THE WARNER SAGA A TRUE "RAGS TO RICHES" STORY INTERNATIONAL Poorhouse Newsletter No33 April - September 2014 CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE 2 Al Capone The Warner Brothers THE WARNER SAGA James Dean directed by Clara & Julia Kuperberg The Warner Brothers’ career is a true “rags 42nd Street with Busby Berkeley and later to riches” story. They very quickly sensed that engaged Errol Flynn for a series of highly produced by Wichita Films running there was more money to be made with film successful cloak-and-dagger movies. Craig time 52' Shot in HD with Stereo than with the paternal shop in Youngtown, Detweiler, author, filmmaker and professor of Sound Ohio. communications, who narrates The Warner When Sam Warner saw the Edison Saga, thinks, “the Warner brothers saw Kinetoscope for the first time, he saw the themselves as Robin Hoods, in the forest, future. The brothers bought a projector which robbing from the rich, making movies for the came with one print, the old classic western poor. The Great Train Robbery. And they made more With WW2 looming, the Warner brothers money in a week, showing this movie in a commissioned Confessions of a Nazi Spy in rented hall, than their father in a month. 1939. Being profoundly anti-fascist, profoundly So Jack and Sam set out to California to anti-communist and actually believing in produce movies in 1912. They first succeeded the American dream as they had lived it in 1918 with My Four Years in Germany. themselves, they turned out strings of patriotic Subsequently the four brothers began to buy films hitting the nerve of their public. up cinemas to show their films and distribute With the advent of television, Hollywood The Hangover those of others. Warner Features Co., went for bigger movies, but Warner Brothers founded in 1913, turned into Warner Brothers chose to go after younger audiences with films Studios and First National Pictures. They like A Street Car Named Desire, East of Eden signed on Ernst Lubitsch and Michael Curtis. and the seminal teenage picture of the 1950’s In 1927 Warners hit the jackpot with the Rebel Without a Cause. Jack Warner finally release of their fourth talkie, The Jazz Singer. - completely in control of the studio after Unfortunately Sam died a day before the having bought out his remaining brothers - premiere, and Harry and Jack would wrestle abandoned the old Warner Brothers principle for the control of the studio for the remainder and invested 5 million Dollars in the rights of their life. to My Fair Lady. It paid off and won him the Jack Warner became head of productions, Oscar for Best Picture, an Oscar that Jack assisted by Darryl F. Zanuk. As the Warner Warner could really claim as his own. Oscars for My Fair Lady brothers were outsiders themselves, they were In the late 60’s the anti-heroe emerged, and really street kids, they readily glorified people actors like Steve McQueen in Bullitt or Paul on the margins, people on the outside, people Newman in Cool Hand Luke were prominent struggling to get by. They elevated the working at the studio. Warner Brothers went back to class and gave people during the depression in their trusted formula of one guy taking on the their films somebody to cheer for, somebody system, working against it. And Clint Eastwood who resembled them. This is how the series of became a typical Warner star with films like Gangster Films came about which swept James Dirty Harry. Cagney and Edward G. Robinson to movie In 1976 Jack Warner sold his controlling stardom. interest in the studio to Seven Arts, and it When musical comedy became fashionable, lost a little bit of its personality. Franchises like Warner Brothers opted for the cheaper Superman, Batman or Harry Potter guarantee backstage stories and produced films like success today. But most of that family touch Oscars for Jezebel has gone. April - September 2014 Newsletter No33 3 Esther Bejarano directed by Thomas Gonschior & Christa Spannbauer produced by HOMAGE TO LiFE Thomas Gonschior Productions A film about courage resistance and the running time 58' indestructible dignity of the Human spririt. Yehuda Bacon Singers, Esther Bejarano and Greta Klingsberg, “Whoever has been in hell knows that there is Shot in HD with Stereo Sound the writer Eva Fahidi and the painter Yehuda no alternative to goodness.” Bacon survived Auschwitz. Thomas Gonschior As a fourteen year old boy, secretly and in Greta Klingsberg finds out how they were able to preserve their mortal danger, he made drawings of life and In 1938, a few months after the German humanity in such inhuman conditions. What death in Auschwitz. Today the eighty three annexation of Austria, Greta Klingberg fled to were the sources of the strength and hope year old Israeli painter Yehuda Bacon passes Czechoslovakia, but was deported from there they found? The film uncovers the formidable on his message as an artist of conciliation and when she was 12 to Terezín concentration capacities of those who confronted and humaneness to the next generations. camp. In Terezín, she sang the leading role courageously remember the horrors of their of Aninka in over 50 performances of the past. Here are a few extracts of what you are Éva Pusztai-Fahidi legendary childrens’ opera Brundibár by Hans going to see: “In those of us who returned from Auschwitz, the Krása. Greta and almost all of the children from life force is very deep. We know how valuable those performances were further deported Esther Bejarano life is.” to Auschwitz. She is the only known female “Solidarity played a big role. The support which On the ramp at Auschwitz, Éva Pusztai- survivor. After liberation, she emigrated to we gave each other enabled us to keep on living.” Fahidi lost her entire family to the gas chamber. Jerusalem. It is thanks to her initiative and There was a time when she had to play for Now after fifty nine years of silence, the eighty dedication that Brundibár is being performed her life in the Girls’ Orchestra of Auschwitz. seven year old has written a book about again in many countries throughout the world. Today the eighty eight year old Esther Bejarano her Hungarian family and relations. Since performs on stage with rappers. writing the book the dedicated ‘Holocaust- In her songs, she calls for resistance to fascism activist’ gives lectures and readings to stop the and xenophobia. past from being forgotten. Greta Kingsberg Yehuda Bacon April - September 2014 Newsletter No33 4 Les Indes Galantes photo © Cosimo Mirco Magliocca A COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTION OF 250 YEARS OF RAMEAU THE COMPOSER’S WORK revenge on the composer for having expressed he was attempting to reduce harmony to a Jean-Philippe Rameau died his opinion on Rousseau’s own compositions. natural and inevitable principle and to elicit the 250 years ago, in 1764. He was In those pre-revolutionary times people were secret of music from the harmonic series. His a contemporary of Bach and receptive to all that seemed simple; they theoretical works are still of great importance preferred to see normal human beings on for the study of harmony as well as for today’s Handel and every bit as great stage rather than Gods or nobility. It was for equally tempered twelve-tone systems. “No as these two. this reason that the Italian Buffo-art was so composer”, says conductor John Eliot Gardiner, From his early years as organist a successful. He replied to these charges with his “was able to use the orchestra in such a few Grands Motets survive of which In third and final creative period which began in virtuoso manner as Rameau”. Convertendo is arguably the most accomplished, 1760. Les Paladins was a comédie-ballet that It was also Rameau and not Webern who anticipating the operatic works Rameau was adapted important elements of the Italian style. invented the first Klangfarbenmelodie. Diderot to compose later. In 1722 he settled in Paris Les Paladins parodied itself, it mingled transformed him into a literary monument in where his second and third collection of Pièces accepted musical forms and also brought an his satirical novel Le neveu de Rameau. de clavecin appeared. With his earlier Traité androgynous character onto the stage in the Today we begin to rediscover Rameau’s de l’harmonie réduite à ses principes naturelles person of the fairy Manto. music with its wealth of melody and harmony, he had already profiled himself as a scientist, Rameau’s final opera Les Boréades was a faster pace than Handel and astonishingly close but for any musician who wished to count for tragédie-lyrique that many consider to be his to our sensitivities. The Rameau renaissance is anything in Paris, Rameau had to have success best opera. It was in rehearsal when Rameau in full swing with seven of his operas, already with an opera. He made his debut at the died aged almost 81. Its performance was recorded for television. Académie Royale with Hippolyte et Aricie in cancelled; it was totally forgotten and only For five of them we also offer extra 1733. rediscovered in our time. features which introduce the audience to The opera was a success although it divided We must ask ourselves why Rameau’s the world of the composer by having the the audience into traditionalist supporters of works with the exception of Les Indes Galantes protagonists narrate the plot and conductors Lully and admirers of the more modern style were forgotten so quickly and so completely, as well as stage directors talking about of Rameau. It caused the famous composer though we should also remember that both Rameau and his time.