The studio saved by a dog

This blog generally aims at topics of universal interest, but its author is, after all, human. And when you have a close relative employed by a major film studio, matters related to that studio draw your attention. And so I break with usual practice, and base this brief post not on my reading of a book, but on my reading of a book review. Not a practice that I'm proud of, to be sure, but our world is entering a depression, and I'm not inclined to go out and spend the $50 list price just so I can more fully do the book justice.

When we see the Warner Bros. logo, I suspect many of us think of a certain rabbit with a carrot. "Eh, what's up doc?," and all that. But a new coffee table book, available for Christmas purchase (only $31.50, actually, from Amazon), shows that the studio -- founded by four brothers named Harry, Abe, Sam and Jack -- was once exemplified by a much nobler animal. A dog, a dog whose popularity saved the studio from bankruptcy. The dog's name? Rin Tin Tin. The famous canine hero, much later popularized in a television series, was the star of Warner Bros. in the 1920's, and the subject of 19 films, most, unfortunately, now lost to history.

According to the review, the book suggests that for most of its existence, Warner Bros. films were notable for telling bleak stories with unhappy endings: a long line of gangster films, Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, the films of director Stanley Kubrick, and even some of the later films including some of Clint Eastwood's. These films, according to the book, were marked by an "existential chill, the air of fated hopelessness."

Whether this early reputation continues for a studio that has released, in more recent years, such films as March of the Penguins, The Polar Express, the Pokémon movies, Scooby-Doo, and the entire Harry Potter series, I'll leave to the reader. Certainly, however, the Batman films and the Matrix series display a darkness of theme and ambiguity in resolution that would be worthy of the studio's Casablanca days of the 1940's.

So if you have the spare loot, buy the book, read the history, enjoy the scads of photo stills from nearly a century of movies, and -- for Tawny's sake -- plunk down the price of admission to the next WB film that shows up in your local theater!

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Richard Schickel and George Perry, You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story, Running Press, $50. Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek in today's NY Times.