Jump to content

William Fox (producer): Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
No edit summary
Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit
Line 16: Line 16:
| father = Michael Fuchs
| father = Michael Fuchs
}}
}}
'''William Fox'''<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/215390/William-Fox|title=William Fox|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |accessdate=10 August 2011}}</ref> (born as '''Vilmos Fuchs'''<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.gr/books?id=qj5VDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=vanda+krefft+the+man+who+made+the+movies&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieibS09ZbdAhXHOSwKHUFGBQoQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=vanda%20krefft%20the%20man%20who%20made%20the%20movies&f=false|title=William fox biography|last=|first=|date=|website=|access-date=}}</ref> January 1, 1879 – May 8, 1952)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57459159|title=The Cinema of Central Europe|last=Szabo|first=Istvan|publisher=Wallflower Press|year=2004|isbn=1904764215|editor-last=Hames|editor-first=Peter|location=London|pages=|oclc=57459159}}</ref><ref name=Fox/> was a [[Hungarian-American]] [[motion picture]] executive, who founded the [[Fox Film|Fox Film Corporation]] in 1915 and the [[Fox Theatres|Fox West Coast Theatres]] chain in the 1920s. Although he lost control of his movie empire in 1930, his name lives on in the names of various media ventures, including [[20th Century Fox]], [[Fox Broadcasting Company]], and [[Fox News Channel]].
'''William Fox'''<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/215390/William-Fox|title=William Fox|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |accessdate=10 August 2011}}</ref> (born as '''Vilmos Fuchs'''<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://books.google.gr/books?id=qj5VDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=vanda+krefft+the+man+who+made+the+movies&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwieibS09ZbdAhXHOSwKHUFGBQoQ6AEIJDAA#v=onepage&q=vanda%20krefft%20the%20man%20who%20made%20the%20movies&f=false|title=William fox biography|last=|first=|date=|website=|access-date=}}</ref> January 1, 1879 – May 8, 1952)<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57459159|title=The Cinema of Central Europe|last=Szabo|first=Istvan|publisher=Wallflower Press|year=2004|isbn=1904764215|editor-last=Hames|editor-first=Peter|location=London|pages=|oclc=57459159}}</ref><ref name=Fox/> was a [[Hungarian-American]] [[motion picture]] executive, who founded the [[Fox Film|Fox Film Corporation]] in 1915 and the [[Fox Theatres|Fox West Coast Theatres]] chain in the 1920s. Although he lost control of his movie empire in 1930, his name lives on in the names of various media ventures, including [[Fox Broadcasting Company]] and [[Fox News Channel]].


==Early life==
==Early life==

Revision as of 20:53, 17 January 2020

William Fox
William Fox in 1921
Born
Vilmos Fuchs

(1879-01-01)January 1, 1879
Tolcsva, Kingdom of Hungary
DiedMay 8, 1952(1952-05-08) (aged 73)
Manhattan, New York, United States
Resting placeSalem Fields Cemetery, Brooklyn
OccupationEntrepreneur
Spouse(s)
Eva Leo
​
​
(m. 1899; "his death" is deprecated; use "died" instead. 1952)​
Children2
Parents
  • Michael Fuchs (father)
  • Hannah Fried (mother)

William Fox[1] (born as Vilmos Fuchs[2] January 1, 1879 – May 8, 1952)[3][4] was a Hungarian-American motion picture 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 movie empire in 1930, his name lives on in the names of various media ventures, including Fox Broadcasting Company and Fox News Channel.

Early life

Fox was born in Tolcsva, Hungary[5] and originally named Vilmos Fuchs.[6] His parents, Michael Fuchs[2] and Hannah Fried, were both Hungarian Jews.[4][7][8] The family immigrated to the United States when William was nine months old and settled in New York City, where they had twelve more children, of whom only six survived. Wilhelm worked as a newsboy and in the fur and garment industry as a youth.

Film career

In 1900, he started his own company, which he sold in 1904 to purchase his first nickelodeon. Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, he concentrated on acquiring and building theaters. Beginning in 1914, New Jersey-based Fox bought films outright from the Balboa Amusement Producing Company in Long Beach, California, for distribution to his own theaters and then for rental to other theaters across the country. He formed the Fox Film Corporation on February 1, 1915, with insurance and banking money provided by the McCarter, Kuser and Usar families of Newark, New Jersey, and the small New Jersey investment house of Eisele and King. The company's first film studio was leased in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where many other early film studios were based at the beginning of the 20th century.[7] He now had the capital to acquire facilities and expand his production capacity.

In 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 (Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957)), and the work of Theodore Case to create the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, introduced in 1927 with the release of F. W. Murnau's Sunrise. Sound-on-film systems such as Movietone and RCA Photophone soon became the standard, and competing sound-on-disc technologies, such as Warner Bros.' Vitaphone, fell into disuse. From 1928 to 1963, Fox Movietone News was one of the major newsreel series in the U.S., along with The March of Time (1935–1951) and Universal Newsreel (1929–1967).

In 1927, Marcus Loew, head of rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, died, and control of MGM passed to his longtime associate, Nicholas Schenck. Fox saw an opportunity to expand his empire, and in 1929, with Schenck's assent, bought the Loew family's holdings in MGM. However, MGM studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were outraged, since, despite their high posts in MGM, they were not shareholders. Mayer used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to sue Fox for violating federal antitrust law. During this time, in the middle of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had virtually wiped out his fortune, ending any chance of the Loews-Fox merger going through even if the Justice Department had given its blessing.

Fox lost control of the Fox Film Corporation in 1930 during a hostile takeover. A combination of the stock market crash, Fox's car accident injury, and government antitrust action forced him into a protracted seven-year struggle to fight off bankruptcy. At his bankruptcy hearing in 1936, he attempted to bribe judge John Warren Davis and committed perjury, for which he was sentenced to six months in prison. After serving his time, Fox retired from the film business.

For many years Fox resented the way that Wall Street had forced him from control of his company. In 1933 he collaborated with the writer Upton Sinclair on a book Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox in which Fox recounted his life, and stating his views on what he considered to be a conspiracy against him by Wall Street.

He died more or less unnoticed in 1952 at the age of 73 in New York City. No Hollywood producers came to his funeral. He is interred at Salem Fields Cemetery, Brooklyn.

In 1935, Fox Film Corporation, under new president Sidney Kent, merged with the upstart Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century-Fox. (Darryl Zanuck, the driving force behind the creation of 20th Century-Fox, was married to actress Virginia Fox. This has led to some erroneous claims on Internet movie sites that Zanuck was William Fox's son-in-law. In fact, Virginia Fox and William Fox were not related.) 20th Century Fox was itself merged into Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 1985 (and in 2013, 20th Century Fox with most of News Corporation's entertainment assets were spun out into 21st Century Fox which also use William Fox's name). News Corporation (and subsequently 21st Century Fox), 20th Century Fox's corporate parent, continues to make movies and started the Fox Network, one of the four (later five) principal commercial broadcast television networks in the United States. However as of December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company (which owns and operates networks such as ABC and ESPN) announced plans to purchase 21st Century Fox, which includes 20th Century Fox, for $52.4 billion,[9] the deal was completed on March 20, 2019.

Fox personally oversaw the construction of many Fox Theatres in American cities including Atlanta, Detroit, Oakland, San Francisco and San Diego.

For numerous years, many historians claimed that 20th Century Fox was founded in 1915, the same year Fox founded his film enterprise. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, although many historians claimed 1935 as its original founding.

Personal

Fox was married to Eva Leo (1881-1962)[10] and had two daughters.

In 1943, Fox served a five month and seventeen day sentence on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice and defraud the United States, in connection with his bankruptcy.[11]

References

  1. ^ "William Fox". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
  2. ^ a b "William fox biography".
  3. ^ Szabo, Istvan (2004). Hames, Peter (ed.). The Cinema of Central Europe. London: Wallflower Press. ISBN 1904764215. OCLC 57459159.
  4. ^ a b "William Fox". Calendar of Szabó Ervin Library, Budapest (in Hungarian). Retrieved 20 November 2009.
  5. ^ "A 20th Century Fox is magyar alapította". Népszabadság (in Hungarian). 2008-12-10. Archived from the original on 2010-04-04. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
  6. ^ "Fried Fuchs" is give by Britannica, cited in William Wellman, Jr. (7 April 2015). Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 184. ISBN 978-1-101-87028-0., and by Adrian Room in Adrian Room (1 July 2010). Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed. McFarland. p. 183. ISBN 978-0-7864-5763-2.
  7. ^ a b Solomon, Aubrey (2011). The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935: A History and Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. ISBN 9780786462865. OCLC 690102781.
  8. ^ "Twentieth Century Fox". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 26 March 2010.
  9. ^ "The Walt Disney Company To Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc., After Spinoff Of Certain Businesses, For $52.4 Billion In Stock" (Press release). The Walt Disney Company. December 14, 2017. Archived from the original on December 14, 2017. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
  10. ^ "Ancestry. Com".
  11. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/1943/05/04/archives/william-fox-freed-from-prison-on-parole-has-served-5-months-in.pdf
Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Fox (producer).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Fox_(producer)&oldid=936284206"