information:highlighting
Early business ventures

In Youngstown, the Warner brothers took their first tentative steps into the entertainment industry. In the early 20th century, Sam formed a business partnership with another local resident and took over the city's Old Grand Opera House as a venue for "cheap vaudeville and photoplays ". The venture failed after one summer. Sam then secured a job as a movie projectionist at Idora Park, a local amusement park. He convinced the family of the new medium's possibilities, and purchased of a Model B Kinetoscope for $1000 from a projectionist "down on his luck". Jack contributed $150 to the venture by pawning a horse.

The enterprising brothers screened a well-used copy of The Great Train Robbery throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania before renting a vacant store in New Castle, Pennsylvania. This makeshift theatre, called the Bijou, was furnished with chairs borrowed from a local undertaker. Jack, who was still living in Youngstown, arrived on weekends "to sing illustrated song-slides during reel changes".

In 1906, the brothers purchased a small theater in New Castle, which they called the Cascade Movie Palace. In 1907, the Warner brothers established the Pittsburgh -based Duquesne Amusement Company, a distribution firm that proved lucrative until the advent of Thomas Edison 's Motion Picture Patents Company (also known as the Edison Trust), which charged distributors exorbitant fees. In 1909, Harry agreed to bring Jack into the family business, sending him to Norfolk, Virginia, where Jack assisted Sam in the operation of a second film exchange company. Later that year, the Warners sold their business to the General Film Company for "$10,000 in cash, $12,000 in preferred stock, and payments over a four-year period, for a total of $52,000" (equivalent to $ 1,800,000 today).