Abstract
The Introduction delineates the parameters of this study of Warner Bros. in the 1920s and 1930s, explaining how the studio’s early history might be retold differently by focusing on a group of Broadway actors recruited to achieve Harry Warner’s ambition of producing prestige pictures based on successful stage plays. In so doing, it highlights the study’s main aims: to explore the commonalities between stage and screen before, during and after the coming of sound; to examine the continuities between silent and sound cinema; to explore how actors combined Modern acting methods with pictorial and histrionic actions associated with older acting styles; and to recover for film history the important contribution of actors and directors who have so far been ignored or marginalized in other histories.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Baron, Cynthia. Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film. London: Palgrave, 2016.
Behlmer, Rudy. Inside Warner Bros. (1935–1951). New York: Viking Penguin, 1985.
Brewster, Ben, and Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema: Stage Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Bubbeo, Daniel. The Women of Warner Brothers: The Lives and Careers of 15 Leading Ladies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002.
Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990.
Duckett, Victoria. Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: Performance and Silent Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1952/2008.
Freedland, Michael. The Warner Brothers. London: Harrap, 1983.
Higham, Charles. Warner Brothers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.
Hirschhorn, Clive, The Warner Bros. Story. New York: Crown, 1979.
McTeague, James H. Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory 1875–1925. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993.
Pearson, Roberta S. Eloquent Gestures: The Transformation of Performance Style in the Griffith Biograph Films. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.
Roddick, Nick. A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner Brothers in the 1930s, London: British Film Institute, 1983.
Schickel, Richard, and George Perry. “You Must Remember This”: The Warner Bros. Story. Philadelphia PA: Running Press, 2008.
Tibbetts, John C. The American Theatrical Film: Stages in Development. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1985.
Warner Sperling, Cass, and Cork Milner, with Jack Warner Jr. Hollywood be thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story. Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky, 1998.
Wilson, Garth B. A History of American Acting. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1966.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shingler, M. (2018). A Warner Bros. Story Retold. In: When Warners Brought Broadway to Hollywood, 1923-1939. Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40658-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40658-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40657-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40658-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)