William Fox

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William Fox (January 1, 1879 - May 8, 1952) was a pioneering

American motion picture executive, who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915

and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s. Although, in 1936, Fox sold

his interest in these companies to settle bankruptcy, his name lives on in the

names of various media ventures which are currently owned by Rupert Murdoch,

most notably the Fox TV network, Fox News Channel, 20th Century Fox, and 21st

Century Fox.

Fox was born in Tolcsva, Hungary and originally named

Wilhelm Fried. His parents, Michael Fried and Anna Fuchs, were both German

Jews. Eventually the family emigrated to the United States and settled in New

York City. Wilhelm worked as a newsboy and in the fur and garment industry as a

youth, then later changed his name to William Fox. In 1900, he started his own

company which he sold in 1904 to purchase his first nickelodeon. In 1915, he

started Fox Film Corporation.

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, 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

Brothers' 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 financial holdings, 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.

He died 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