Here's Looking at You, Warner Bros.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

If you tried to sell the plot to a movie studio, you would be laughed right out of the place. Imagine four immigrant brothers - call them, say, Jack, Harry, Sam, and Abe - hocking their father's horse and gold watch to buy a print of "The Great Train Robbery" and go into the business of showing silent films in a storefront "movie palace." They are so successful that they buy back the watch and horse, return them to Poppa, then go on to Hollywood, where they form their own studio ... and the rest is history. improbable or not, that's how Warner Bros. came into existence.

Few things are as irresistible to film buffs as snippets of scenes from favorite pictures, especially when the stars of yesterday and today pour across the screen almost faster than the mind can register. "Say, wasn't that (James Cagney, Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Edward G. Robinson, you name it)?" As narrated by Clint Eastwood, they appear in multitudes, triggering nostalgic delight.

From the studio's first stars - John Barrymore and Rin Tin Tinto - such modern-day icons as Robert Redford, Warren Beattie, Barbra Streisand, and Clint Eastwood, there are an abundance of film clips and interviews. Warner Bros. was the pioneer of sound, stunning the public with "The Jazz Singer." It dazzled audiences with the geometric choreography of...