Fox Film
Industry | Film |
---|---|
Predecessors |
|
Founded | February 1, 1915Fort Lee, New Jersey | in
Founder | William Fox |
Defunct | May 31, 1935 |
Fate | Merged with Twentieth Century Pictures |
Successor | 20th Century Studios |
Subsidiaries |
|
The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American independent film production studio formed by William Fox (1879–1952) in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attraction Company (founded 1913).
The company's first film studios were set up in
After the Wall Street
History
Background
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[c] 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
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
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
With the introduction of sound technology, Fox moved to acquire the rights to a
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
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. The two companies merged that spring 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
Newsreels
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
Notes
- ^ $56,530 in 2023 dollars
- ^ Unrelated to the Broadway theatre operating at the same time, also called the Gaiety
- ^ $11.4 million in 2023 dollars
References
- ^ Solomon 2014, pp. 10–11.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 11.
- ^ Solomon 2014, pp. 11–12.
- ^ a b Solomon 2014, p. 12.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 13.
- ^ Slide 2001, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Canemaker 2005, p. 182.
- ^ Crafton 1993, p. 112.
- ^ Golden 1996, p. 30.
- ^ Shepherd 2013, p. 197.
- ^ Solomon 2014, pp. 14, 227.
- ISBN 0-86196-652-X.
- ^ "Studios and Films". Fort Lee Film Commission. Archived from the original on October 20, 2018. Retrieved May 30, 2011.
- ISBN 0-7385-4501-5.
- ISBN 0-8108-3426-X.
- ^ "Theda Bara (1885-1955)". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved April 21, 2021.
- ^ a b Eyman, Scott (December 8, 2017). "Review: William Fox, 'The Man Who Made the Movies'". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "The Formation of Twentieth Century-Fox". Cobbles. United States. Retrieved December 14, 2023.
- JSTOR 3815289.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 1.
- ^ Fielding 2011, p. 60.
- ^ Fielding 2011, p. 61.
- ^ a b c 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.
- ^ Fielding 2011, pp. 102–104.
- ^ Fielding 2011, p. 105.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 57.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 23.
- ^ Solomon 2014, pp. 30–31.
- ^ Solomon 2014, pp. 49–50.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 71.
- ^ Solomon 2014, p. 145.
Bibliography
- Canemaker, John (2005). Winsor McCay: His Life and Art (Revised ed.). Abrams Books. ISBN 978-0-8109-5941-5.
- Crafton, Donald (1993). Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898–1928. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-11667-9.
- Fielding, Raymond (2011) [1972]. The American Newsreel: A Complete History, 1911–1967 (2nd ed.). McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6610-8.
- Golden, Eve (1996). Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. Vestal Press. ISBN 978-1-879511-32-3.
- Shepherd, David J. (2013). The Bible on Silent Film: Spectacle, Story and Scripture in the Early Cinema. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-04260-5.
- Slide, Anthony (2001). The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry (2nd ed.). Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1-57886-015-9.
- Solomon, Aubrey (2014). The Fox Film Corporation, 1915–1935: A History and Filmography. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-6286-5.
External links
- Media related to Fox Film Corporation at Wikimedia Commons