The Brothers Warner: 100th Anniversary Edition

By Cass Warner Sperling

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Warner Brothers Studios, we issue the Brothers Warner 100th Anniversary Edition which shares the trials, tribulations, and celebrations of this iconic family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warner Sisters, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960018120

Book preview

The Promise

A guard opened the iron gate at the entrance of an old, austere Bel Air mansion with big columns flanking the front door. My mother and I stepped into this huge mausoleum-like house with shiny marble floors.

Why was Grandpa Harry here and not at his beloved ranch?

I listened for his greeting, but it didn’t come. Instead, I was led down a long hall into a dark, antiseptic-smelling bedroom. The person stretched out on the bed was like a statue, not the vital, spirited grandfather I knew.

I heard the nurse say he had eaten a little, but that he was still unable to speak. She bent down close to his ear. Mr. Warner, your daughter and granddaughter Cassie are here to see you. He gave no response.

A mysterious force drew me to him as if he were a candle in the dark. It was a gentle force.

His eyes were open, and moved to take me in. He smiled. I watched his hand inch slowly across the sheet toward me. His hand found mine, and he tried to speak, but no words came. Instead, the look in his eyes transmitted his thoughts. His hand tightened around mine, sealing the message—something special was being entrusted to me. I squeezed back. A promise was made.

He tried to sit up. The nurse rushed over. I was being escorted out. I felt something tugging at me, telling me not to leave.

Cassie.

I turned and saw him reaching for me. It was the last time I would see him.

I was ten years old when this happened, and it wasn’t until years later that I would realize the magnitude and meaning of that moment. As I did my research for this book and produced my documentary film, I learned more about what was important to my grandfather. I came to interpret the unspoken message that had passed between us as a responsibility that I had agreed to take on—a responsibility to convey to others his deep beliefs and ideals.

From a very early age, I was aware of my privileges. I had time to daydream, play, and take piano and dance lessons, while our gardener’s son had to help his father tend to the yard every day after school. Often, I felt as if kids were being my friends so they could come see the movie stars who visited our house. Almost every weekend these celebrities would gather to watch films on our full-size living room screen.

Yet my family was different from those who were concerned only with how they looked, who they knew, and what parties they were going to. I was able to compare this mindlessness with values I was absorbing at home. Around the dinner table, my family discussed world affairs and civil rights. My grandfather and my parents were quick to point out injustices they saw. My father would always lighten things up with anecdotes about some situation that had happened at the studio or in the newspaper.

One of my favorite pastimes was sitting in my father’s overstuffed leather chair in his home office and listening to him as he worked. As a screenwriter, he would often collaborate with another writer. There was always laughter along with their intense concentration. I felt like I was participating because he’d give me a script to hold on my lap and read. I could sense the exhilaration he felt in creating with another, and the pleasure he got from being a producer and putting all the pieces together. I also watched my mother as she dedicatedly worked in her studio, practicing her detailed pencil sketches or spreading oil paints on her canvases. She taught me the value of being a mother as well as the importance of using one’s artistic abilities.

There was nothing quite as special as going to the studio. I loved watching the cast and crew working together and seeing how much teamwork went into the magic of filmmaking.

Even today, when I go to the movies and see the audiences moved emotionally and influenced by a film’s viewpoint, the power of this medium astounds me. I have great admiration for the process and the choices made by its creators.

It’s almost as if film casts a mysterious spell on those watching it, like the beat of a tribal drum that’s subtly conveying beliefs and values. I believe this wonderful cooperative art of storytelling and drama will endure and grow for many to use as an important communication tool.

It’s with great pleasure and pride that I give this recollection of the brothers’ story as a gift back to my grandfather, family and friends who continue to inspire optimism and shared understandings.

The brothers’ original motto for making the films they did was to educate, entertain, and enlighten. May this continue to be a part of the Hollywood and filmmaking legacy.

This book is in honor of and dedicated to dreamers, doers and determined, caring souls like my grandfather, Harry Warner. May their hopes, visions and personal integrity guide humanity toward a better tomorrow.

My promise has been kept.

~Cass Warner

Dedication

While growing up, the atmosphere and example that surrounded me was a most concerned, compassionate and creative family—one that not only spoke about world affairs but used films to bring important human issues to the forefront in an entertaining way. Early on, I was aware that I was fortunate, and I learned that using one’s good fortune was a delicious responsibility.

Hopefully, we all have someone in our life who makes a poignant, profound impression on us—someone who we look up to, and that we connect with naturally and in a deep way. My grandfather, Harry, was that person for me. Wanting to carry on the tradition of deeply loving and caring for others, I began having children at twenty-two years old. While growing a garden of four wonderful people, I experienced the great satisfaction and pleasure of nurturing a future generation as well as wanting to see that the world they would grow up in to be a more sane, decent and safe place for them to create in.

Observing early on one of the ways I could reach out and touch many others was to tell a story that struck some kind of universal chord, and aided in awakening an awareness and sensibility, or reminding someone of something they knew to be true. Looking for what was deep inside me that I could share, I went back to important moments in my life. Where were my turning points? How could I creatively give something back to those who gave so much to me? This is when I realized the importance of the last time I saw my grandfather and where a silent but powerful promise had been made, and needed to be kept.

Watching my magical story teller of a father, Milton Sperling, and noticing how he always began his creative process with the development and back stories of his characters, I knew this was the first thing I needed to do. So…who were these brothers? Where did they come from? What was their philosophy of life?

In doing my research, I was fascinated by their tenacity, their never-give-up on their dream stamina; their mandate that no matter what they were a family first; and when it came to business they knew and respected their specific talents as a close-knit team. Every challenge or barrier was an incentive to come up with another way of getting around whatever was stopping them. They were gamblers of the highest order as they believed their dream or future vision was worthy of their unshakeable belief in themselves.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros. studio now wearing the title of Warner Bros. Discovery, I wanted to do something special in honor of this occasion, thus this special edition. I also wanted to send out a personal appreciation to all those who continue to work for the studio and all its subsidiaries.

I’m most grateful for the leadership of the new CEO, David Zaslav, and for his interest in carrying on what the brothers’ believed was important to incorporate into good storytelling and quality entertainment. There is an awareness and responsibility that reaches many people with this tribal drum, which is our entertainment. The legacy lives on!

~Cass Warner

Foreword

by David Zaslav

This year, Warner Bros. celebrates its 100th anniversary. And as we embark on our second century with the studio now an integral part of Warner Bros. Discovery, we are more committed than ever to ensuring the company the Warner brothers – Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack – built continues to be viewed around the world as a symbol of high quality, creative risk-taking, and innovative and impactful storytelling.

Growing up in Brooklyn, every Saturday, my Dad would take me to the local movie theater – it was our thing, just the two of us. We would get popcorn and soda, the lights would go down, the movie would start, and it was like magic. I’ll never forget staring up at the big screen and seeing Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and Steve McQueen in Bullitt. I was completely captivated by the stories and characters and could not get enough of them. These and so many other great films I fell in love with over the years had one thing in common: the WB shield.

Not only did the Warner brothers revolutionize the motion picture business with the introduction of talkies in the 1920s, they also had the guts to tell stories that shed light on important issues of the day. And that took real courage, given the widespread resistance – and even prohibition – in Hollywood of the production of any films that took a critical view of sensitive topics such as Nazism and anti-Semitism. The brothers faced stiff pressure from both U.S. and foreign government leaders, activist organizations, industry elites, and others. Yet, they remained firm in their determination to use the platform of film to raise awareness of global injustices.

Having witnessed their own family escape oppression in Poland, the brothers understood the dangers of allowing such divisive and destructive forces to go unchecked, and they also recognized the power of motion pictures to change how people see others and the world. As they saw it, they had an opportunity as well as a responsibility to make a difference, and they did exactly that.

David Zaslav

President and CEO, Warner Bros. Discovery

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of many people contributing in many different ways. I hope that those who helped will regard this mention and the book itself as a form of my appreciation. I’m especially grateful to my children (Tao, Cole, Vanessa, and Jesse) for their many years of patience and understanding; to my father and mother for having faith in this project, sharing their experiences, and inspiring this all along the way; to my cousin, Jack Warner, Jr. for all his personal contributions and interest in telling the definitive story; to Howard and Anne Koch for their friendship and artistic support; to Barbara Warner a most warm thanks for breaking the family curse; to Doris Kearns Goodwin for her special hand holding; and to my friend, Jack Skinner, for encouraging and being a part of the birth of this book. Special thanks go to Leith Adams, archivist for the Warner Collection at the University of Southern California, and Ned Comstock in USC’s Department of Special Collections for their years of assistance; to Ann Warner’s estate for permission to quote from Jack Warner’s book My First Hundred Years in Hollywood. Others who aided the cause in a variety of appreciated ways: Sean Burke, Bernard Percy, Bill Schaefer, William T. Orr, Charles Yoss, Eric Sherman, Gregg Orr, John and Lewis Steel, Viki King, Ann Sperber, Ronald Reagan, Richard Gully, Lina Basquette, Sam Halper, Vicki Hiatt, the late Ruby Keeler, Ian Bernard, Anne Francis, Dennis Hopper, Lita Heller, Shirley and Jim Lavine, Lois McGrew, Kate Horowitz, Jonathan Kirsch, Dasheng and Guilan Pan, Joke and Frizell Clegg, Gay Ribisi, Judy Code, Bruce Rigney, Lisa Kastner, Danny and Dani Kahn, and the Princeton Theater Collection.

PROLOGUE

Camelot

An amber blade of light slices through the darkness. The blare of trumpets breaks the silence, punctuating the single word on the screen:

CAMELOT

In my mind’s eye, the proud old man sighs heavily, rolls an unlit cigar between his fingers, feeling its silkiness, and settles into the cushioned seat. The movie credits roll:

RICHARD HARRIS, VANESSA REDGRAVE, FRANCO NERO…

The man mumbles, Yeah, and not one of them could sing a lousy note, but his words are lost in the chorus of voices performing the title song and the void of the studio screening room. There is no one to hear him.

The song increases in tempo as the names of the composers and music director flash on.

Then, in bold letters, the credit:

PRODUCED BY JACK L. WARNER

The old man stares at the name—his name—etched across the screen like a page from a medieval illuminated manuscript.

Reflected light washes over Warner’s face as the credits dissolve into a wooded scene of snow and ice. Richard Harris, as King Arthur, is emoting: How did I blunder into this? When did I stumble? When did I go wrong…? The voice of Merlin the Magician breaks in: Think back, Arthur … think back to the day you met Guinevere…the day she came to Camelot. That is the beginning …

Jack Warner spits out a shred of tobacco and grumbles in the darkness, Some beginning. His eyes glaze, dissolving the color on the screen; his ears shut out the sound. A window of his mind opens onto the flickering images of a black and white film, the first feature from the early silent era: The Great Train Robbery.

The film is lashed with jagged black scratches and has been spliced together so many times it jumps erratically from scene to scene. Yet the audience leans forward on the edge of the benches in the darkened space, their emotions audible as the deadly shootout unfolds magically on the bedsheets pinned to the wall. They scream and duck as the menacing black locomotive rushes toward them.

Sweating inside the cramped projection booth, seventeen, Sam Warner cranks the Kinetoscope projector, coils of celluloid piling up around his knees. Outside the tent his brother Abe, nineteen, sells tickets to the line of people waiting for the next show to begin. He passes the coins to Harry, the eldest brother at twenty-three, who drops each nickel admission into a cigar box. Jack, the youngest boy, now thirteen, waits to sing his ballads between showings, a practice the brothers have discovered quickly clears the room.

Some beginning, Jack Warner grumbles again. "But it worked. We damn well made it work."

The shadowy sound of another voice, from another place and time, intrudes: Together, together you are strong! Their father, Ben Warner, big-shouldered, square-jawed, is standing before a kitchen table on which is piled a stack of wooden sticks. Harry, Abe, Sam, and Jack watch as their father takes a stick, grasps it in both hands, and snaps it in two. Alone, the wood is weak, it breaks easily, Ben says. He takes two sticks and cracks them apart. Then three; harder this time. Finally, he picks up four sticks, gathering them into a tight bundle. This he cannot break. He looks hard at his four sons and repeats, Together you are strong.

Jack Warner chews on the end of his cigar. Sure, sure, always together. Well, nothing lasts forever. He pushes out of the seat, staring at the image of King Arthur on the screen and hisses, "Damn you, Harry, damn you!" Moisture glistens on his eyelashes.

King Arthur sings:

"Don’t let it be forgot,

that once there was a spot,

for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot…"

The towers of Camelot dissolve into a watery blur.

Part I

1890s & 1900s

1

Two Nickels and

a Handshake

Summer 1955

I called it the Mystery Room.

I was seven years old when I started exploring in Grandpa Harry’s ranch house and found it. It was a dark place with paneled walls, a big wooden desk, and a curtain that was always drawn shut. On the walls were photographs. I had to stand on tiptoe to see most of them. Many were of my grandfather smiling that warm smile of his while standing next to important-looking men whose names I didn’t know. (I later learned these men also had important names: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman;Hap Arnold and Ike Eisenhower Albert Einstein.)

There was also a huge glass case filled with trophies, plaques, ribbons, and silver cups. I wished I knew how he got all these ribbons and things. Was Grandpa an Olympic runner?

Then one day while I was snooping around in the room I heard Grandpa softly say my name, Cassie? He came over to the showcase I was staring at.

Grandpa, why do you have all these?

He put his hand gently on my shoulder, as if he realized it was time that I knew, took a photograph off the wall, and led me to a dark maroon leather couch in the center of the room. On the way, he opened the curtains: light streamed into the room.

This was our first theater—the Cascade, he said, tilting the photograph so I could see it better. His fingers traced an outline around one of the figures standing in front of the theater’s arched entry way. That’s your great-uncle Sam.

He died, I said.

Yes, many years ago. My grandpa sighed. But not before he gave us, and the world, the gift of hearing music and the spoken word on film. He sat there for a few moments, his fingers still touching the photograph. Then, with great care, he hung the photo back on the wall and came back to the couch.

He opened a huge scrapbook lying on the coffee table in front of us. Here, this is Sam describing how it all began. Very slowly he read from a yellowed newspaper clipping:

Harry and I were walking on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh in 1905, when a sign attracted us which read:

NICKELODEON

We put two nickels on the plate and Harry and I walked into the place.

We sat through three shows, until we were shown the exit sign. When we got outside, we stood for a time watching the people go in and out of the nickelodeon. We then and there shook hands and said:

We’re in the motion picture business.

Spring 1906

Black smoke churned in angry belches from the idling car’s exhaust and gritted the air, burning Sam Warner’s eyes. He tilted his head and lifted his shoulder to his cheek, trying to blot away the sweat, careful not to slow his cranking of the Kinetoscope projector. With his other hand he fed the film strip into the machine’s take-up spool, feeling the gears click as metal claws poked into the sprocket holes to move the film forward frame after frame.

On the white sheet sewn to the side of the unventilated black tent, shadows came to life, revealing the panorama of Yosemite National Park. The six people crammed into the back seat of the touring car were enthralled with the scenic ride. Why, it was just as if they were there, in the mountains, passing a cascading waterfall, smelling the lush green foliage … George! Sam Warner tried to attract the attention of the other man hunched behind the car. In the flickering shadows Sam could see his colleague pushing up and down on the car’s bumper, then rocking it from side to side as he tried to simulate the car’s bumpy journey through Yosemite. George! Sam repeated louder. We gotta cut the engine …

Sam coughed; his throat raw.

George Hale looked fiercely at his young projectionist and growled, Shaddup!

Sam closed his eyes and sucked air in through his nose, hoping that would filter out the acrid fumes. His arm felt like lead from cranking the wooden handle of the projector. Great, now I’m in the motion picture business, Sam thought, as he remembered that day a year earlier when he and Harry had strolled down the Pittsburgh street and had been attracted to the NICKELODEON sign.

Sam smiled at the recollection as he wearily fed the last bit of the travelogue film through the projector: clickety click, clickety click … The screen went black. George stopped rocking the touring car, switched off the ignition, and opened the flap to the tent as Sam helped the passengers to step out of the back seat and onto a wooden box, then to the sawdust-strewn ground.

Great trip, young fella, a portly man said, fingering the watch chain stretched across his belly. The man puffed heavily on a cigar, trailing a cloud of gray smoke that mingled with the lingering black fumes.

Stepping past the tent flap, Sam filled his lungs with fresh air and grabbed a can of water he had left in the shade of the ticket taker’s bench. Swallowing a mouthful, he glanced up at the banner which proclaimed:

HALE’S TOURS

LATEST LIFESIZE MOVING PICTURE

TOUR YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK MORAL AND REFINED

PLEASING TO LADIES, GENTLEMEN & CHILDREN

Sam flexed his aching fingers as he watched George climb back onto the little platform in front of the sign, grab his megaphone, and announce to the passing parade of fairgoers:

Lay-deez and genn’men, welcome to the miraculous scenic tour of one of America’s wonderlands. Enjoy it in the privacy and luxury of your own touring car …

Sam poured the last of the water over his face, then, pushing his shirtsleeves higher on his arms, went back into the tent to rewind George Hale’s miraculous scenic tour.

Even though Sam hated returning to the hot tent, he loved working with anything mechanical. A year earlier (about the time he and Harry had walked into the nickelodeon) he had read, enthralled, of the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk. Sam laughed when people scoffed at airplanes as they had at autos in the ’90s. He was clever beyond his years and was always burrowing into some engineering book or other that he couldn’t quite understand.

At six feet he was solidly built, with a square jaw and a thick head of rust-colored hair. He liked to laugh to his friends: Everyone thinks I’m Irish, not Jewish. His deep blue eyes had a faraway quality in them that saw beyond the confines of Youngstown, Ohio.

Grandpa turned the pages of the album carefully, smoothing each page with the palm of his hand until he came to a brown-toned photograph of a football team. The young men were in uniforms thickly padded with cotton, each of them staring seriously into the camera. Grandpa pointed to a figure on the back row, the largest player in the group.

Abe, he said. Your great-uncle Abe.

Just a bit older than Sam, Abe was making a few bucks of his own. Barrel-chested like his father, with huge hands and solid, stern features, Abe had stayed in school longer than any of his brothers, entering Youngstown’s Rayen High School in 1900, where he played quarterback on the football team, before deciding to quit and take a job in a steel mill. He quickly discovered that the cavern of forges spewing rivers of white-hot metal was a terrifying place to work. Cascades of hot sparks shot sparkling fingers of fire at him, and coal cinders scratched his eyes. Even worse, on his first day at the mill a worker was crushed to death when a huge ingot fell on him.

On his second day, Abe saw a man’s leg smashed by a metal beam.

His mother, Pearl, could see the dark lines of worry on her son’s face when he came home from work that second day. After he told Pearl of the accidents, she spoke to him in Yiddish, the language she favored, having yet to completely master English: You stay home from work.

Abe, his face blackened by sulfur and soot, answered, Mama, I can’t stay home. The job pays well.

No! She grasped one of his huge hands in hers. Life is more important than money.

The warning was enough for Abe, who started looking for other employment. When a representative from Swift and Company in Chicago visited the family grocery store, he talked Abe into becoming a salesman. In Chicago, Abe, to his dismay, found himself a failure as a soap salesman.

At night, in his hotel room, he would line up the different kinds of soap on the bureau, then walk up and down in front of them practicing his sales pitch. He even carried a bar of soap in his pocket to take out and present to the storekeeper the minute he got in the door. Still, he couldn’t get an order and was thrown out of many places. Then Abe got an idea: He’d raise the price of the soap and throw in one free box with every six he sold. Of course, the customer was paying exactly what he would have paid for seven boxes, but the excitement of getting something free brought in the orders. Without realizing it, Abe had invented discount trading. In a year he was the company’s top soap salesman.

It was while he was working in Pittsburgh selling soap that he saw his first motion picture—at the same theater Harry and Sam had seen theirs.

In 1903 a nickelodeon had opened on Smithfield Street, and the pictures shown were changed twice a week, Monday and Thursday nights, Abe recalled later. I was first in line to see each new picture and I began to figure out the attraction. If moving pictures had so much appeal that I never missed one, then it ought to be a pretty good thing to be in. I thought about it some more and decided to get into it some way or the other. So I resigned as a soap salesman, and with no definite idea of how to get into the movie business, I started home. When I got back to Youngstown, I discovered that my brothers Harry and Sam had had the same idea.

Strange… the three of us thought about it at the same time. My grandfather began turning the pages of the album and paused at a page showing Jack hamming it up in a strip of five snapshots: one with a fake cigar stuck in his mouth; the others feigning laughter, surprise, anger, and pensiveness.

I heard my grandpa say under his breath, Jack should have been an entertainer. I could see that he was bothered, and he slowly closed the book, put his arms around me, and gave me a big hug.

Jack Warner had his own ideas about getting into pictures. He loved them—as long as he was the subject. In 1903, when he was eleven, he’d hang around the Banner Studio, where they made photos-while-you-wait at a penny apiece.

He became a pest around the studio, the owner, Bill Stanton, recalled years later. When the camera wasn’t working well, we’d use him for test pictures.

When Jack wasn’t clowning in front of the studio camera, he worked as a delivery boy for his father’s grocery store, a task he did well, albeit reluctantly.

But it was Harry who had borne the major burden of the family workload since he began to labor as a child in his father’s Baltimore cobbler shop in 1889. Ben Warner had shown his young son how to salvage bent nails by straightening them with a short claw hammer. He taught him how to hold new ones in his mouth so he wouldn’t have to fumble for them on the bench. Together they worked long hours building their reputation and living up to the store-window sign that read:

SHOES REPAIRED WHILE YOU WAIT.

By 1890, when Harry was nine, Ben thought his son was capable enough to give him the job of managing the shop.

Although by 1906 the Warner boys knew they were interested in the picture business, none of them had figured out how to get into it. Sam still had his job at Hale’s Tours, but he didn’t want to slave the rest of his life cranking a projector for someone else. He wanted one of his own.

A Youngstown friend, George Olenhauser, who ran a small machine shop, had taken in one of Edison’s Kinetoscope projectors for repair and, knowing Sam’s interest in anything mechanical, called him to help work on it. Sam looked at the brass label on the projector’s box that read Edison Kinetoscope Deluxe Model AA Projector and could hardly wait to take it apart.

When he lifted the brass and copper machine from its box, turned the latch, and opened it to see the myriad gears, wheels, sprockets, and the mirrored carbide lamp, he felt as if he had truly touched a magic lantern. All he had to do was rub its gleaming surface to release the genie inside.

A few months after Sam had learned how to take apart and put back together George Olenhauser’s Kinetoscope (I can do it blindfolded, he bragged), the opportunity for the brothers to get into the motion picture business presented itself.

A woman who ran a theatrical boardinghouse near the amusement park where Sam still worked for Hale’s Tours confided in Sam one day that her son, Joey, had just returned, broke, from touring with the Kinetoscope he owned.

Sam, you maybe know somebody … wants to buy it? she asked. Sam swallowed, trying to stay calm. How much do you suppose Joey wants?

He says a thousand.

Sam’s shoulders sagged. George Hale had told him that was what he had paid for the machine he used for his Yosemite tours. A thousand bucks. A lot of nickels.

"Joey’s got a film, The Great Train Robbery, goes with the machine, the woman said. There’s rolls of tickets, blue and gold, he had printed up. The Great Train Robbery, produced by Edwin S. Porter in 1903, was 800 feet of red-blooded drama in which desperadoes rob a passenger train and end up chased by a posse. Audiences would yell out Catch ’em! Catch ’em! as puffs of smoke erupted from six-shooters. The most terrifying moment came when the villain, in a close-up, aimed his revolver directly at the camera and fired. Women swooned in their seats.

Pearl Warner, a robust woman of forty-six, whose waist had widened from twenty years of childbearing, stood over the kitchen stove stirring a heavy pot of soup with a wooden spoon as she listened to her boys talk to their father. It was a cool, brisk day late in October 1906, but the warmth emanating from the black wood-burning stove and the aromas drifting across the room from Pearl’s boiling pots made the kitchen a cozy, warm place to be.

It’s a real bargain, Sam was saying.

Pops, like Sam says, it comes with a film, rolls of tickets…, Abe said, leaning back from the table while his older sister, Annie, pushed a clean plate in front of him. Across the table, fourteen-year-old Rose was setting knives and forks by Harry’s plate. Two of the younger Warner children, David, eleven, and Sadie, nine, were in the small living room playing. Milton, only seven, the youngest, lay in the bedroom next to the kitchen with a cold, his chest greased with mentholated oil.

It’s a big opportunity, Sam added, nervously twisting a button on his jacket. He had to have this projector.

Ben Warner leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his barrel chest. He was a big man with a square jaw and a bold black mustache, and when he spoke his children listened. In broken English, he said, If it’s such a big—how’d you call it?—‘bargain’, how come this Joey, he want to sell?

The machine just needs a little fixing, Sam said, pressing his father. I know how to do that.

Ben looked at his oldest son. And what do you think?

Harry hunched forward, elbows on the table. "Pop, we all talked about this before. This movie business, it’s new. It’s not like Sam taking odd jobs all over the country or Abe off selling soap while I help you run the store. This is something we can all work at together."

Ben Warner nodded. He liked that—working together, helping one another. Yes, that’s the way his boys would succeed. How many times had he told Harry that, as the oldest,