The Mogul (1990)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
In 1974, an elderly Jack L. Warner lives in relative obscurity in a Havana retirement home. He suffered a stroke, which leaves him unable to speak or walk. He is watching a television, which morphs from a British period drama to the 1902 film
The Great Train Robbery. Jack is suddenly thrust back into 1903 in Youngstown, Ohio, where he and his brothers screen the film in a rented theater, first marking their impact in the film industry.
In 1918, after years as distributors and minor producers, the Warner Brothers (Sam, Harry, Albert, and Jack) establish a studio in Culver City, California, where they make a successful war film (My Four Years in Germany), but are unable to replicate that success. Eventually, they are forced to move to a studio on Olive Avenue. There, in 1923, a veteran named Lee Duncan brings in a German Shepard that he had found in a bombed out kennel in France. Jack perceives Rin-Tin-Tin as intelligent and manageable, and he proves a massive box office hit with his films, saving WB. A young man named Darryl F. Zanuck rises from writing one of Rin Tin Tin’s pictures to become Warner’s leading executive producer.
In 1925, Sam begins to negotiate with the company Western Electric to develop a new sound technology for film. While the others are skeptical, Sam manages to get them on his side, and the new Vitaphone system is put to work for the 1928 feature
The Jazz Singer, starring Broadway star Al Jolson. However, the day before the premiere of the film, Sam Warner dies of pneumonia (though the film implies his brothers may have had a hand in his death).
The Jazz Singer puts Warner Brothers on the map, and they follow up this success with crime films like
The Public Enemy and
Little Caesar. However, WB’s success and their authoritarian rule over the studio also puts them into conflict with the various guilds and unions in Hollywood. Jack provides information about some of his staff involved with strikes or the burgeoning communist movement to the MPPDA to ensure they don’t get work, and testifies with other studio heads like Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn in front of the Fish Committee about Communist activities in Hollywood.
As the Revolution comes to California, the Warners are split as to where to go. Harry wants to return to Canada, while Jack advocates taking their resources to Cuba. As the Warner lot becomes closer to the Red line, the Warner Bros attempt to flee. Harry and Albert both receive telegrams from Jack, telling them the location of a smuggler that could take them to Canada. However, Harry ends up in a location just outside of Los Angeles, where he is soon caught in the middle of a battle, and killed. Albert is killed in a similar fashion, as his limousine is caught in gunfire.
Jack soon arrives in Havana, where he formally relocates the Warner lot (recreated to look like the old Culver City one), and quickly uses his existing resources and experience to establish Warner Bros as a leading film producer for the new Cuban market, and himself among the White American business clique. He is bitter when he learns that Zanuck has stayed in the mainland, and taken over operations of the old studio for the Reds, feeling Zanuck had betrayed him personally, though he finds a new protege in David O. Selznick, a former RKO executive.
Despite this, there are fewer resources in Cuba than in the US, so he pools his resources with previous bitter rival Cohn and Columbia Pictures. This partnership proves very fruitful in 1938 when the two co-produce an adaptation of White exile Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller
Gone with the Wind, starring Errol Flynn and Vivian Leigh.
The mega-success of Gone with the Wind impresses General MacArthur, who commissions the new Warner-Columbia alliance to make films promoting the “American Way”, and offers him massive subsidies through a new program from the “Department of Communications” to make movies to promote Cuban policies.
The program begins with epic American historical features like
Washington’s War and
Gettysburg, before Cuba enters the war in South America. Warner and Cohn are commissioned to make a film about the war effort. Plagiarizing an old World War I script from the pre-Revolution days,
In the Jungle proves a massive success, and provides a road map for Warner and Columbia to make large, epic war films, with racist views of native Cubans and big battle scenes. These Macaco films further curry favor with MacArthur, and Warner and Cohn end up in his inner circle, influencing policy, and becomes Cuba’s leading tastemaker.
During the war, Frank McCarthy, a former line producer at Columbia, crosses over into WB, and becomes a protege of Selznick. McCarthy’s brother Tommy is a high ranking figure in the Irish Mob (McCarthy, in fact, describes his childhood and young adulthood to Warner as very similar to James Cagney’s character in
The Public Enemy), and Warner is convinced by his friend Meyer Lansky (one of the heads of the Havana Outfit) to promote McCarthy to an executive position.
As the war winds down, and “Macaco films” continue their dominance in cinemas, the old rivalry between Cohn and Warner intensifies, especially as they attempt to jockey for the subsidies. Cohn seems to start to win in this contest, especially with his advocacy for a limitation of Franco-British films being released (
The Third Man and other films from Alexander Korda, now a pawn of Warner’s other old rival Louis B. Mayer becoming major hits). Still, the two use their combined influence to have Joseph I. Breen, the long time censor for the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America, removed for “hindering the production of patriotic films” (Breen had denied releases to several Macaco films for their violence). Warner and Cohn also try to hinder the rise of television in Cuba, but Warner eventually gains the foresight to start a television department, with shows like
Caracas [1] and western Old
Colorado, which he is then able to sell to the BBC. McCarthy decides to leave Warner as well to form his own studio in Santiago, prompting Warner to acrimoniously cut ties and call him “just another Zanuck”
Cohn’s health starts to take a turn for the worst, and with declining profits (Warner taking a larger share of their co-productions due to technicalities in the contracts), he makes Columbia public. Warner takes advantage, secretly organizing a syndicate to buy up Columbia stock. Eventually, he buys up most of it. Cohn assistant brings news of this to Cohn in the hospital and he dies of complete shock.
Warner completes his takeover and merger of Columbia, celebrating it by knocking down the wall that previously separated the studios. Warner-Columbia, however, is only kept alive by the Department of Communication subsidies, with their stable of Macaco and Westerns becoming less and less successful.
MacArthur’s 1963 death and the rise of Kennedy prove further disastrous, as Kennedy ends the “propaganda state”, stopping subsidies, despite Warners plea to Joe Kennedy. To make matters worse, his son Jack M Warner (Jack Jr.), whom he had become estranged from, defects to the mainland. Warner tries to make one last attempt at capitalist success, making both a traditional epic Macaco film in
The Fires of Venezuela and buying the rights to TH White’s
The Once and Future King, and adapting the
Ill-Made Knight.
Both films have massive production difficulties, with
The Fires of Venezuela dealing with the Brazilian military withdrawing support and the harsh tropical environment in Brazil, and the tensions between Warner and British actors in
The Ill-Made Knight. Both films are gigantic flops, and unable to handle the growing debt and expenses, Warner declares bankruptcy, and sells off the studio piecemeal to buyers.
Now living in obscurity with relatives, his mental state deteriorates from dementia. In one instance, while with Harry’s son Lewis, he mistakes Lewis for Harry, and hints at how he had Harry and Albert killed in the Civil War. He also suffers a stroke while watching
A Long Night, produced by McCarthy as a deliberate attack on the Macaco films that made Warner famous.
Warner lives the rest of his days in assisted living, before his death in 1978. A few years later, Harry and Albert’s remaining children learn evidence from the mainland that Jack had both of his brothers killed by misleading them, along with testimony from
In the Jungle star William Demarest that all three had killed Sam Warner right before the debut of
The Jazz Singer. The resulting legal battle inside the family was still ongoing as of the film’s release (settled in 1994).
[1] A show about a former NBI agent turned JSB operative in Venezuela, foiling plots by “agitators” and Red American agents
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Special thanks to
@Mr. C for reminding me of this idea. Also to
@Bookmark1995 for their piece, which gave some info used (Read it here:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/reds-fanfic.341837/page-272#post-15745852)