I'm looking there, you're a really young man in it, but you're a little bit of the focus or point of view, especially as the piece starts. For the listeners who aren't as familiar, tell me a little bit about the origins of that and what kind of led you to make that. Well, Jack Warner died in 1978. He was my step-grandfather, actually. I knew him growing up as my grandfather, and he treated me kids as a grandparent. So when he died in 1978, my grandmother

remained in this large estate that they had built in Beverly Hills, a nine acre estate, which was beautiful. It had waterfalls and a golf course and giant swimming pools and inlaid octopus on the bottom of the pool. And when my grandmother died in 1990, I knew a whole way of life was disappearing. A Hollywood royalty, you know, the castle, the Buckingham Palace of Hollywood was going to the auction block and my aunt was handling the sale, Jack Warner's daughter, and I wanted to get up there and preserve it before it was sold. So a friend of mine, Don Priest, who later became the editor of my documentary, and I went up there with a video camera and simply shot some things. Me wandering around the house itself, the grounds, just to preserve it. And I thought I'd make a short film for my family or something.

I had not yet made a documentary. I'd made some TV commercials and promotional films and so forth. And this was something small, but as it grew and as I realized, there's obviously a great story here. Let me jump into it. So it became a feature length documentary. I had to raise money. It became a larger format that took about three years to make. So that was the 1993 iteration. And during all that time, it was my first documentary and it was well-received. It never played in the United States, which is interesting.

I could not sell it in the U.S. Warner Brothers took a cut-down version of it for a DVD extra on a release of Casablanca, I think in 2008 or 2006. And so the feature-length version never showed here. It showed overseas. Lots of people bought it internationally. So with the 100th anniversary coming, I said, I want to update this film because there were things missing. It could have been a fuller film and material was good, but it could have been better.

So for years, I thought about this. And with the 100th anniversary approaching, I said, now's the time to do this. this and with the 100th anniversary approaching, I said, now's the time to do this. So I got some resources together and started diving back into the archives and how to do this and actually in 4K, up-res everything that couldn't be found in the original. So the interviews are very well done in terms of up-resing to 4K, a process that somehow makes things look pretty good. But everything else, we went back to photos, we went back to archival footage. Warner Brothers provided new film clips, all in 4K. And I wanted a film that would last for the next generation and hopefully some future generations in a pristine manner. Yeah. And I just rewatched it, as I mentioned earlier, and I saw how good it looks and what you've redone with

the photos and everything. And more than that, the content, it just is kind of a timeless content because it's telling a story about your grandfather. And of course, it's about your whole extended family as well. One thing that you also go into there is the fact that your mom and your dad, you know, had a very good career and their careers tied into Warner Brothers. And that story is in there, which is fascinating. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your mom? And I think a lot of people will go, oh, yeah, as soon as you say what it is that she's probably best known for in terms of a Warner Brothers film? As I said, Jack Warner is my step-grandfather. My mother was around nine years

old when her mother married Jack Warner. My mother's real father and my actual grandfather is a silent film actor named Don Page, who went under the name of Don Alvarado, a silent screen star of some note, sort of a Rudolph Valentino knockoff, a Latin lover type. So I was surrounded by sort of movie people, actors and so forth. And I grew up with Jack Warner. My mother grew up in that house with her mother and her stepfather. And when she was about 17, she was taking acting classes at Warner Brothers. And Sophie Rosenstein, the acting coach, gave her a script to read and a part to

read, and she read it. And Sophie said, oh, that's very good. Let me call in the casting director for this film. And that person came in and said, oh, that's good. Let me call the director. It kept going until they finally said, well, I think she could do this part. But her stepfather is Jack Warner. Should we ask the boss? And they wanted my mother to go to Jack and say, can I do this movie part? Nobody wanted to approach him about it. So someone finally did. And he said, okay, she can do it, but we're not putting her under contract. And that role was of a young woman from Bulgaria who goes to Humphrey Bogart in the movie Casablanca to ask for his help and advice in getting letters of transit for she and her husband to leave Casablanca.

So at age 17, just out of high school, it was her first film role. And it's a stroke of luck, in a sense, that you land in such a film. So that's how she started her career and did not get a contract at Warner's. My grandfather was not crazy about having a family member as an actor, I guess. And she did things at MGM and later came back and did Warner Brothers Television. I remember, I mean, as I'm watching and I see that and I connected the dots to you, I was like, wow, that's fantastic. Because what movie is more associated with Warner Brothers than Casablanca? But at the time of the filming, nobody, of course, knew that.

No, that's a good point. My mother read the script at home. Her father, stepfather, would bring home scripts and she'd read them at home as a young girl. And she read Casablanca and she said, eh, it's kind of old fashioned. It's a little creaky. I don't know. And that's what she told me. And she said later when she heard that Ingrid Bergman was going to be in it, then she said, oh, she brings a lot of class. So maybe it'll be a better movie. And then of course she ended up in the movie. Right. Well, it's a, it's a classic scene that everybody knows. I mean, you see the refugees in that. But in the scene where she is with Humphrey Bogart and she's a newlywed and you can just see that she, you know, she's afraid that her husband is losing all their money and she's going to have to sleep with the commissioner and you just feel for her. And then the fact that that character breaks through that cold exterior,

you know, and the Bogart. And that's what she's there for as a character to mirror what Ingrid Bergman's character is possibly going to do. That, you know, could you ever forgive a woman for doing something like this? And that's, so she speaks sort of the, the debate that has to go on in Bogart's mind as the character. Right. Well, that was a great role for her and, and a great role that goes down in film history for Warner Brothers and, and to have her so associated with it is so cool. But then I was also just, it was great to see in the documentary how important or

how active your father, Bill Orr, was as well. He was an actor. Tell us a little bit about his career and then how he got kind of brought into the Warner Brothers family. He grew up in New York. His father had had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, lost everything with the crash. So he had a somewhat privileged background, but then a lot of that went away, too. So he and his mother came out to Los Angeles when I think he was 16. They drove cross-country. And at a nightclub, an agent, Henry Wilson, came up to him, said, you know, are you an actor, young man? Because we're looking for people to do some screen tests. So he spent the summer, part of the summer, doing a screen test.

He said, it was great. I got to kiss all these actresses at the end of the season. He thought about maybe being a doctor. So he went back to finish high school. And when he came back, he said, I want to do this movie thing, this movie acting thing. So he came out here and took classes. He did some modeling. And then he was in a stage show that was very popular. This was all before World War II

in the mid-late 30s called Meet the People. It was sort of a musical review. Luella Parsons hosted it, the famous gossip columnist. And everyone in Hollywood came to see it because it had singing and dancing and skits, a little bit like Saturday Night Live of its day. So he became known and ended up getting a contract with Warner Brothers as an actor. In the documentary, he mentions meeting Jack Warner once on the lot. And Jack just said, oh, hello, young man, or something like that. And that's the only contact. But he eventually got to meet my grandmother, Jack's wife, who invited him up to the house. And from that, he met my mother and eventually started seeing her. So he married my mother at the end of World War II and went back to the East Coast with my mother to go back to doing a nightclub act and possibly do some more acting. It wasn't working out. And it was actually Jack Warner who said, look, young man, you're not going anywhere. Why don't you come here and be some sort of assistant? My father told me that Jack said, why don't you come and you can

spy on all the actors and other people to see if they're getting in on time. Oh, yeah, that's a great job. A lamp dropped on my head one day. So he said to him, why don't I go through the scripts and see if there's some nice parts for our young actors, our new hires, and sort of fit people into these small roles. And that's what he did. And then became an assistant for my grandfather. And eventually, in mid-1950s, I think 1956, he was sent over to run the new, the fledgling TV department. And that's where we got the Warner Brothers shows. Cheyenne was the first one, and then Maverick, and 77 Sunset Strip, and Bronco, and all those Westerns, detective shows, Surfside Six, The Alaskans.

I mean, it went on and on. They had- B&I, F2P. B&I. Those were all part of his credits. All part of his credit, which was at the end of the show. I think I've been told he had about nine shows a week on. It's a lot of production.

But it sort of saved the studio. Not sort of, it did. The lot was very quiet from features through some of that early time. So the TV shows were keeping the company going. So the TV shows were keeping the company going. Yeah, and I wanted to point this out because I did work primarily on the TV side of the home entertainment releases when I was at Warner Brothers. And I have great respect for Warner Brothers Television. Warner Brothers Television was number one worldwide in terms of distribution of content for something like 12 out of 13 years or 12 out of 14 years. In other words, that TV division was just a moneymaker for the studio. And, you know, film years are great or poor or average or whatever, but the TV was just cash flow, cash flow, cash flow,

which every studio needs. And it also put out a lot of content, of course, to keep characters or franchises alive, such as the DC franchises or the animation around the world. And it was just a fantastic group. And so I have a soft place in my heart for that division that your dad pretty much launched for the studio and out of the gate, just a great success. So I thought that was pretty, pretty special, pretty cool. And then he worked there for quite a few years before, before, of course, everything came into an end. Unceremoniously. Unceremoniously, as it always does.

But he had a lot of good years there also working very closely with Jack Warner. He did. And at one point, he was put in charge of all production around the time of My Fair Lady and Camelot. I think he may have made the deal for Camelot. Jack Warner is, of course, very involved with My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady, Camelot. I think he may have made the deal for Camelot. Jack Warner is, of course, very involved with My Fair Lady. And then he was asked to step back to television. Jack Webb had been running it for a while and people weren't happy with Jack Webb. I don't know if they sold any new shows and it wasn't going well. So my father spent the last year of his career there in television and they weren't the same company in terms of success.

They had been. My father said in the early days of television, you could just call up ABC and sell a show on a few lines. ABC was so desperate for content that they had to defer in a sense. They really needed Warner Brothers to make content. So my father says it was fairly easy to sell a show. You could sell a show on the way to lunch. It's very different, obviously, now. So he got that together.

And, you know, I think there was one producer per show then, you know, and one casting agent. Very small, top ranks. Obviously, it's much more complicated and more people are needed now. Yeah, and they made, I don't know what they made, 32, 36 shows a year at first. It's a grueling schedule. Right, right. Were you of the age where you were able to go to any of those sets or see any of that? Or were they more sheltering you from that side of the business?

It's a good question because my father did not want me to be a Hollywood kid. My brother, my sister, and I, I'm the youngest of three. He did not want us. So I loved going to the studio, though. So arrangements would be made to go out there and see something being shot. And I could sit on a soundstage all day. It's really where I fell in love with movies, not watching them in a movie theater like most normal people, but the chances of

being on a set and watching this group of people collectively do something. A magic happened, right? Yeah. A magic happened right there, and everyone cooperated to do it. Of course, everyone was nice to me. I'm boss's son, so they have to be, but I really enjoyed it. And so I got to see, you know, it did have a family feel. And that was a family that I know was contentious, just like on the movie side. The TV side had its own problems and stars not getting paid much and wanting more. And, you know, so it's tough that way. And people suing James Garner, most famously, I suppose, suing to get out of this contract.

But it was a very special place and small in terms of the amount of people who were making these shows. There weren't many of them behind the scenes. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. So growing up then, did you see your grandfather that often when you would go to see your grandmother? Or was he famously just always gone and busy? And would you talk about how that had a huge impact, of course,

negatively with his family? Right. Well, when I came along, he was slowing down a bit, but he still ran the studio when every day was involved, saw all the footage being shot, all the printed material from films, but he did not watch the television shows, their footage. He liked it because it made money, but he didn't have an interest in the medium. He didn't like television particularly. My father told me that he didn't allow a TV set to be a prop, you know, a piece of furniture in a lot of the movies. He just didn't want to remind people that this existed. So just don't ignore that box in the corner.

And I would see him on occasion, not every time I went to the studio, but we'd go to his office. And it was always a little chilly down there. I think you stepped down a couple steps to go into his office. So that was a treat to see him too. Again, everyone was nice to me. His assistants,

Bill Schaefer, was very nice to me. I'd go up to the house, but you just didn't show up at Grandpa Jack's house uninvited or without making a reservation in a sense. The house did have a studio guard at the gate.

You could go. You could go to play tennis on occasion or he'd have screenings up there, which were great, and little dinners and invite people up to watch movies in the projection room. So I would drop in. And then twice in my life, I did go to the south of France, where he and my grandmother had a house in Cap-D'Antibes, right on the water. You'd walk off the little terrace into five feet of Mediterranean, which was pretty great. So I did get to see him there two summers. But he wasn't someone as a kid who you could get really close to. He was always the entertainer. He was the showman, the ringmaster. And so he did all the talking. He didn't really ask you much how you're doing. Right. But I was included.

We were all included in this show of his. Well, let's talk a little bit about the documentary. There's so much good footage in that documentary of what you just related. There's footage of you guys in the south of France, I think maybe, or at least Jack and your dad there. I know there's home footage of you guys at the Beverly Hills place. There's other great home footage. Where did that come from? And I think that's what makes, of course, your documentary so unique is how personal the storytelling is.

I did want to tell the history from what I knew. And that's where I began. And that included all the footage, which I found. This was not the 16 millimeter footage that's in the documentary came to me very late and supposedly recovered from trash cans when the house is being sold. Oh, wow. By one of the studio, one of the guards. He said, look, I found this in the trash, whether that's true or not,

but he gave it to me. And that was beautiful color footage from the 1930s and then also when we were kids in the early 60s, late 50s, early 60s. So that was a starting point, the personal family footage, the stuff in the South of France in the 50s. So getting that transferred and then re-transferred

recently into high definition, it was just transferred to NTSC back in 1990s. So rounding that out, you begin the search of what's out there. And Warner Brothers was nice about providing some photos. USC Cinema Library had a lot of photos and also my grandfather's scrapbooks, which were oversized scrapbooks that he had put together or had an assistant put together for his entire career. There were 50 of them. He wrote in them and there's everything from obviously photos to letters to invitations to premieres to covers from Hollywood Reporter and Variety that documents his career and his personal involvement in things. And so that was great to go through and get material out of that.

For the update I did, besides wanting to make it in high definition, I needed more visual material. I knew there was out there stuff that I did not find in 1992. So I went back to all kinds of archives and was looking for how to tell this story visually in a more compelling way, an entertaining way. So that's where it came across more interesting archival footage and short films that we can discuss. So do those 50 scrapbooks belong to the family or are they part of the Warner Brothers archives? They're donated to USC. The question, I don't know if they're, I'm not sure they're directly part of the Warner Brothers archives. I think it's a part of the Jack Warner collection at USC Cinema Library in Los Angeles.

Right. Well, I mean, that's a treasure. It's obviously not everything because it's a point of view of things. But it reminded me how people talk about Jack. You know, there's plenty of negative about Jack. And I think a lot of it's true. But he didn't seem to show a lot of sentimental feelings, although he could be sentimental about certain people. Old actors he'd keep on the payroll at times, film actors he'd work with he'd cast again but when it comes to scrapbooks you realize how much his story and the people in it mattered to him and he'd write these little notes a good time was had by all or these are the good old days and

so this is something maybe privately for him i don't know if he ever showed it to anybody uh he had a trophy room with the studio that he definitely showed off to people you know with all these awards the studio and he had gotten. But the scrapbooks may have been just for him to look through. So you get an insight into some emotional depth in terms of his life and the people in it. Yeah, I mean, it's no mystery, the story of how he treated his brothers and basically took the studio away from them in the 50s or whatever. I mean, that's a well-known story. Yes. And one of the things I was not able to do, even in the update, was go into it more fully at the time. I didn't have the information.

I only started getting that after the film, the update had been done. And so on the DVD that's going to be coming out, we did a little extra segment about that sale in 1956. That is illuminating in terms of what Jack knew, what the brothers knew, what actually happened in terms of the sale. Someone has told me that he cheated his brothers. I say now he fooled his brothers into keeping his job and buying back some shares, but he didn't cheat them. Everyone was paid for their shares. And Harry Warner and Albert Warner stayed on the board of directors of Warner Brothers after the sale. Jack had gone behind their back in terms of staying. They were all supposed to sell and get out of the business. He was younger. He was 11 years younger.

I don't want to go on about a whole defense of him, but I just think it's sort of the nuance of it that what he did was – it says how bad the relationship was at that point with the brothers that he really couldn't talk to them and say, look, I want to stay. I'm younger and I'm happy at this job. And the new owners or the main investors wanted him to stay too. There was another man they wanted, Cy Fabian, who ran the Stanley Warner theaters. His family owned those theaters.

And he was supposed to be the next president of the company. And the Justice Department would not let him take on that job and keep owning theaters. There had been the consent decrees separating the studios from the exhibition. So when their first choice could not take the job, they turned to my grandfather and said, we'd like you to run the studio. You know how to do this and we have confidence in you and the stockholders will have confidence in you. And that's how he got that job to be

head of the whole company. So that's one of the extras that are going to be on the, and is it going to, you said it's going to be a 4k release, correct? No, it's an HD release. At this point, they're not doing a UHD, you know, ultra high definition 4k. And that'll be one of the extras on there. And then do you have any other extras that are going to be part of this release? We added a little short newsreel about the launching of the SS Benjamin Warner as the last Liberty ship launched at the end of World War II. Benjamin Warner was the brother's father who had come from Poland with his wife. And so that's sort of sweet to see them all there at the shipyard launching the ship. And then we have a long excerpt from the HUAC hearings, the House Un-American Activities Committee's hearings in 1947 with Jack

as a witness and his testimony during that. And that's also a high definition from the National Archives. So I thought, okay, here's a way to people to watch that, you know, a big chunk of those hearings and his testimony. Well, I saw on the credits that our good friends, George Feltenstein and Jeff Briggs had some help with this new version or updated version. What did they do with you to help pull this together? Well, I am very fortunate that George and Jeff are at the studio because they love the history.

They know the history. They want to preserve the history. And so when I went back after 30 years, the original people from 30 years ago just weren't there. went back after 30 years the original people from 30 years ago just weren't there right judy singer who had who had done the clip licensing back in 1990s uh had passed away and so approaching a new administration a new group of people and they couldn't have been nicer about it and more helpful and i'd have questions about um i am looking for this film is that something warner brothers owns or is that at u UCLA or where is that?

And George would look it up, you know, on their database. Same with Jeff finding photos and helping me navigate their, their collection and pointing me in the right direction. And just being general sort of cheerleaders being curious, they liked the history and they were happy that I was delved into it and they were happy to help i mean i you know they didn't work for this film but they did spend some time and i i definitely appreciate it and uh julie heath over clip licensing also was enormously helpful because they could have said look you made the film 30 years ago just stick with that we're we're busy and they were busy because they were getting ready

for the hundred the hundredth because they were getting ready for the 100th anniversary. They were making, helping with the documentary that Warner Brothers made, the four-part series. So I was very fortunate and I'm very grateful to all of them for making this film a reality. And I think you mentioned that there were a few clips or a few films or some segments that you put into the documentary that maybe they assisted with. What are a few of those that you want people to be sure to know about? Well, there's a great moment in the documentary where we cut to a young woman driving up in a big, like, Duesenberg on the studio lot. And Lyle Talbot's at the wheel, the actor.

And he says, well, here we are at the Warner Brothers Studios. And this young woman who's wearing some sort of sash, you can't quite tell what it is, says, gee, I've never been so excited in all my life. And we go into sort of about Warner Brothers. And that's from a short film called And She Learned About Dames, which was to promote the movie Dames. And it was about a young woman who wins a contest and comes to Warner Brothers to see how movies are made, and maybe she'll get an acting part. So they go around the studio and watch Busby Berkeley making the film.

And it was a pristine print that we got from UCLA's archives and had it transferred to 4K. UCLA's archives and had it transferred to 4K. So it's those kinds of moments that bring that past alive. And there's a costume test for Humphrey Bogart in there with Lauren Bacall for a film that he was planning to make, but did not live to make it called Melville Goodman at the time in 1956. And the movie later became Top Secret Affair with Kirk Douglas. So you see them together and they're sort of clowning around a little bit. So there's these moments from the time that I think bring it alive. Yeah, that was a very amusing little clip because the two of them were just having fun. I mean, she's kind of referencing his height compared to her and everything.

And it's just a moment that you think, oh, wow, where was this footage? This is great behind the scenes stuff. And there were so many moments like that in this one. I love the four-part documentary that has just been released by Warner Brothers. But your documentary is very different. It's really the story of Jack Warner. It really focuses on his life. And of course, pretty much his whole life intersects with Warner Brothers, the studio. But it gave you the opportunity to show these little moments and show these little clips and get more

intimate into the storyline. And I think that's the charm of your documentary. Thank you. I wanted that so you'd have a sense of him. I will let historians, film experts talk about all the movies and Jack's history in running that company. I certainly get into it. It's not just about him at home, that's for sure. But there is a sense of, oh, Jack Warner, I see what kind of guy he was and his energy and what made him a good studio boss. But also talk about, I don't hide from his peccadillos, his faults.

Sure. They're there. We talked to a mistress a mistress of his we talked to his ex his his ex his uh his son jack jr who who almost who does become almost an ex-son he's he's inherited yeah and that's a very painful interview but very honest so i wanted an honest look at jack because sort of the truth mattered to me, but a balanced one too, that you really got a sense of a man. My father loved him. My, you know, Jack fired my father, but my father still loved him. So, you know, there are a variety of views you could put into this. And I wanted that to

preserve that. And I think that the documentary shows the complexity of who Jack Warner was. shows the complexity of who Jack Warner was. We, you know, most people have heard the bad and everything, but some of the intimate moments, some of the footage, some of the discussion from the family that is just really honest, you know, people, people are very honest. I thought Jack's very honest about the fact that he and his dad were estranged and how painful that was. And, you know, the fact that they tried to kind of reconcile and when he was overseas doing, doing the work as a, you know, as a colonel in the military that they were able to reconnect. But then as soon as he came back to Hollywood, it just, it just fell apart again. And I thought that was very fascinating. I mean, there's a toll that it takes on a person to be in that kind of a role that Jack Warner was in.

I mean, we could make excuses or we could try to examine it, but it's not necessary. I don't think you just, it's just a fascinating, fascinating story. So you're bringing this out now. And I think it's great for a kind of a new generation because there's a whole group of people who, as you said, never really got to see the full length feature. So now it's available. I sell on Amazon prime. It's in other words, it's already available on streaming, right? Yes. Video on demand right now, eventually go to other platforms, but for now it's Amazon prime and Apple and YouTube and other platforms for rental or sale.

So folks can access that right away. And then when's this new high definition version of the movie coming out on physical media? That will be on August 2nd, which is Jack Warner's birthday. So I thought that was an appropriate time to release it. And that'll have the DVD extras. And I hope people who are true film fans have it in their collection. And I think it's a good teaching tool for film courses, too, of a sort of an overview of what the early American pioneers were like. And I don't know, I don't want to push aside any of the other film pioneers because they're obviously enormously important from Lemley on. But I think in the dictionary someday, when you look up the definition of movie mogul, I have a sense it's going to be a picture of my grandfather. He embodied so much of what we think of as a cigar-chomping, fast-talking, flamboyant executive.

And that's what he was. And so, you know, it's a part of American history. And he ran a company that had enormously talented people. And sometimes they made unbelievably wonderful movies. And I wanted to preserve a little bit of that system, too, of what it was like to be at the studio during those times. And the Warner Brothers, because of the word brothers in there, has a different look than a few of the other studios that had that kind of the one mogul for years or whatever that we associate. But he was the longest lasting of the brothers. He was the kind of the mogul within the group that endured for, was it 50 years or so that he was? 50 years.

I mean, he's the face, at least to the public. Harry Warner did unbelievably great work in terms of his own causes, promoting motion pictures as a force for good. And so he was out there speaking too, but Jack really had both the energy and a personality that loved to go out and glad hand and go to premieres and talk to people and have dignitary people were constantly coming to the studio dignitaries were coming by and he'd

be happy to meet them show them the trophy room give them a tour so he loved being a movie mogul i understand he didn't need a lot of sleep he had enormous energy and he loved he was in the people business if you really think about it that he loved showbiz as a kid. He loved Vaudeville. He joined his brothers as the kid brother. They set up the business. The older brothers did everything initially. And then he was told what to do, which I think over time really bothered him, being told by your older brothers and wanted to get out from under them. But he just loved show business. And he loved the people who made show business. So as somebody in the people business, he developed a shrewd understanding of talent.

And he'd come back to New York several times a year to look at shows and meet with people. And, you know, he brought all those talented people to Warner Brothers and he was willing to fight with them. He always got the last word. Although if you read the memos, not everyone listened to him. He was always frustrated. At some point you see, why don't people do what I asked them to do? You know, he wouldn't, it's funny, he wouldn't fire you over that. But he would just, you know, say, that's it.

We're finishing production today. So what do we have another, you know, another six days on the schedule? Nope, we have enough footage. That's good. We're done. That's it. Turn off the schedule. Nope, we have enough footage. Let's get, we're done. That's it. Turn off the lights. This is your last day.

So he was in charge of it all. And the youngest brother became the head of the studio. And he took over a job that he wasn't really trained to do when young. The youngest is not the same as the oldest. And he was the fun-loving brother. And so he became the harsh businessman at times, too. Right. But it's all there in the documentary of his change, of how people perceived him.

And you watch him do it because you have the footage and the still photos and excerpts from his book. He wrote a book right around the time My Fair Lady came out. the time My Fair Lady came out. So even though there's a lot of stuff that's either made up or embellished, his attitude about things is, we quote it. Right. And an actor do it. Yeah. Well, it's a very American story, too, which I love.

The immigrant in one generation that goes from nothing to being, you know, part of American history. And as, uh, as one of the, the historians, I think that you interview in there, it says the movie studios in the, in the course of the last hundred years have done so much to influence American culture, the way we think, the way we perceive things. It's so now ingrained in the fabric of our society and the Warner Brothers movies, specifically in the U.S. here, because they were the studio of the kind of the common man, so to speak. And we can't disassociate it anymore. It's just so now intertwined. I mean, of course, what I do is talk about movies all the time and TV and everything, but just for the average person, you can't get away

from the influence that the industry has had. And to have all that happen in one generation, it's astounding. What a life and what a story and your documentary is terrific. So I recommend it highly. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast and, and just sharing your stories. It was my pleasure to be here. The Extras is a great podcast and I encourage people to keep listening. You always have good guests and George is always wonderful when he, when he's on, he's, he's so knowledgeable. So I always learn something from listening to you to chat. Well, I feel like we have a similar mission, which is to promote these wonderful movies and TV shows and all the entertainment that comes out of Warner Brothers and the other

studios as well. Though we just happen to focus a lot on the Warner Brothers, as I mentioned there in the open. So, well, it's been terrific. And I look forward to the reaction from people as they see the new version of the movie. Thanks very much. It's a pleasure. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.

I have seen the update to Greg's movie, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about Warner Brothers history and the life of Jack L. Warner. It is currently available on digital for rental or purchase and now on DVD with the extras. You can find purchase links and more information in the podcast show notes. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to continue the conversation and to be a part of our community. And check out our YouTube channel as we are posting more videos there all the time, including my conversation with Greg, in case you wanted to check that out.

And if you're a fan of Warner Brothers, you're invited to our Facebook group called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group. So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes as well. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv

or look for the link in the show notes.