Jack Warner

Jack Leonard Warner was an Americuban film executive whose tenure as President of Warner Bros. and later Warner-Columbia would see him become one of the biggest businessmen in American Havana, and a leading figure in early Havanawood

The Warner Brothers of Youngston, Ohio (Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack), sons of a Polish Jewish butcher (originally Wonzal) who immigrated to Canada, first entered the film business by touring mining towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, before going into distribution formally, and founding the Warner Bros studio in 1918. It would grow to become a massive movie studio during the Jazz Age, with hit films starring the dog Rin Tin Tin and especially the first talkie The Jazz Singer.

With Sam's death in 1927 (the day before the debut of the Jazz Singer), Jack became increasingly hardened and difficult to work with. He quickly directed his ire towards the increasing presence of the Workers' Communist Party in Hollywood. Warner, with fellow moguls Harry Cohn and Louis B. Mayer, colluded with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) to produce "Blacklists" of talent that were affiliated with the WPA, and could not be hired. In 1929, Warner testified in front of the Fish Committee about the increasing unionization in Hollywood, and what he viewed as "communist agitators" responsible, as well as "internal fifth columns" slicing in propaganda into "innocuous pictures."

During the Revolution, Harry and Albert were killed in the fighting around Los Angeles, while Jack fled to Havana with MacArthur's forces. (Jack's possible involvement in his brothers' death has never been firmly established, though some reports have him deliberately misleading them to their deaths). The Warner lot becomes the Olive Street Collective.

Faced with much less talent and resources in Havana as opposed to Hollywood, Jack pooled resources with his former rival Harry Cohn. When Cohn received the rights to Margaret Mitchell's epic Civil War novel Gone with the Wind, Warner co-produced the film and secured Errol Flynn for the lead.

With the mega-success of Gone with the Wind in 1938, Warner and Cohn became the biggest moguls in the Cuban movie industry (Havanawood) and a large part of Douglas MacArthur's inner circle (sometimes jointly called "MacArthur's Goebbels"). They became the recipients of grants from the Department of Communication, MacArthur's newly established propaganda department.

During World War II, Warner and Cohn innovated the unique Cuban genre of Macaco films, with In The Jungle (Largely plagiarized from a pre-Revolution World War I-set script called "The Village of Death"), which were large war epics (set in the South American campaign) with extravagant effects and racist depictions of Cubans or Brazilians. Macaco films, with a staple of historical and gangster films, combined with grants from the Department of Communications, allowed Warner Bros. and Columbia to practically dominate Havanawood. However, Warner and Cohn competed internally for attention from MacArthur and individual grants. Cohn's hardline stance against Franco-British films flooding the Cuban market and championing of the Cinema Act of 1953 to ensure tax breaks for films with "patriotic content" to increase the number of Cuban films made him more favorable to MacArthur.

However, in 1956, Cohn was injured while meeting with Department of Communication officials in an anti-MacArthur attack. In his incapacitated state, he decided to sell Columbia publicly. Warner secretly organized a syndicate to purchase Columbia stock. By Cohn's death in 1958, Warner purchased a majority stake in Columbia, and allowed a merger of Warner Bros. and Columbia into Warner-Columbia.

However, the merger overstretched the company, straining its ability to function. Not helping with the defunding and dismantling of the Department of Communications under Robert Kennedy. Warner attempted to keep afloat with the biggest Macaco film The Fires of Venezuela and the Arthurian epic The Ill-Made Knight. Both were troubled productions and both were flops on their 1968 release.

Now bankrupt, Warner sold off the studio piecemeal to several buyers (including Warner's former number two Frank McCarthy and Howard Hughes, who would use the Warner name attached to RKO for his media and casino enterprises), and spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity. Warner would have a stroke in 1972, and would die in his Havana retirement home in 1978.