Word: warner
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That kind of attention to detail helped auto-parts maker Borg-Warner, which discovered that the Japanese believe a product must look good even if the customer will never see it. Borg-Warner, a manufacturing conglomerate, makes a five-speed transmission used in Nissan's popular 280Z and 300ZX sports cars. While the driver sees only the stick shift, Nissan insisted that the whole transmission must shine. "We ran into the Japanese fetish for appearance," says Thomas Hague, the firm's Asian area director. "It's an emotional thing with them." After Borg-Warner polished up its act, Nissan...
...bottom of every Warner Bros. memo sheet was a routine injunction that said, "Verbal messages cause misunderstanding and delays (please put them in writing)." And put them in writing they did, the most star-studded list of memo writers in movie history: the Warner brothers themselves; producers, directors and writers; and a roster of stars that included Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn and George Raft. The best of those tens of thousands of messages have now been collected by Film Historian Rudy Behlmer, whose Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) (Viking; $19.95) is, to any fan of film, an open...
...first memo, which actually dates from 1929, before the avalanche begins, brusquely dismisses Rin-Tin-Tin. The introduction of talking pictures, argues one Warner executive, has turned their canine star into just another unemployed hound, "very obviously, of course, because dogs don't talk." To the regret of Jack Warner, who ran the studios (Brother Harry was president and Albert was treasurer), his other stars could talk and often did. When Davis objects to being cast in something called Hollywood Hotel (1937), her withering look can be seen between her lines to him: "I have worked very hard to become...
...strongest characters in the book is Jack Warner himself. A brilliant egomaniac, he became angry when top producers received all the credit for Warner pictures, and he had a habit of suspending uncooperative stars. Finally, during World War II, Brother Harry had to step in. "You must bear in mind," he wrote, "that everyone is preaching liberty and freedom and the actors are getting to believe it. When the war is over and all the actors and help have come back, you can at that time suspend anyone you want.'' --By Gerald Clarke
...missed an error that would make a publisher blush. The book, in the second paragraph on page 195, informed her teenage audience that it is "safe" to have sex the week before and the week during ovulation. The mistake, undetected until a New Jersey librarian pointed it out, forced Warner Books to recall all 115,000 copies issued since October. Warner will put out a new, corrected edition this month, with a red cover. "I had more than one sleepless night about it," says the New York City therapist about the misguiding misprint of "unsafe." "I'm certainly not happy...