MiceMaking the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk used the platform he owns, X, once Twitter, to increase Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. In the process, Musk falsified political links with Trump that can help set up a range of his business interests, from government contracts to the X space to his Tesla factories in China. Today, Musk is reported to have an office near the White House and the official email address of the White House.
This approach is significantly different from that used by the new film industry to gain political recognition almost a century ago. During the 1930s and 1940s, Harry Warner, the founding president of Warner Bros, operated the company with his three brothers, gained great respect and continuously strengthened his company in the process. But at no point did Warner Angele make a different position of power than he already had, despite close ties to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
During the Great Depression, Warners Bros was thrown into politics with films that spoke with the American average in other bypassed ways and studios. Warners were strong supporters of the FDR and its new popular deal, and the studio worked hard to sympathize with the difficult situation of daily Americans during the Great Depression. A movie after another described an authentic war that resonated with the audience. Profitable movies like as Public enemy (1931) and I am a fugitive from a bunch of chains (1932) described how the financial war brought about by government failure can lead to crime.
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Attempts to promote humanity in and out of the screen raised Warner’s personal confidence in using films to entertain AND educate. Born in a close Jewish family, Warner grew for fear of pogroms in Poland. When he came with his family in America, Warner he learned a great deal of durability by running a range of businesses such as a grocery store, a bike business and shoe repair shop. After his younger brother introduced the family to the early films, Warner decided to enter the film exhibition and directed several film companies with his three brothers before including Warner Bros. in 1923. Despite faced cases of anti -Semitism, Warner devoted himself to the idea that films could make the world a better place.
Many Hollywood Jewish leaders at the time were afraid to speak against anti -Semitism. Pogromet never far from his mind, Warner fearlessly wore his identity as an American immigrant. When domestic fascism was growing in the 1930s, Warner used his growing position of wealth and the impact of talking about this growing threat to everyone he encountered, including studio carpets and office assistants. After the closed doors, Warner, along with several other Power Hollywood players, funded anti-Nazi espionage in mid-1930 Los Angeles to combat the inner fascism of groups such as the silver shirts and the German-American Bund. Warner Bros. It was also one of the first companies to withdraw their products from Germany in 1933 while climbing Hitler.
As political tensions increased in 1938, Warner invited a group of Hollywood leaders and internal director of Mervyn Leroy, actor Paul Muni, Spimaster and anti-Nazi lawyer Leon Lewis, and producer David O. Selznick-to read Morris Lazaron Common Terraine: A Prayer for Intelligent Americanism (1938). Written by a military hat, Place It ends with a prayer of cooperation to maintain democracy by ensuring that all “men of good will set our hands on the task of running the mistakes affecting our society today”. Warner’s purpose was to encourage a conversation about religious tolerance and building bridges between people of all faiths. For Warner, patriotism meant opposing extremism and encouraging tolerance.
A year later, Warner Bros. produced one of the first major films to attack Hitler directly in The stories of a Nazi spy (1939). Such films were not great money creators, but anti-Nazi products created discussions about the biggest role of the studio in society. Hollywood comedian Groucho Marx once called Warner Bros. “The only studio with any intestine.” After Warner Bros. donated profits from successful This is the army (1943) in the Army Emergency Aid Fund, New York Times Mark Warner Bros. as a company known for “combining a good citizenship with good paintings”.
Continuing his humanitarian mission to encourage the good will for all in 1940, Warner donated dozens of ambulances – but especially, not tanks – in the UK. That year, Warner also spoke in front of 6,000 studio employees and their families in Lot Warner Bros. in Burbank. People from every level of employment were there to hear his speech, which he rightly, “United we survive, divided.” Warner was convinced that the oppressors should stop not only using military strength but also with intellectual muscles and dialogue.
Taking a political attitude had consequences, however. The US Senate argued that Hollywood anti-Nazi films were guilty of heating and opened an investigation into the industry in late 1941. Senator Gerald Nye (R-North Dakota) directed the charge, claiming that the studios were “giant propaganda engines”. When it was his turn before the Senate’s subcommittee, Warner defended his work by reading a letter from NYE for Warner Bros. that complimented the patriotic quality and value of The stories of a Nazi spy.
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Attempts to cultivate patriotism while standing against extremism were paid after the war. Warner landed numerous closed -door meetings with President Harry Truman. By July 1946, Warner was particularly concerned that UK member Ernest Bevin was open to his opposition to Jewish immigration in his country. In the archived letters, Warner asked President Truman for emergency legislation to allow refugees in Alaska, a land that could carry millions and even offered to fund research to develop infrastructure to shelter them. Sadly, Truman politely rejected the offer, saying to Warner, “I wish that it is possible, as you say, for the human heart and the mind of man to get land and people together.” In 1945, Truman had issued an executive action allowing the immigration of some Jews who had been displaced but was forced to fight with a resistant convention in the late 1940s.
Warner indicated that you can run a lucrative studio while talking to your mind and advancing social values. He successfully invested in synchronized sound technology, led an audience -centered agenda, abandoned the profits to protest Hitler, and rejected the profits to serve the country by producing films for the war information office during World War II. Warner never changed the course when political winds changed, donated to the humanitarian causes his entire adult life and always made sure he was a publicly accessible leader in Hollywood. None of this questions the continued growth of Warner Bros.
By 1947, after decades of Warner talking his mind and giving up or donating profits, Hollywood Reporter noted that Warner Bros’s stock price. It is constantly growing with studio profits.
Warner serves as an example of how to grow an adult business while exercising political brain from within the private sector.
Now, Hollywood has an opportunity to follow Warner’s steps and take a high moral ground. Moreover, history suggests that this road will cope well for them. When political tensions increased, Warner embraced empathy and compassion to fight Americans as it flattened resistance to global harassers. Warner’s studio produced films in time that reflected the era lice and, as a result, cemented his film company as a successful and bold studio finding success through a strong moral basis.
Chris Yogerst is a writer, historian and professor whose work can be found in Hollywood Reporter AND Review of books in Los Angeles. He has written three books, including Hollywood of hating Hitler. His last book, Brothers Warner, He was named one of the best of 2023 by the magazine Sight and Sound.
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