Jack L. Warner - Northernstars.ca

Jack L. Warner
b. August 2, 1892 in London, Ontario
d. September 9, 1978 in Los Angeles, California

Born in London, Ontario, Jack L. Warner was the youngest of 12 children in a Polish immigrant family. His father, a cobbler, had originally settled in Baltimore, Maryland, before moving his family to Canada and then back again to Baltimore. They eventually moved to Youngstown, Ohio, and in 1903, Jack and three of his brothers, Harry, Albert and Sam, acquired a nickelodeon in Pennsylvania where Jack would entertainment the audience between screenings. In 1905, the brothers went into distribution and by 1910 they were producing their own films.

Warner Bros. was formed in 1918, with Harry as president and located in New York City, Sam was chief executive, Albert treasurer, and Jack was the head of production at their studios in Burbank, California. Warner Bros. took a huge gamble when it launched the sound era in 1927 with The Jazz Singer. The film proved to be a great success, and Warner Bros. became one of Hollywood’s major studios with enduring stars such as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. In 1942, Warner’s released the wartime drama Casablanca with Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, viewed by fans and critics alike as a classic example of Hollywood studio moviemaking at its very best.

In 1956, Harry and Albert sold their interest in the company (Sam had died shortly after the release of The Jazz Singer), but Jack stayed on as studio chief. He would occasionally produce himself and is credited as the producer on My Fair Lady, which won the Oscar for best picture in 1964. In 1965 he published his autobiography, My First Hundred Years in Hollywood.

Go to Jack Warner's filmography.

Wyndham Wise launched Take One: Film & Television in Canada in 1992, serving as the magazine’s publisher and editor-in-chief until 2006. In 1997 he founded the Toronto Film Critics Association; in 1998 launched Canadian Screenwriter for the Writers Guild of Canada; and in 2009 he launched Canadian Cinematographer, published by the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. He is the editor of The Essential Guide to Canadian Film, which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2001. He is a contributing editor to Northernstars.ca.