Hollywood: Three to Get Ready

No spotlights swept the sky when it happened. No vinyl microskirted star lets babbled by; no gawkers gathered under a spangled marquee. Yet the event was as important as any premiere in Hollywood history. On the day in 1966 when Jack Warner sold his studio to the parvenu Seven Arts Productions, a new movie epoch began.

Warner was the last of the old-style movie moguls — the wily pioneers like Goldwyn, Mayer and Cohn — who ruled their lots like caliphs, buying stars like steers, firing directors as easily as office boys, and...