- Self - Harry Warner's granddaughter, also narrator: The truth is, they were a phenomenal team that built an empire on a dream and revolutionized Hollywood while making the most classic, relevant movies of their time.
- Self - Harry Warner's granddaughter, also narrator: Today the family business has been reincarnated into another body - a corporation that's part of an even bigger corporation, as part of an even bigger corporation. In other words, a conglomerate. So, does anyone even know who the original Warner brothers where? Can people possibly imagine that this huge company was run by an actual family - people with a story, a past, a passion and a purpose?
- Self , author and professor: Warner Brothers, by far, was known in Hollywood as a studio with a social conscience. Warner Brothers had a motto to educate, entertain, and enlighten.
- Self - Harry Warner's granddaughter, also narrator: Every crisis was an incentive for the Brothers to take their next step. It became difficult to get a supply of films. They formed the Duquesne Film Exchange, acquiring films for themselves and for others to rent, realizing distribution was more profitable than exhibition. When one of the films arrived as a negative print, Jack advertised it as the first picture made with all colored actors.
- Self - Harry Warner's granddaughter, also narrator: World War I broke out. Sam and Jack got hired to make training films for the Army. In their first film, "Open Your Eyes," Jack played the part of a soldier who caught the clap.
- Roy Edward Disney: "The Jazz Singer" was the thing that inspired "Steamboat Willie," which was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. "The Jazz Singer" came out and Walt goes, "Got to have sound." Started a whole new, in secret - now, the studio at the time was five people - and, in secret, from the other four he had the animator start up this talkie. And became this world wide phenomenon. But, it was because of the success of "Jazz Singer" that that all happened.
- Samuel Goldwyn Jr.: Opening night of "The Jazz Singer" at Grauman's Chinese, Irving Thalberg came out of the theater and he turned to my father and he said, "This thing won't last. It's a one shot."
- Self - Harry Warner's daughter: Harry is convinced that he cannot do business with Germany as long as Hitler's in power. This is the first studio in Hollywood history to stop doing business with Nazi Germany. And other people thought he was crazy. People, you know, like Louis B. Mayer, said, "We can't live without the German box office."
- Self , author and professor: Warner Brothers looked at some of the harsher realities of the United States and that's another, I think, sort of courageous move on Warner Brothers part. In that, they looked at the prison system. They looked at sort of the underside of America.
- Tab Hunter: If you could think of Jack Nicholson as the Joker, that would be sort of Jack Warner.
- [laughs]
- Self , author and professor: We think about the history of Hollywood, you ask somebody, "What is the purpose of Hollywood?" Most people would jump to entertain me. Let us entertain you. Take me away from my worries. Harry Warner certainly was committed to education and a lot of that, I think, he got from his father. His father said to him, "You want to go into films, then take that tool and make it a tool for social good."
- Self - history professor, University of Southern California: "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" was definitely a milestone in American cinema. It's the first American movie that is an explicitly anti-Nazi film. They were writing it in 1938, shooting it in the beginning of 1939, and it premiered in April 1939. Until the the Production Code Administration had consistently turned down every project that had to do with Nazis. They would not let the studios make anything attacking Hitler.
- Self - film historian: "Casablanca", of course, is the greatest romantic melodrama ever made. It has the character at the center who's very bitter and very cynical about everything, who ultimately is redeemed by love and by the noble effort of the Second World War.
- Self - history professor, University of Southern California: What happened in February 1938, the FBI uncovered a Nazi spy ring operating in the United States. And they brought them to trial in early October in New York. And the Warner Brothers realized that this was their opportunity to come in and make their anti-Nazi film. Because, now they would making a film about a real case. It was an FBI story. They flew out one of their writers to watch the trial in New York. They then signed up Leon Turrou who had been the FBI agent who broke the case. And Turrou flew out to Los Angeles as a consultant, were he wrote in a number of articles how impressed he was by the Warner Brothers and by the real dedication of the studio and everyone involved with the production to make an anti-Nazi film.
- Self - Producer: You know, you always wonder about film as whether it's mirroring what's going on or leading - what's going on.
- Self - Harry Warner's granddaughter, also narrator: United they stood. Divided they fell. Yet, their ideals live on - in all those who believe in using media to educate, entertain and enlighten. In other words, those who have a chutzpah to put their tuchus on the table to make their dreams a reality.
- Self - Actor: Harry had not wanted to sell the studio and then Jack insisted it was a good price, a good time, it's time for them to get out of it, and so on, and he argued and argued and argued with Harry and Harry finally said, "Okay." Jack sold it to Semenenko who was the head of the Bank of Boston at that time. Semenenko had it for one day and sold it back to Jack without Harry's involvement - which is a - wow!
- Self - historian: It's not just he Hollywood industry that is selling its product overseas, but, Americans across the board are doing business with Nazi Germany. You know, the International Business Machine, for example, IBM, they're working with Nazi Germany. In fact, they develop the device to catalog the folks who will go to the prison camps. The Warner Brothers wanted to make a film called, "Concentration Camp." This was based on the reporting that had been coming in about the concentration camps. Dachau opened in March of 1933. I mean, people forget that the camps started that early. Harry Warner wanted folks in the studio to start collecting stories. You know, start going through newspapers. They're going to focus on the horrors of the camp. I mean, they can't be as graphic as they could be today. But, about people losing their civil liberties, people being rounded up, you know, put into these camps for forced labor. So, the Production Code says, "No, you can't do that." And they say that, "If you try to go through with this film, we'll contact the State Department." It's a funny thing to me if Warner Brothers knows there's concentration camps in the mid-30s, then other people know. And so, it was a real attempt at making a very hard hitting film that they didn't get to make, unfortunately.
- Tab Hunter: You had an industry that was run by Jews, censored by Catholics, and an audience of Protestants. So, only in America.