Motion Picture Studio Executive, Film Producer, Film Pioneer. He co-founded Warner Bros. Pictures with his siblings Harry, Sam, and Albert Warner. The youngest of 12 children of Polish-Jewish immigrants, he was born Joseph Leonard Eichelbaum in London, Ontario, Canada. His father was an itinerant peddler who pursued get-rich-quick schemes throughout the northeastern US. In 1903, the family pooled their resources and bought a fleapit nickleodeon in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Business brain Harry handled the receipts while young Jack, an aspiring musical comedy star, entertained the audience during intermission. Their attempts to build a film distribution exchange were crushed by the powerful Edison Trust in 1910, but they carried on and began producing one-reelers in 1912. They scored their first blockbuster with the World War I propaganda feature "My Four Years in Germany" (1918) and with the profits built a handsome studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Their first star and main breadwinner was the canine hero Rin-Tin-Tin. In 1923, Warner Brothers went public as a corporation with Harry as president, Sam the CEO, Albert the treasurer, and Jack the production chief. They launched an ambitious expansion campaign by acquiring the Vitagraph Company, Burbank-based First National Pictures (where they set up their new headquarters), and a nationwide chain of theatres, but by 1927 the organization was financially stretched to the breaking point. Salvation arrived with the Warners' experiments with talking pictures, initiated by Sam Warner before his early death. The phenomenal success of "The Jazz Singer" (1927) touched off the talkie revolution and firmly established Warner Bros. as one of the giants of the American film industry. While Harry and Albert handled the corporate end in New York City, Jack ran the studio with an iron fist and a production philosophy of maximum economy consistent with quality. He held his stars to unfavorable contracts they had signed as unknowns and was famously sued by James Cagney, Bette Davis, and Olivia de Havilland over his draconian policies. Even the family was not spared from his ruthless behavior. In 1956, the three surviving brothers agreed to sell most of their shares in the company. Jack held onto his instead, gaining total control of the studio while watching the stock triple in value. Harry never spoke to him again and the episode made Jack persona non grata with the rest of the Warner clan. (This may explain why he is buried not in the Warner Family Mausoleums but in a private garden nearby). Throughout it all he kept a sense of humor, which he usually indulged without tact and at the least opportune moments; Jack Benny said of him, "He would rather tell a bad joke than make a good movie." (Example: On being introduced to Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek, he muttered that he had forgotten his laundry). In 1967, he finally sold his interest in Warner Bros. to Seven Arts Productions (creating the merger of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts), maintaining a position as an independent producer until his retirement at 80. He wrote an autobiography, "My First Hundred Years in Hollywood" (1965).