| Among the
company's myriad of honors have been more than 100 major Academy
Awards, including six Best Picture Oscars, for the films The
Life of Emile Zola (1937), Casablanca (1943), My Fair Lady
(1964), Chariots of Fire (1981), Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
and Unforgiven (1992); as well as a special Academy Award
given at the first ceremony in 1929 for bringing sound to
the motion picture industry with The Jazz Singer. Much of
the work done on these films occurred on the Warner Bros.
Studios lot. The Studios were originally built in 1927 for
First National Pictures on farmland purchased from Dr. David
Burbank, a dentist and rancher after whom the city of Burbank
was named. They were acquired in 1929 by the Warner brothers,
two years after they had revolutionized movies with the fore-mentioned
first "talkie," Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer. Soon,
the brothers were turning out movies at a feverish pace --
86 features in 1929 alone.
Creative vigor, on both sides of the camera,
propelled Warner Bros. into the 1990s. Movies like Lethal
Weapon 3 and 4, Oliver Stone's JFK, Batman Returns, Unforgiven,
Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, Spike Lee's Malcolm X, The Bodyguard,
Dave, The Fugitive, The Client, Natural Born Killers, Interview
With the Vampire, and The Matrix have delivered memorable
performances both on-screen and at the box office. At the
same time the company continued to strengthen its television
leadership. Over the last few years the Warner Bros. lot has
been home to such television series as Sisters, Full House,
Family Matters, The Drew Carey Show, the WB Network shows,
and the multiple Emmy-winning Murphy Brown, as well as the
smash hit series E.R., Friends and The West Wing.
Entering the new millennium, Warner Bros.
Studios continues to embody the romantic traditions and lore
of the great classic movies of the past, while forging into
the future, always turning the eye of creative imagination
both inward toward the Studio and outward at the world. |
