A Warner Brothers Cinema showing the World Premiere of Anatole Litvak’s film ‘Confessions Of A Nazi Spy’ in 1939. Credit – General Photographic Agency/Getty Images
During the 2024 Presidential election, Elon Musk used the platform he owns, X, formerly Twitter, to boost Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy. In the process, Musk forged political connections with Trump that may help elevate a range of his business interests, from government contracts with Space X to his Tesla factories in China. Today, Musk reportedly has an office near the White House and official White House email address.
This approach is markedly different than the one leveraged by the fledgling movie industry to gain political recognition almost a century ago. During the 1930s and 1940s, Harry Warner, founding President of Warner Bros., operated the company with three of his brothers, garnered great respect, and steadily strengthened his company in the process. But at no point did Warner angle for a different position of power than he already had, despite close ties with Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
During the Great Depression, Warners Bros. jumped into politics with movies that spoke to the average American in ways other studios overlooked. The Warners were stalwart supporters of FDR and his popular New Deal, and the studio worked hard to sympathize with the plight of everyday Americans during the Great Depression. One film after another depicted authentic struggle that resonated with audiences. Profitable films such as The Public Enemy (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) depicted how financial struggle brought on by government failure could lead to crime.
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Efforts to promote humanitarianism on and off the screen elevated Warner’s personal belief about using movies to entertain and educate. Born into a close-knit Jewish family, Warner grew up fearing pogroms in Poland. When he came with his family to America, Warner he learned great resilience running a range of businesses such as a grocery store, bike rental business, and shoe repair shop. After his younger brother introduced the family to early films, Warner decided to go into film exhibition and led several film companies with three of his brothers before incorporating Warner Bros. in 1923. Despite facing instances of antisemitism, Warner dedicated himself to the idea that movies could make the world a better place.
Many Jewish Hollywood executives at the time were afraid to speak out against antisemitism. The pogroms never far from his mind, Warner fearlessly wore his identity as an immigrant American. When domestic fascism was on the rise in the 1930s, Warner used his growing position of wealth and influence to speak up about this rising threat to everyone he encountered, including studio carpenters and office assistants. Behind closed doors, Warner, along with several other Hollywood power players, funded anti-Nazi espionage in mid-1930 Los Angeles to combat the domestic fascism of groups like the Silver Shirts and German-American Bund. Warner Bros. was also among the first companies to pull their products from Germany in 1933 during Hitler’s ascension.
As political tensions rose in 1938, Warner invited a group of Hollywood executives and insiders—director Mervyn LeRoy, actor Paul Muni, anti-Nazi spymaster and attorney Leon Lewis, and producer David O. Selznick—to read Morris Lazaron’s Common Ground: A Plea for Intelligent Americanism (1938). Written by a military chaplain, Common Ground concludes with a plea of collaboration to preserve democracy by ensuring all “men of good will set our hands to the task of righting the wrongs that afflict our society today.” Warner goal was to encourage a conversation about religious tolerance and building bridges between people of all faiths. To Warner, patriotism meant opposing extremism and encouraging tolerance.
The following year, Warner Bros. produced one of the first major films to attack Hitler directly in Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). Such films were not huge moneymakers, but anti-Nazi productions created discussion about the studio’s larger role in society. Hollywood comedian Groucho Marx once called Warner Bros. “the only studio with any guts.” After Warner Bros. donated profits from the wildly successful This is the Army (1943) to the Army Emergency Relief fund, the New York Times branded Warner Bros. as a company known for “combining good citizenship with good picturemaking.”
Continuing his humanitarian mission to encourage goodwill to all in 1940, Warner donated dozens of ambulances—but notably, not tanks—to Great Britain. That year, Warner also spoke in front of 6,000 studio employees and their families on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. People from every level of employment were there to hear his speech, which he entitled, “United We Survive, Divided We Fall.” Warner was adamant that oppressors should be stopped not only using military force, but also with intellectual muscle and dialogue.
Taking a political stance had consequences, though. Isolationists in the U.S. Senate argued that Hollywood’s anti-Nazi movies were guilty of warmongering and opened an investigation into the industry in late 1941. Senator Gerald Nye (R-North Dakota) led the charge, claiming that studios were “gigantic engines of propaganda.” When it was his turn in front of the Senate subcommittee, Warner defended his work by reading a letter from Nye to Warner Bros. that complimented the quality and patriotic value of Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
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Efforts to cultivate patriotism while standing against extremism paid off in the aftermath of the war. Warner landed multiple closed-door meetings with President Harry Truman. By July 1946, Warner was particularly concerned that U.K. Parliament member Ernest Bevin was open about his opposition to Jewish immigration into his country. In archived letters, Warner asked President Truman for emergency legislation to allow refugees into Alaska, a land mass that could hold millions and even offered to fund the research to develop infrastructure to house them. Sadly, Truman politely declined the offer, telling Warner, “I wish it might be possible, as you say, for the heart of man and the mind of man to get land and people together.” In 1945, Truman had issued an executive action allowing for the immigration of some Jews who had been displaced, but was forced to contend with a resistant Congress in the late 1940s.
Warner showed that you could run a profitable studio while speaking your mind and advancing social values. He successfully invested in synchronized sound technology drove an audience-focused agenda, gave up profits to protest Hitler, and gave up profits again to serve the country by producing films for the Office of War Information during WWII. Warner never altered course when political winds changed, donated to humanitarian causes his entire adult life, and always made sure he was a publicly accessible leader in Hollywood. None of this put into question the continued growth of Warner Bros.
By 1947, after decades of Warner speaking his mind and forgoing or donating profits, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Warner Bros. stock price was steadily increasing with the studio’s profits.
Warner serves as an example of how to a grow business while exercising political savvy from within the private sector.
Now, Hollywood has an opportunity to follow in Warner’s footsteps and take a moral high ground. What’s more, history suggests that this path will bode well for them. When political tensions rose, Warner embraced empathy and compassion for struggling Americans while leveling resilience against global bullies. Warner’s studio produced timely films that mirrored the mores of the era and, as a result, cemented his film company as a successful and courageous studio by finding success through strong moral footing.
Chris Yogerst is a writer, historian, and professor whose work can be found in The Hollywood Reporter and Los Angeles Review of Books. He has written three books, including Hollywood Hates Hitler. His latest book, The Warner Brothers, was named one of the best of 2023 by Sight and Sound magazine.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
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