Fox Film Corporation

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Fox Film Corporation is the name of a former US film production company . The company was founded in 1915 and became part of 20th Century Fox in 1935 .

history

The company was founded in 1915 by William Fox , a pioneer in the American cinema industry. The company emerged from the merger of the film distributor Greater New York Film Rental with the production company Fox Office Attractions Company . Both companies were owned by William Fox and had only been founded two years earlier. The merger to form Fox Film Corporation was one of the first cases in the history of the American film industry in which a distribution and production company merged ( vertical integration ).

William Fox discovered the potential of the then unknown actress Theda Bara (1885–1955) and from 1915 built her up with a previously unprecedented publicity campaign to become the first vamp and thus a sex symbol in cinema history. Other stars from the early days of the studio were the swimmer Annette Kellermann (* 1887), Betty Blythe (* 1887) and the popular western actor Tom Mix . In 1921, director John Ford (1894–1973) joined Fox and remained under contract well into the 1930s. Other notable directors who began their careers with the studio were Raoul Walsh (1887–1980), Frank Borzage (1893–1962) and Herbert Brenon (1880–1958).

In the early years, Fox Film Corporation was characterized by the priority given to theatrical exploitation over film production. The latter merely provided the material with which the cinemas could work. The company's first own film studio was set up in Fort Lee , New Jersey . In 1917, when many other large film production companies moved from New York to Hollywood , Fox also set up a film studio in California under the management of Winfield Sheehan and Sol M. Wurtzel.

In the transition phase to sound film , the studio was able to demonstrate the better technology in the long term with the patent on the optical sound process . In this process, the soundtrack is copied directly onto the film material. In 1925/26 the rights to the inventions of Freeman Harrison Owens and Theodore Case as well as to the Tri-Ergon light tone process were added. From this, Fox developed the sound process, later known as Fox Movietone . In the mid-1920s, Fox began to bring out a newsreel with music for the first time , which was produced under the title Fox Movietone News until 1963. In 1926, Fox Film Corporation acquired 1.2 km² of undeveloped land west of Beverly Hills and built Movietone City , the best-equipped film studio of its time.

In 1929, William Fox prepared the purchase of the majority of shares in Loew's, Inc , the parent company of the rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . In addition, he took over 45% of Gaumont-British , the most important film production company in England. Fox was on the verge of monopoly on both cinema markets when a chain of accidents occurred. Fox was nearly fatally in a car accident that left him in the hospital for two months. The uncertainty among shareholders about further developments exacerbated the studio's crisis after Black Thursday . The value of the studio's shares fell from $ 119 to $ 1 in two days. The US government threatened antitrust proceedings , causing the transactions to collapse. In 1930 Fox had to sell his empire to a consortium of bankers. Like most other companies, Fox-Film also suffered enormous losses in the following years due to the heavily deficient cinema chains, which were burdened by the high investments for the conversion of the sound film and whose attendance figures had fallen sharply since 1930 due to the global economic crisis. Despite the popularity of its stars like Janet Gaynor , Will Rogers and, since 1934, Shirley Temple , the studio was placed under receivership . Under the new President Sidney Kent, the company was finally merged with the film production company 20th Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox in 1935 .

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