45 Facts About Harry Warner

Harry Warner was born Hirsz Mojzesz "Wonsal" or "Wonskolaser" to a family of Ashkenazi Jews from the village of Krasnosielc, Poland.

Harry Warner was the son of Benjamin Wonsal, a shoemaker born in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum.

Harry Warner's given name was Mojzesz he was called Hirsz in the United States.

In Baltimore, the money Benjamin Harry Warner earned in the shoe repair business was not enough to provide for his growing household.

Sons Jacob and David Harry Warner were born in London, Ontario.

In 1896, the family relocated to Youngstown, Ohio, following the lead of Harry Warner, who had established a shoe repair shop in the heart of the emerging industrial town.

In 1899, Harry Warner opened a bicycle shop in Youngstown, Ohio with his brother, Abraham.

Harry Warner eventually accepted an offer to become a salesman for a local meat franchise, and sold meat in the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

However, by his nineteenth birthday, Harry Warner was reduced to living in his parents' crowded household.

In 1905, Harry Warner sold his bicycle shop and joined his brothers in their fledgling film business.

Harry Warner sent Sam to New York to purchase, and ship, films for their Pittsburgh exchange company, while he and Albert remained in Pittsburgh to run the business.

Harry Warner agreed to let younger brother Jack be a part of the company, sending him to Norfolk to serve as Sam's assistant.

Once Warner Features was established, Harry acquired an office in New York with his brother Albert, sending Sam and Jack to run the new corporation's film exchange divisions in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In 1917, Harry won more capital for the studio when he was able to negotiate a deal with Ambassador James W Gerard to make Gerard's book My Four Years In Germany into a film.

The studio rebounded in 1921 with the success of the studio's film Why Girls Leave Home; The film's director, Harry Warner Rapf, became the studio's new head producer.

Harry Warner became company president, with Albert as treasurer and Jack and Sam as co-heads of production.

Around this time, Harry Warner purchased a home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park, where he remained until 1929.

Harry Warner had initial reservations about the idea; when Sam first made this suggestion, Harry Warner wanted to focus on background music before delving into people talking on screen.

Harry Warner responded, "We could ultimately develop sound to the point where people ask for talking pictures" The company began acquiring theaters.

Harry Warner, after purchasing a string of music publishers, diversified the company by establishing a music subsidiary-Harry Warner Bros.

Once Harry Warner returned to New York, he and Albert were able to work together .

The first year of the Great Depression, 1930, did not damage the studio badly, and Harry Warner was even able to acquire more theaters for the studio in Atlantic City.

In 1934, Harry Warner officially bought out the struggling Teddington Studio.

However, in 1933, a blow would occur as the studio's longtime head producer Darryl F Zanuck would quit over disagreements with Harry Warner, which included Warner being strongly against allowing Zanuck's film Baby Face to step outside the Hays Code boundaries; and refusing to restore Zanuck's salary, which had been reduced as a result of the financial woes the studio temporarily faced from President Roosevelt's bank holiday - let alone raise it in the wake of the New Deal's economic rebound.

One problem that remained for Harry Warner was the studio's projectionist labor union, which had fallen under Mafia control.

Harry Warner then agreed to accept the union's demands, and the kidnapping threat ended.

Harry Warner later moved into a 1,100-acre ranch in the San Fernando Valley.

Harry Warner occupied a central place in the Hollywood-Washington wartime propaganda effort during the Second World War, and by the end of 1942, served as a frequent, anti-Axis spokesman for the movie industry.

Harry Warner spent large sums of money to get many of his relatives and employees out of Germany when the war officially began in the latter part of 1939.

In 1947, Harry Warner, who was by now exhausted from all his years of arguing with his brother Jack, decided to spend more time at his San Fernando Valley ranch and to expand his interest in horse racing.

The last person to serve as a buffer between the two, father Benjamin Harry Warner, died on November 5,1935.

On one occasion during this period, studio employees claimed they saw Harry Warner who was very furious at his brother Jack chase him through the studio with a lead pipe, shouting "I'll get you for this, you son of a bitch".

In 1949, Harry Warner, seeing the threat of television grow, decided to shift his focus towards television production.

However, the Federal Communications Commission would not allow Harry Warner to do so.

The studio's television westerns would, indeed, help compensate for the net losses that the studio was now given at the box office Within a few years, Harry Warner, who was accustomed to dealing with actors in a high-handed manner, provoked hostility among emerging television stars like James Garner, who filed a lawsuit against Harry Warner Bros.

Jack Harry Warner was angered by the perceived ingratitude of television actors who seemed to show more independence than film actors, and this deepened his contempt for the new medium.

Harry Warner found out about Jack's dealing while reading an article in Variety magazine on May 31,1956 and collapsed after reading the news.

All Harry Warner was now dedicated to doing was raising horses.

Harry Warner gave $3 million to his wife Rea, and $1.5 million each to his two daughters Doris and Betty.

Harry Warner felt his brother Sam's widow, actress Lina Basquette, was a tramp and not worthy of raising a child with the last name Harry Warner.

In 1930, Basquette went broke and Harry Warner decided to file for guardianship over Sam and Lina's daughter, Lita.

Basquette claimed that the Harry Warner brothers reorganized Sam's will under New York statutes, while Sam died while living in the state of California, where, at the time of Sam's death in 1927, laws gave widows a larger share in their husband's wills.

The couple would later divorce on August 12,1945, and Harry Warner was left without an heir again.

In 1936, Betty Warner began an affair with one of Darryl F Zanuck's assistants Milton Sperling.

Harry Warner died on July 25,1958 from a cerebral occlusion.