Fox Film

Last updated

Fox Film Corporation
Industry Film
Predecessors
  • Greater New York Film Rental Company
  • Box Office Attraction Company
FoundedFebruary 1, 1915;109 years ago (1915-02-01) in Fort Lee, New Jersey
Founder William Fox
DefunctMay 31, 1935;89 years ago (1935-05-31)
FateMerged with Twentieth Century Pictures
Successor 20th Century Studios
Subsidiaries
  • Fox-Case Corporation
  • Fox Movietone Corporation
  • Sunshine Comedy

The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American independent company that produced motion pictures and was formed in 1915 by the theater "chain" pioneer William Fox. It was the corporate successor to his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attraction Company (founded 1913).

Contents

The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee, New Jersey, but in 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood, California to oversee the studio's new West Coast production facilities, where the climate was more hospitable for filmmaking. On July 23, 1926, Fox Studios bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.

After the Wall Street crash of 1929, William Fox lost control of the company in 1930, during a hostile takeover. Under new president Sidney R. Kent, the new owners merged the company with Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century-Fox in 1935.

History

Background

Founder William Fox William Fox 1921.jpg
Founder William Fox

William Fox entered the film industry in 1904 when he purchased a one-third share of a Brooklyn nickelodeon for $1,667. [lower-alpha 1] [1] He reinvested his profits from that initial location, expanding to fifteen similar venues in the city, and purchasing prints from the major studios of the time: Biograph, Essanay, Kalem, Lubin, Pathé, Selig, and Vitagraph. [2] After experiencing further success presenting live vaudeville routines along with motion pictures, he expanded into larger venues beginning with his purchase of the disused Gaiety theater, [lower-alpha 2] and continuing with acquisitions throughout New York City and New Jersey, including the Academy of Music. [3]

Fox invested further in the film industry by founding the Greater New York Film Rental Company as a film distributor. [4] The major film studios responded by forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908 and the General Film Company in 1910, in an effort to create a monopoly on the creation and distribution of motion pictures. Fox refused to sell out to the monopoly, and sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act, eventually receiving a $370,000 [lower-alpha 3] settlement, and ending restrictions on the length of films and the prices that could be paid for screenplays. [4]

In 1914, reflecting the broader scope of his business, he renamed it the Box Office Attraction Company [5] He entered into a contract with the Balboa Amusement Producing Company film studio, purchasing all of their films for showing in his New York area theaters and renting the prints to other exhibitors nationwide. [6] He also continued to distribute material from other sources, such as Winsor McCay's early animated film Gertie the Dinosaur . [7] [8] Later that year, Fox concluded that it was unwise to be so dependent on other companies, so he purchased the Éclair studio facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, along with property in Staten Island, [9] [10] and arranged for actors and crew. The company became a film studio, using the name Box Office Attraction Company; its first release was Life's Shop Window . [11]

Fox Film Corporation

This large stage at the Fox Studio on North Western Avenue was used as the men's dressing room when more than 2,000 people were needed for the Jerusalem street scenes in Theda Bara's Salome (1918) Fox-Stage-1918-1.jpg
This large stage at the Fox Studio on North Western Avenue was used as the men's dressing room when more than 2,000 people were needed for the Jerusalem street scenes in Theda Bara's Salomé (1918)
Silent film The Heart Snatcher (1920) directed by Roy Del Ruth for Fox Film Corporation.

Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, Fox concentrated on acquiring and building theaters; pictures were secondary. The company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee where it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based at the beginning of the 20th century. [12] [13] [14]

That same year, in 1914, Fox Film began making motion pictures in California, and in 1915 decided to build its own permanent studio. The company leased the Los Angeles Edendale studio of the Selig Polyscope Company until its own studio, located at Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, was completed in 1916. [15] In 1917, William Fox sent Sol M. Wurtzel to Hollywood to oversee the studio's West Coast production facilities where a more hospitable and cost-effective climate existed for filmmaking. Between 1915 and 1919, Fox Films earned millions of dollars through films featuring Theda Bara, known as "The Vamp" due to her unique ability to display exoticism. [16]

With the introduction of sound technology, Fox moved to acquire the rights to a sound-on-film process. In the years 1925–26, Fox purchased the rights to the work of Freeman Harrison Owens, the U.S. rights to the Tri-Ergon system invented by three German inventors, and the work of Theodore Case. This resulted in the Movietone sound system later known as "Fox Movietone" developed at the Movietone Studio. Later that year, the company began offering films with a music-and-effects track, and the following year Fox began the weekly Fox Movietone News feature, that ran until 1963. The growing company needed space, and in 1926 Fox acquired 300 acres (1.2 km2) in the open country west of Beverly Hills and built "Movietone City", the best-equipped studio of its time.

Because William Fox opted to remain in New York, much of the Hollywood filmmaking at the Fox Film Corporation was instead managed by Fox's movie makers. [17] Janet Gaynor would also become one of the company's most prominent stars by the late 1920s. [17]

Decline

When rival Marcus Loew died in 1927, Fox offered to buy the Loew family's holdings. Loew's Inc. controlled more than 200 theaters, as well as the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio. The Loew family agreed to the sale, and the merger of Fox and Loew's Inc. was announced in 1929; MGM studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were not included in the deal, and fought back. Using powerful political connections, Mayer called upon the Justice Department's antitrust unit to delay giving final approval to the merger. William Fox was badly injured in a car crash in the summer of 1929, and by the time he recovered, he had lost most of his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929, ending any chance of the Fox/Loew's merger being approved, even without the Justice Department's objections.

Overextended and close to bankruptcy, Fox was stripped of his empire in 1930 [18] and later ended up in jail on bribery and perjury charges. Fox Film, with more than 500 theatres, was placed in receivership. A bank-mandated reorganization propped the company up for a time, but it soon became apparent that despite its size, Fox could not stand on its own. William Fox resented the way he was forced out of his company and portrayed it as an active conspiracy against him in the 1933 book Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox .

Merger

Under new president Sidney Kent, the new owners began negotiating with the upstart, but powerful independent Twentieth Century Pictures in the early spring of 1935. Twentieth Century had begun in the Samuel Goldwyn Studios in 1932 under founders Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck. The two companies merged that spring of 1935 and became 20th Century-Fox. The company was purchased by News Corporation in 1985, becoming "20th Century Fox" without the hyphen, and in 2020 was purchased by The Walt Disney Company and renamed 20th Century Studios. For many years, 20th Century-Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915; for instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, marking its 75th rather than 95th anniversary in 2010. [19]

Products

Feature films

A 1937 fire in a Fox film storage facility destroyed over 40,000 reels of negatives and prints, including the best-quality copies of every Fox feature produced prior to 1932; [20] although copies located elsewhere allowed many to survive in some form, over 75% of Fox's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost. [21]

Newsreels

Title card from a 1935 Fox Movietone News newsreel Movietone title card.jpg
Title card from a 1935 Fox Movietone News newsreel

In 1919, Fox began a series of silent newsreels, competing with existing series such as Hearst Metrotone News , International Newsreel , and Pathé News . Fox News premiered on October 11, 1919, with subsequent issues released on the Wednesday and Sunday of each week. Fox News gained an advantage over its more established competitors when President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the newsreel in a letter, in what may have been the first time an American president commented on a film. [22] In subsequent years, Fox News remained one of the major names in the newsreel industry by providing often-exclusive coverage of major international events, including reporting on Pancho Villa, the airship Roma , the Ku Klux Klan, and a 1922 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. [23] The silent newsreel series continued until 1930. [24]

In 1926, a subsidiary, Fox Movietone Corporation, was created, tasked with producing newsreels using Fox's recently acquired sound-on-film technology. The first of these newsreels debuted on January 21, 1927. Four months later, the May 25 release of a sound recording of Charles Lindbergh's departure on his transatlantic flight was described by film historian Raymond Fielding as the "first sound news film of consequence". [25] Movietone News was launched as a regular newsreel feature December 3 of that year. [26] Production of the series continued after the merger with Twentieth Century Pictures, until 1963, and continued to serve 20th Century Fox after that, as a source for film industry stock footage. [24]

Unlike Fox's early feature films, the Fox News and Fox Movietone News libraries have largely survived. The earlier series and some parts of its sound successor are now held by the University of South Carolina, with the remaining Fox Movietone News still held by the company. [24]

Serials

Fox Film briefly experimented with serial films, releasing the 15-episode Bride 13 and the 20-episode Fantômas in 1920. William Fox was unwilling to compromise on production quality in order to make serials profitable, however, and none were produced subsequently. [27]

Short films

Hundreds of one- and two-reel short films of various types were also produced by Fox. Beginning in 1916, [28] the Sunshine Comedy division created two-reel comedy shorts. Many of these, beginning with 1917's Roaring Lions and Wedding Bliss , starring Lloyd Hamilton, were slapstick, intended to compete with Mack Sennett's popular offerings. [29] Sunshine releases continued until the introduction of sound. [30] Other short film series included Imperial Comedies, Van Bibber Comedies (with Earle Foxe), O'Henry, Married Life of Helen and Warren, and Fox Varieties. [31] Fox's expansion into Spanish-language films in the early 1930s also included shorts. [32]

Notes

  1. $56,530 in 2023 dollars
  2. Unrelated to the Broadway theatre operating at the same time, also called the Gaiety
  3. $11.4 million in 2023 dollars

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">20th Century Studios</span> American film studio

20th Century Studios, Inc. is an American film studio owned by the Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, in turn a division of The Walt Disney Company. It is headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles, leased from Fox Corporation. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by 20th Century Studios in theatrical markets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newsreel</span> Form of short documentary film, containing news stories

A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding a feature film, but there were also dedicated newsreel theaters in many major cities in the 1930s and ’40s, and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theaterette where newsreels were screened continuously throughout the day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theda Bara</span> American actress (1885–1955)

Theda Bara was an American silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the more popular actresses of the silent era and one of cinema's early sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp", later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Major film studios</span> United States film production and distribution companies with high output

Major film studios are production and distribution companies that release a substantial number of films annually and consistently command a significant share of box office revenue in a given market. In the American and international markets, the major film studios, often known simply as the majors or the Big Five studios, are commonly regarded as the five diversified media conglomerates whose various film production and distribution subsidiaries collectively command approximately 80 to 85% of U.S. box office revenue. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary motion picture business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate.

Movietone News was a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States. Under the name British Movietone News, it also ran in the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1986, in France also produced by Fox-Europa, in Spain in the early 1930s as Noticiario Fox Movietone before being replaced by No-Do, in Australia and New Zealand until 1970, and Germany as Fox Tönende Wochenschau. An Indian version called Indian Movietone News ran in 1942 and 1943 before getting replaced by Indian News Parade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Fox (producer)</span> Hungarian-American film producer (1879–1952)

Wilhelm Fried Fuchs, commonly and better known as William Fox, was a Hungarian-American film industry executive who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s. Although he lost control of his film businesses in 1930, his name was used by 20th Century Fox and continues to be used in the trademarks of the present-day Fox Corporation, including the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News, Fox Sports and Foxtel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goldwyn Pictures</span> Former American motion picture production company

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company that operated from 1916 to 1924 when it was merged with two other production companies to form the major studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was founded on November 19, 1916, by Samuel Goldfish, an executive at Lasky's Feature Play Company, and Broadway producer brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, using an amalgamation of both last names to name the company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">20th Century Fox Records</span> American record label

20th Century Fox Records was a wholly owned subsidiary of film studio 20th Century Fox. The history of the label covers three distinct 20th Century Fox-related operations in the analog era, ranging chronologically from about 1938 to 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pathé</span> French media production and theater businesses

Pathé is a French major film production and distribution company, owning a number of cinema chains through its subsidiary Pathé Cinémas and television networks across Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph M. Schenck</span> Film studio executive (1876–1961)

Joseph Michael Schenck was a Russian-born American film studio executive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twentieth Century Pictures</span> American film production studio (1933–1935)

Twentieth Century Pictures, Inc. was an American independent Hollywood motion picture production company created in 1933 by Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck from Warner Bros., and co-founded by William Goetz from Fox Studios, and Raymond Griffith. The company product was distributed theatrically under United Artists (UA), and leased space at Samuel Goldwyn Studios.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movietone sound system</span> Sound system for film

The Movietone sound system is an optical sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures, ensuring synchronization between sound and picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film that records the pictures. The initial version of this system was capable of a frequency response of 8500 Hz. Although modern sound films use variable-area tracks instead, modern motion picture theaters can play a Movietone film without modification to the projector. Movietone was one of four motion picture sound systems under development in the U.S. during the 1920s. The others were DeForest's Phonofilm, Warner Brothers' Vitaphone, and RCA Photophone. However, Phonofilm was principally an early version of Movietone.

Castle Films was a film company founded in California by former newsreel cameraman Eugene W. Castle (1897–1960) in 1924. Originally, Castle Films produced industrial and advertising films. Then in 1937, the company pioneered the production and distribution of 8 mm and 16 mm films for home projection, moving its principal office to New York City. It became a subsidiary of Universal Pictures and was eventually renamed Universal 8 from 1977 before folding in the early 1980s due to competition from home video.

Blackhawk Films, from the 1950s through the early 1980s, marketed motion pictures on 16mm, 8mm and Super 8 film. Most were vintage one- or two-reel short subjects, usually comedies starring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and other famous comedy series of the past. Blackhawk also offered newsreels, documentaries, and silent feature films. With the rise of the video market in the early 1980s, Blackhawk began producing video versions of many of their titles in 1981 and within a few years no longer manufactured film copies. The company was later purchased by Republic Pictures in 1985, and the film elements still later by archivist David Shepard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sony Music Studios</span> US music studio

Sony Music Studios was an American music recording and mastering facility in New York City. The five-story building was a music and broadcasting complex located at 460 W. 54th Street, at 10th Avenue, in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. It opened in 1993 and closed in August 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pathé Exchange</span> Former film production and distribution company

Pathé Exchange, commonly known as Pathé, was an American film production and distribution company, largely of Hollywood's silent era. Known for its trailblazing newsreel and wide array of shorts, it grew out of the American division of the major French studio Pathé Frères, which began distributing films in the United States in 1904. Ten years later, it produced the enormously successful The Perils of Pauline, a twenty-episode serial that came to define the genre. The American operation was incorporated as Pathé Exchange toward the end of 1914 and spun off as an independent entity in 1921; the Merrill Lynch investment firm acquired a controlling stake. The following year, it released Robert J. Flaherty's groundbreaking documentary Nanook of the North. Other notable feature releases included the controversial drama Sex (1920) and director/producer Cecil B. DeMille's box-office-topping biblical epic The King of Kings (1927/28). During much of the 1920s, Pathé distributed the shorts of comedy pioneers Hal Roach and Mack Sennett and innovative animator Paul Terry. For Roach and then his own production company, acclaimed comedian Harold Lloyd starred in many feature and short releases from Pathé and the closely linked Associated Exhibitors, including the 1925 smash hit The Freshman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deluxe Media</span> American entertainment provisions company

Deluxe Media Inc., also known simply as Deluxe and formerly Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., is an American multinational multimedia and entertainment service provisions company owned by Platinum Equity, founded in 1915 by Hungarian-born American film producer William Fox and headquartered in Burbank, California.

<i>Romeo and Juliet</i> (1916 Fox film) 1916 film

Romeo and Juliet is a 1916 American silent romantic drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Theda Bara. The film was based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and was produced by the Fox Film Corporation. The film was shot at the Fox Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and is now considered to be lost.

<i>Fox News</i> (1919–1930) First newsreel broadcast in the United States

Fox News was the original newsreel established by movie mogul William Fox. It was eventually replaced by Fox's pioneering sound newsreel, Fox Movietone News, which began regular operations in December 1927.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1937 Fox vault fire</span> Fire at film storage facility in New Jersey

A major fire occurred in a 20th Century-Fox film-storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States on July 9, 1937. Flammable nitrate film had previously contributed to several fires in film-industry laboratories, studios and vaults, although the precise causes were often unknown. In Little Ferry, gases produced by decaying film, combined with high temperatures and inadequate ventilation, resulted in spontaneous combustion.

References

  1. Solomon 2014, pp. 10–11.
  2. Solomon 2014, p. 11.
  3. Solomon 2014, pp. 11–12.
  4. 1 2 Solomon 2014, p. 12.
  5. Solomon 2014, p. 13.
  6. Slide 2001, pp. 26–27.
  7. Canemaker 2005, p. 182.
  8. Crafton 1993, p. 112.
  9. Golden 1996, p. 30.
  10. Shepherd 2013, p. 197.
  11. Solomon 2014, pp. 14, 227.
  12. Koszarski, Richard (2004). Fort Lee: The Film Town. Indiana University Press. ISBN   0-86196-652-X.
  13. "Studios and Films". Fort Lee Film Commission. Archived from the original on October 20, 2018. Retrieved May 30, 2011.
  14. Fort Lee Film Commission (2006). Fort Lee Birthplace of the Motion Picture Industry. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN   0-7385-4501-5.
  15. Slide, Anthony (1998). The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. pp.  78–79. ISBN   0-8108-3426-X.
  16. "Theda Bara (1885-1955)". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
  17. 1 2 Eyman, Scott (December 8, 2017). "Review: William Fox, 'The Man Who Made the Movies'". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  18. Perman, Stacy; James, Meg; Faughnder, Ryan (March 8, 2019). "Fox oral history: Inside the legendary studio at the end of its run". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  19. "The Formation of Twentieth Century-Fox". Cobbles. United States. Retrieved December 14, 2023.
  20. Pierce, David (1997). "The Legion of the Condemned — Why American Silent Films Perished". Film History. 9 (1): 5–22. JSTOR   3815289.
  21. Solomon 2014, p. 1.
  22. Fielding 2011, p. 60.
  23. Fielding 2011, p. 61.
  24. 1 2 3 Wilsbacher, Greg. "The Fox Movietone News Donation: A Brief History". Moving Image Research Collections. University of South Carolina. Archived from the original on February 26, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2015.
  25. Fielding 2011, pp. 102–104.
  26. Fielding 2011, p. 105.
  27. Solomon 2014, p. 57.
  28. Solomon 2014, p. 23.
  29. Solomon 2014, pp. 30–31.
  30. Solomon 2014, pp. 49–50.
  31. Solomon 2014, p. 71.
  32. Solomon 2014, p. 145.

Bibliography