Stanley Warner Corporation

The Stanley Warner Corporation (SWC) had its roots in the Warner Bros. Pictures company, who purchased the Stanley Corporation of America (SCA) theater chain in 1928; a history which informed the crafting of the SWC's name.^[4] Warner Bros. used the former SCA theaters to start their Warner Bros. Theatres chain empire which existed from 1928 until it was forced by consent decree to divest itself of its 436 theaters^[2] following an antitrust lawsuit.^[4] The consent decree made with the United States Department of Justice was reached on January 5, 1951 and in December 1952 a sale of the theaters was made to Fabian Enterprises Inc.^[5] Stockholders voted to form a new company to oversee the theatre chain purchased by Fabian, and the SWC was formally incorporated on January 30, 1953.^[6]

The newly formed SWC was led by M. A. Silver as its director and Simon H. Fabian as the president of its board.^[7] In 1954 the SWC purchased the International Latex Corporation (now Playtex).^[8] The Warner Cinerama theater was one of its theaters, and the company partnered with the Cinerama corporation to operate that venue. The company was also under contract to co-produce Cinerama technology films with the Cinerama company for a five year period during the 1950s.^[9] The company funded the development of Hans Laube's Smell-O-Vision after seeing a demonstration of his 1955 short film My Dream demonstrating a prototype of the technology.^[10]

In 1953, Van Curler Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of Stanley Warner, received a construction permit for a new television station in the Albany, New York, area.^[11] The station began broadcasting as WTRI on channel 35 on February 28, 1954,^[12] and moved to channel 13 as WAST on January 1, 1959.^[13]

In 1967 it merged with the Glen Alden Corporation to form RKO–Stanley Warner Theatres,^[2] a company which had previously acquired the RKO Theatre Corporation chain owned by RKO Pictures when it too had been forced to relinquish its chain by consent decree.^[14] WAST, which had been profitable for several years, was spun off.^[15] After an attempt to sell the station to RKO General^[16] was scrapped over regulatory concerns,^[17] the Sonderling Broadcasting Corporation of Oak Park, Illinois, acquired WAST for $8 million in 1968.^[18] In 1971, RKO–Stanley Warner was sold to the Cinerama corporation.^[2]