Review of You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story - Part 1

Just finished watching this five hour version of the film history of Warner Bros. on the PBS "American Masters" series. Lots of fascinating clips of various pictures from the studio over the years starting with their first one from 1918 called My Four Years in Germany. From there, we hear of a young man named Darryl Zanuck and his early days as a writer on the studio's "Rin-Tin-Tin" pictures, to the triumph of the first feature talkie The Jazz Singer and the tragedy of Sam Warner's death the day earlier, to the "gangster movies" that made stars of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, to the eventual stardom of Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. When we get to the '50s, we're briefly shown titles of Warner's TV shows as well as highlight clips of classic cartoons like Duck Amuck and What's Opera Doc? along with Doris Day's musical heyday and Elia Kazan's discoveries of Marlon Brando and James Dean. By the last two hours comes various titles from the '70s to now that show how committed Warner Bros. is to compelling dramas from big stars like Clint Eastwood (who narrates here) and George Clooney as long as they also provide crowd pleasing blockbusters. Perhaps the way this documentary glosses over some bad times and flops makes this less than ideal as a definitive history of one of the greatest movie studios of all time, but still You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story should provide plenty of reasons while watching all those scenes to want to go to the nearest library or video store and check many of their movies out!