You Must Remember This The Warner Bros Story

From Rin Tin Tin to Casablanca to Harry Potter, the Warner Bros. story is the history of Hollywood. Eighty-five years of screen icons, legendary films, and history-making achievements are detailed in this comprehensive, photo-filled treasure trove, fully authorized by the studio. No production company has had more legendary films, stars, or influence on the course of Hollywood than Warner Bros. Among the superstars who worked for the studio are Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Joan Crawford, Marlon Brando, James Dean, and John Wayne. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick made history for the studio, and it has been home to blockbuster franchises like Superman, Batman, Lethal Weapon, and Harry Potter. Produced in conjunction with Warner Bros., this volume is the ultimate guide to the greatest movie studio in history. You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story is also the companion to a five part documentary in the PBS American Masters series by author Richard Schickel that will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in the spring of 2008 and debut on PBS in the fall, to coincide with publication of the book.

Behind the scenes at the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where four immigrant brothers transformed themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasy Warner Bros charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings in the early twentieth century through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. The Warner Brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants, yet they founded a studio that became the smartest, toughest, and most radical in all of Hollywood. David Thomson provides fascinating and original interpretations of Warner Brothers pictures from the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer through black-and-white musicals, gangster movies, and such dramatic romances as Casablanca, East of Eden, and Bonnie and Clyde. He recounts the storied exploits of the studio’s larger-than-life stars, among them Al Jolson, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Doris Day, and Bugs Bunny. The Warner brothers’ cultural impact was so profound, Thomson writes, that their studio became “one of the enterprises that helped us see there might be an American dream out there.”

This text charts the real story of the Warner brothers and contains all the drama of a big screen production. The book tells of tension and strife among four brothers, love and marriage, death and divorce, and plotting and betrayal.

Originally published: New York: Viking, 2014.

A Los Angeles Times bestseller A New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice” Selection “Even the die-hardest Casablanca fan will find in this delightful book new ways to love the movie they were certain they could never love more.” —Sam Wasson, best-selling author of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. Casablanca is “not one movie,” Umberto Eco once quipped; “it is ‘movies.’” Film historian Noah Isenberg’s We’ll Always Have Casablanca offers a rich account of the film’s origins, the myths and realities behind its production, and the reasons it remains so revered today, over seventy-five years after its premiere.

Leslie Epstein's Hill of Beans is the story of how one nation, one industry, and in particular one man responded to the desperate hope of freedom in the Second World War.