Collection: Warner Bros Biography and Art Gallery Collection

Warner Bros. is an American entertainment company founded on April 4, 1923, by the four Warner brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack. The corporation produces film, television and music entertainment. As one of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock Entertainment, DC Entertainment, and the former The WB Television Network and Kids' WB. Warner Bros. owns half of The CW Television Network.

Looney Tunes is Warner Bros. popular animated series. In 1929, as a tool to promote the music of recently acquired Brunswick Records, Warner Brothers developed a series of animated shorts set to music. Warner Brothers hired Leon Schlesinger, Rudolph Ising, and Hugh Harmon to produce these cartoons, which were dubbed Looney Tunes as a play on Disney's popular music-based cartoon Silly Symphonies. The first character to grace the Looney Tunes stage was Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid. Unfortunately, when Harmon and Ising left Warner Bros. in 1933, they took the rights to Bosko with them. Luckily, this setback did not hinder the series' progress. Looney Tunes ran in theaters from 1929 to 1970 and continued to develop a cast of lovable characters. The wise cracking Bugs Bunny, the lisping Daffy Duck, and the stuttering Porky Pig are just some of the famous characters to emerge from the endearing cartoon series.

The Looney Tunes series' popularity was strengthened even more when the shorts began airing on network and syndicated television in the 1950,s under various titles and formats. However, since the syndicated shorts' target audience was children and because of concerns over children's television in the 1970's, the Looney Tunes shorts were edited, removing scenes of violence (particularly suicidal gags and scenes of characters doing dangerous stunts that impressionable viewers could easily imitate), racial and ethnic caricatures (particularly stereotypical portrayals of blacks, Mexicans, Jews, American Indians, Asians, and Germans as Nazis) and questionable vices (such as smoking cigarettes, ingesting pills, and drinking alcohol).. From the 1970's to the 1990's, Warner Bros. also made several feature films and television specials, mostly starring Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, including the 1996 feature Space Jam. Though the cartoons are rarely seen on TV today (since Nickelodeon stopped airing the shorts in 1999), the Looney Tunes characters and their endearing mannerisms have left a permanent mark on American culture.