Warner Bros is 100 on April 4, 2023, and as part of its centennial celebrations it’s giving the press a look inside its secret archive of movie history.
The company has produced film & TV classics from every decade; The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Friends. The corporate archive is where its most infamous props, costumes and set pieces go be watched over in a temperature controlled warehouse by a team of 10 dedicated archivists.
The company was founded by the Warner brothers themselves; Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack. The Jewish immigrants from Poland started screening early silent films and then moved to Hollywood to open one of the very first film studios.
Warner Brothers embraced early audio recording technology with The Jazz Singer, a 1927 film with both music and dialogue, that ushered in the era of the talkies.
The corporate archive is not a generic prop production warehouse, full of objects to reuse or rent out to other films, this is the cream of the prop crop.
Just some of the treasures include;
- multiple Batmobiles & Batman cowls
- the pink Cadillac from Elvis
- one of the robotic “sentinels” from The Matrix
- Freddie Krueger’s hand from the Nightmare series
Archivist Jesus (no last names) told The Guardian,
We have to be very selective about the items we do want to keep.”
There is SO much. Have a look around…
(Photos, Warner Bros Archives; via The Guardian)
