An Intimate Dinner in Celebration of Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee

A Silver Jubilee would imply 25th anniversary and this was made in 1930 but Warner Bros. Pictures wasn't incorporated until 1923. How can that be? Well, according to many of the comments here, the actual brothers Warner started in the movie business when they rented a movie theatre in 1905. Okay! Anyway, it's a formal party with many of the studio's stars in attendance, well, except for George Arliss, John Barrymore, or Richard Bartheness. What, no Al Jolson, the one who put Warners on the map with The Jazz Singer? And it puzzles me why this was on TJS DVD when he's not even mentioned. Oh, and the little girl introing the stars is playing Miss Vitaphone, the sound process that also helped put the studio on the map. One more thing, among the songwriters at the tables are Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II but they're both with their then-partners of Lorenz Hart and Sigmund Romberg, respectively. In summary, An Intimate Dinner in Celebration of Warner Bros. Jubilee was an interesting curio and nothing more.

This short subject, nominally in celebration of Warner Brothers' silver jubilee -- the only thing I can think of is that they may have opened their first theater in 1905; they didn't go into production for another dozen years -- is an excellent primer for putting faces to names. If you are a fan of old movies, you have seen these actors, but you may not be able to link the faces with the names.

Besides the players, various composers and lyricists are shown. It is amusing, given what happened later, to see Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II -- but they are seated next to, respectively, Lorenz Hart and Sigmund Romberg.

This is not, otherwise, an interesting short subject --the moviegoer was intended to be overwhelmed by the sight of so much talent and probably was. Now it is simply a historical artifact.

I am not a huge fan of short films from the 20s and 30s unless they are comedies. However, when I saw this on TCM, I still watched it because I was excited about seeing a film that was essentially a commercial extolling the wonders of Warner Brothers. That's because I wanted to see their stars and see how they looked when they were young. Well, unfortunately, I noticed that in 1930, they had very few stars anyone would recognize today. I am really good at film trivia and there were several I simply didn't recognize and many who I did recognize but knew them only as small-time actors. Plus, three of their biggest stars weren't in this short and they simply showed photos of them and inserted fake letters from them to the audience. Not having John Barrymore, George Arliss and Richard Barthelmess was a real disappointment and the audience had to be content to watch a few small-time actors (with the exceptions of Loretta Young, Walter Huston and a couple lesser stars, who were in the film). The film's structure was also something I myself didn't like--having the film star a small child called "Miss Vitaphone". Yes, I understood the significance--Vitaphone was the new unit from Warners responsible for sound pictures. But, I'm not much of a fan of precocious children.

All-in-all, this is a curio and that is all--and not a very interesting one at that.

Intimate Dinner in Celebration of Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee, An (1930)

*** (out of 4)

The 25th Anniversary of Warner Bros. is documented here with a party thrown that included many of the studios biggest stars at the time. Loretta Young, Edward G. Robinson, Walter Pidgeon, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Walter Huston, David Manners and Joe E. Brown are just some of the famous faces at the party. Each are introduced and often times their next movie is mentioned for some free press.

You can view this historic short on disc 3 of Warner's The Jazz Singer set.

Between the 1930 release of this short and 1934, most of the talent appearing or mentioned in this short were gone from the Warners lot. Grant Withers divorced Loretta Young and soon after worked elsewhere. Loretta stuck around to 1934 before leaving. Richard Barthelmess, who sent a telegram that he was on location(Warners was great at creating telegrams) left in 1934 when Warners did not renew his contract. Marilyn Miller did not last that long before departing. George Arliss also sent a telegram in lieu of making an appearance. Arliss's last movie for Warners was 1933's Voltaire, directed by John Adolfi, who also directed this short. Adolfi's career and everything else ended in 1933, death from a cerebral hemorrhage. In Arliss's next movie after Voltaire, House of Rothschild, his co-star was Loretta Young and the production boss was Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Pictures. Before he quit Warners in 1933, Zanuck was that studio's production chief.

Samuel Marx said that when Louis B. Mayer ran MGM, he would tell the MGM staff that as long as they did their job well, they had a job for life. And, to a large extent until he was ousted in 1951, Mayer kept his word. The situation at Warners was different, run like a sweatshop, actors constantly put on suspension for refusing to work in pictures they thought would wreck their careers and Jack Warner pinching pennies everywhere except at the racetrack. This short is evidence of the great turnover of talent at Warners. Warners made great pre-code movies in the early thirties, but it was not a nice place to work at, not having much job security. And what happened to Alice White, she starred in 1930's The Widow From Chicago with Edward G. Robinson, who was at the dinner.