William Fox (producer)

William Fox[1] (born 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 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, and Fox Sports.

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 1952)
Children2
Parents
  • Michael Fuchs (father)
  • Hannah Fried (mother)

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 once sold candy[9] in Central Park, worked as a newsboy, and worked in the fur and garment industry as a youth.

Film career

In 1900, Fox 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, became obsolete. From 1928 to 1964, 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).

Following the 1927 death of Marcus Loew, head of the parent company of rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 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 MGM holdings, unbeknownst to studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg who were outraged, since, despite their high posts at MGM, they were not shareholders. Mayer used his strong political connections to persuade the Justice Department to sue Fox for violating federal antitrust laws. 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 October of 1929 had wiped out virtually his entire fortune, ending any chance of the Loews-Fox merger going through even if the Justice Department had approved it.

Fox lost control of his Fox Film Corporation in 1930 during a hostile takeover. In 1935, Fox Film Corporation would merge with 20th Century Pictures, becoming 20th Century-Fox, which was later renamed "20th Century Fox" and, after the 2019 spin-off of Fox Corporation, "20th Century Studios." William Fox never had any involvement with the film studio that famously bore his name. A combination of the stock market crash, Fox's car accident injuries, and government antitrust action, forced him into a protracted seven-year legal battle to stave off bankruptcy. At his bankruptcy hearing in 1936, he attempted to bribe judge John Warren Davis and committed perjury. 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.[10] After serving his time, a disgraced and embarrassed 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 large Wall Street conspiracy against him.

His death in 1952 at the age of 73 went largely unnoticed by the film industry; No one from Hollywood attended his funeral. Fox is interred at Salem Fields Cemetery, Brooklyn.

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

His companies had an estimated value of $300,000,000 and he personally owned 53 percent of Fox Film and 93 percent of the Fox Theaters.[11]

Personal

Fox was married to Eva Leo (1881–1962)[12] and had two daughters.

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References
  1. "William Fox". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
  2. Krefft, Vanda (2017-11-28). William fox biography. ISBN 9780062680679.
  3. Szabo, Istvan (2004). Hames, Peter (ed.). The Cinema of Central Europe. London: Wallflower Press. ISBN 1904764215. OCLC 57459159.
  4. "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. 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. Solomon, Aubrey (2016-03-31). The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935 : a history and filmography. Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4766-6600-6. OCLC 933438482.
  10. "William Fox Freed From Prison on Parole; Has Served 5 Months in Bankruptcy Case". The New York Times. 1943-05-04. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-01-18.
  11. Solomon, Aubrey (2016-03-31). The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935 : a history and filmography. Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN 978-1-4766-6600-6. OCLC 933438482.
  12. "Ancestry.com".
  • Gabler, Neal (1988). An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Crown. ISBN 0-385-26557-3.
  • Krefft, Vanda (2017). The Man Who Made the Movies. Harper. ISBN 9780061136061.
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