I’ve seen people put Confederate flags in their windows. If that’s free speech, robots are free speech.

I’ve heard that one attributed to Dorothy Parker about Calvin Coolidge.

Ain’t no savagery like British Dame savagery.

‘If you can see past Al Jolson’s predilection for performing in blackface...’ would’ve been a better way of phrasing this idea.

A Marx brothers stage performance was interrupted by the announcement that Woodrow Wilson had died, and Groucho responded, “How can they tell?”

My favorite Jack Warner story:

As I recall, 1776 (which he made as an independent producer after retiring from Warner’s) was viewed by him as his baby, his personal “gift” to American culture and history or whatever. When it bombed (along the lines of his other last big hurrah, Camelot), he decided it was finally time to leave the business.

So, in The Groucho Letters, Mr. Marx published a sort of cease-and-desist from Warner Brothers. They were upset that the Marxes were making a movie called A Night in Casablanca. Groucho’s reply was along the lines of “I don’t think anyone is going to confuse Harpo with Ingmar Bergman” and went on to theorize that he…

Came here to say this.

I thought of Louis B. Meyer, Judy Garland’s tormentor.  Face it, none of these guys were very benevolent.

Jack Warner could be one nasty sonofabitch (the story of him basically swindling his brothers out of their own company is legendary), but overall the guy’s studio consistently cranked out some pretty good movies. He also was pretty up front about the kind of guy he was.

Yep, as soon as I saw “Hollywood’s most hated movie mogul”, Cohn was the first person that came to mind.

I recall hearing that Jack Warner wanted the “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” musical number cut out of 1776 so as not to offend his pal Richard Nixon, and even ordered the print destroyed, but it was secretly saved by someone involved with the film and was thus eventually able to be restored. Says a lot about how hated…

I still think Louis B Mayer wins all around SOB. Jack Warner was awful, but in a cutthroat dollars-and-cents kind of way, arrogant and greedy and ignorant.

25 years ago, Warner Brothers’ 75th anniversary was a triumph. They created a traveling week-long film festival featuring films from specific decades each day. Look at this lineup:

I think it’s just a turn of phrase. Jolson loved blackface as much as DeSantis loves Covid.

Jack Warner not only rushed the stage for the Casablanca Oscar, he had his underlings seated near Wallis and put them under orders to make a wall to keep Wallis from reaching the stage first (or at all.)

Nope. Harry Cohn (Columbia Pictures) beats out Jack. May be an apocryphal story but at Cohn’s funeral which was attended by most of Hollywood, Red Skelton said, “Just goes to show you. Give the people what they want and they’ll turn out for it.”

“An enduring image of corporate lore that could be apocryphal but embodies an inner truth anyway finds Harry chasing Jack around the Burbank lot, swinging a lead pipe at Jack’s head.”

He was also well-known for squelching the artistic desires of the actors in his employ: