Film mogul Sam Warner born in Poland 130 yrs ago
Exactly 130 years ago, on August 10, 1887, Sam Warner, one of the siblings who would later co-create the famous Warner Brothers film studio, was born in Poland to a Polish-Jewish shoemaker's family.
Sam Warner was born in the small village of Krasnosielc in Poland's Mazovian province, as the first son of the poor shoemaker, Beniamin Wonsal.
Shortly thereafter, to escape poverty and the looming prospect of anti-Jewish pogroms, which were becoming ever more frequent in Tsarist Russia, the Wonsals emigrated to Canada, subsequently moving to America, first Ohio, and then Pennsylvainia. Beniamin Wonsal took the only precious object he owned with him, a gold watch, which became a sort of symbol and would appear in many Warner Bros movies.
It was in America that Jack and the rest of Sam's siblings were born. In 1903, Albert and Sam set up the Cascade theatre, which they later converted to a cinema, eventually creating the Warner Features studio, renamed Warner Bros in 1923.
The studio became one of the cornerstones of Hollywood, churning out one high-quality movie aftern another, including such box office hits as "Singin' in the Rain" or "Casablanca". The Warners' films were renowned for their blend of pop culture with universal, philosophical issues, a combination which remains their trademark to this day, film critic Michal Chudolinski told PAP on Thursday.
The studio was also the first to unveil a sound movie, Alan Crosland's "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. Sam Warner, however, didn't live to witness it, as he died on the eve of the film's premiere.
But his legacy lives on with Warner Bros, now part of the TimeWarner media empire, "still setting trends and creating new brands in the film industry", Chudolinski told PAP.
The brothers' ambitious pursuit of success had surely its source, among others, in childhood spent in Krasnosielec. In her book "The Brothers Warner", Cass Warner Sperling, the granddaughter of Harry Warner, wrote: "We had to hide away to study - so told me my grandfather, Harry. That way of cheating and, indeed, sneaking up for knowledge might have been the reason I had always strove for my movies to be made with such an attachment to quality. I did not want to entertain only, I felt compelled to educate".
Meanwhile, in Sam Warner's native village of Krasnosielc, people continue to perserve the memory of the lowly shoemaker's sons by holding film festivals, workshops and drawing competitions in honour of the Warner brothers.
Other Polish-related people to have influenced cinematography and co-built Hollywood industry were, among others, the inventor of first multiplex and protoplast of reality shows Zygmunt Lubczynski and Warsaw-born Samuel Goldwyn (ne Szmul Gelbfisz), who along with Mazovia-born Louis B. Mayer co-founded the famous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. (PAP)
