William Fox (producer)

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William Fox (1921)

William Fox , as Wilhelm Fuchs , according to sources other than Vilmos Fried (born January 1, 1879 in Tolcsva in Austria-Hungary , † May 8, 1952 in New York ) was a film producer . He was the founder of Fox Film Corporation , which later became 20th Century Fox .

Life

William Fox was born Wilhelm Fuchs as one of 13 children of a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family in Tolcsva . His parents were Michael Fried and Hannah Fuchs. The family emigrated to New York City when he was a child. At the age of eleven, he left school to support his parents. After an unsuccessful attempt to build a career in the textile industry, Fox bought its first movie theater in 1904, which was then still called Penny Arcade or Nickelodeon . The audience could watch short film strips there, which rarely lasted more than five to ten minutes. From these beginnings, a chain of 15 houses quickly developed, mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Fox quickly realized that there was a higher profit margin on film distribution than showing it, and founded The Greater New York Rental Company . In 1914, a film production company was added to his cinema and distribution company, which he founded that year. For this purpose Fox rented a studio in Fort Lee , a suburb west of New York in the state of New Jersey, which at the time was the center of the US film industry, which was still located on the east coast.

In 1915 he founded the Fox Film Corporation , in which he combined his three companies in the cinema, distribution and production industries. In the same year he made Theda Bara the first vamp and thus the first sex symbol in cinema. Thanks to the tremendous financial success of A Fool There Was , one of the early feature films, the company quickly grew into a prosperous company. In 1919 the company finally moved to Hollywood, which in those years developed into the most powerful film metropolis in the world. In 1921 he successfully fended off an attempt by the Patent Company to buy out his companies.

By the end of the 1920s, his company's output had grown to around 50 new films annually and over 250 cinemas. One of the greatest artistic successes was the film Sunrise , directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau . Fox also made the leading actress of the film Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, after the success of Das Glück in der Mansarde , directed by Frank Borzage from 1927, into one of the most popular dream couples in cinemas, their success with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert as well as the team Ronald Colman / Vilma Bánky competed.

William Fox tried to establish a monopoly-like position in the film industry in the late 1920s. At the beginning of 1929 he reached an agreement with the shareholders of Loew's, Inc. , the parent company of MGM , on the purchase of the majority of the shares. But a serious traffic accident that left Fox completely cuffed to his hospital bed for two months in the middle of the year, as well as the global economic crisis, prevented the implementation of the agreement. Fox Film Corporation's shares fell from $ 119 to one US dollar in two days after the stock market crash. William Fox was ruined and in 1930 had to sell his company to a consortium of bankers for $ 18 million. Fox Film Corporation merged with 20th Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox in 1935 . Endless litigation with his creditors forced William Fox to declare bankruptcy in 1936. In 1941 he was sentenced to one year in prison for attempting to bribe a judge. In the end, Fox managed to repay all of his debts and lived the rest of his life in some prosperity thanks to several patents that he still held, particularly on various sound film systems such as the Tri-Ergon process.

The author Upton Sinclair described the dramatic fall of the Mughal in 1933 in the reportage Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox .

literature

  • Vanda Krefft: The man who made the movies: the meteoric rise and tragic fall of William Fox , New York: Harper, 2017, ISBN 978-0-06-113606-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rudolf Ulrich (Ed.): Austrians in Hollywood. New edition, Verlag Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-901932-29-1 , p. 136
  2. ^ Hungarian Roots: William Fox, The Man Who Forgot To Sleep And Founded 20th Century Fox ( English ) Hungary Today . June 10, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Fox, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fuchs, Wilhelm; Fried, Vilmos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film producer (founder of 20th Century Fox)
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Tolcsva , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1952
Place of death new York