Cass Warner walks in the visionary footsteps of her grandfather
By Mark Krasn
"The legacy of the brothers are boots I like to wear," says studio city resident Cass Warner - author, producer and documentarian.
The brothers? Well, those would be Harry, Jack, Abe and Sam - the world-famous quartet who overcame tremendous odds time and again to establish the studio that went on to provide movie lovers everywhere with some of the alltime classics.
Warner, who is the granddaughter of Harry (the eldest of the Warner Bros. Studios four plucky founders, considers herself the "Keeper of the Flame" — as evidenced through a number of heartfelt projects.
Just one of these is the documentary about the Warner Bros. Studio being made in anticipation of its 85th anniversary. Clint Eastwood is Executive Producer of the history — slated to premier at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008.
"It's a pleasure and a duty to carry on my family's vision of films as tools for social awareness," says Warner, who founded Warner Sisters – a production company to bring many of her projects to fruition. One of these projects – already completed and in its sixth printing, is the book, Hollywood Be Thy Name, The Warner Brothers Story.
"It took me a long time to process my grandfather's final communication to me," says Warner, who saw him for the last time when she was ten years old. "I realized that there was a promise between us for me to carry on what the brothers began and believed in."
The privilege of fulfilling that promise, says Warner, includes encouraging filmmakers to product works that are both aesthetically pleasing, but which have an important message about the global issues of the day. To "educate, entertain and enlighten" was her grandfather's enduring motto.
Examples, says Warner, include the legendary Casablanca, where Humphrey Bogart sees his true love Ingrid Bergman fade into the sunset, in lieu of a more romantic ending. This, says Warner, was a message of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper, was another Warner Bros./Howard koch production that, Warner says, was an "anti-war" film.
"Howard told me that, when he wrote, he felt he was just the conduit for a message that needed to be conveyed," says Warner. "And my grandfather was one of the first people to really understand the power of film to convey those messages artistically."
Warner, the daughter of screenwriter Milton Sperling, has fond memories of happy times spent on Harry Warner's 1100-acre ranch in Topanga Canyon where she says the humble man drove a tractor, fed chickens and lovingly tended to his family.
She had little awareness of the power he yielded until she saw the startled reaction of childhood friends who joined movie stars such as Natalie Wood and Richard Burton when the Warner-Sperlings held Saturday night home movie screenings.
"I wasn't really aware of my good fortune when I was younger," says Warner, whose father wrote The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell and a documentary, The Sands of Iwo Jima and was twice nominated for an Academy Award. "My family didn't desire the limelight."
Warner's preservation of her family's legacy includes participating in the revitalization of the New Castle, Pennsylvania theatre where the Harry, Sam, Abe and Jack Warner first displayed silent films, such as The Great Train Robbery.
Visionaries all, they eventually produced The Jazz Singer, the first successful "talkie", that starred Al Jolson. The theatre's revitalization will be accompanied by the development of storefronts and restaurants that warner says will bring new life to downtown New Castle.
Warner is also hard at work on The Promise, a feature documentary about the rags to riches tale of the four brothers who parents escaped Czarist Russia to pursue a better life. 1904 marked their first entertainment venture, when father Ben pawned his precious gold watch and a horse so that his sons could purchase a kinetoscope projector for nickel per ticket showings of The Great Train Robbery.
Warner says the documentary will focus on her beloved grandfather Harry, the studio's "strategic general" and financial whiz.
The "Dream Factory" is another way through which Warner hopes to preserve her grandfather's legacy. The nonprofit will make available to children interviews with "people at the top of their game" whatever their station in life.
"I want to start a library of these interviews to inspire and motivate children," says Warner. "Why do people love what they do, and how can they communicate their insights?"
Warner also is a founder of the International Youth for Human Rights Festival, dedicated to helping young people between the ages of 12 to 21 to use film as a medium for social betterment, and serves on the board of advisors for the Citizens Commission for Human Rights.
She sees this as part of her obligation to leave a better world for her own grown children: daughters Tao and Vanessa and sons Jesse and Cole (known as Cole Hauser — an actor whos credits include roles in Good Will Hunting, Tigerland and Paparazzi).
Warner Sisters has acquired the rights to all of the unproduced works of Howard Koch. Praising recent socially conscious movies, such as Good Night and Good Luck — a look at the McCarthy-era blacklisting of supposed Communist sympathizers — Warner says it's fitting that Clint Eastwood occupies her grandfather's studio bungalow as he helps Warner Bros. prepare to celebrate its 85th birthday.
"Hollywood has an ethical responsibility," says Warner. "As Frank Capra once said, we have the power to speak to millions of people two hours at a time in the dark."
