William Fox

Producer and Hollywood Mogul - Founder of Fox Studios!

William Fox was born in Hungary as Vilmos Fried in 1879, he died in 1952, New York.

Fox began his US career in the garment trade and moved into the penny arcade business in 1904. He went on to develop successful film exhibition, distribution, and production operations, merging all three interests with the formation, in 1915, of the Fox Film Corporation, one of the most powerful and creative studios of the silent era.

At the peak of his power, Fox owned over 500 movie houses in the US (he bought control of the giant Loew's, Inc.) and the Gaumont Theatres chain in Great Britain. By the end of the 1920s the company had accumulated several top stars and directors and produced a number of prestigious films; the stock market crash of 1929, however, forced the overextended Fox to sell his shares in the corporation. His company merged with 20th Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox in 1935. In 1936, a year after Fox studios merged with 20th Century, Fox bribed a judge during the liquidation of his holdings in bankruptcy proceedings. His sentence, a year in prison, began in 1941. Paroled in 1943, he was a pariah in Hollywood.

Though secure from his many patent holdings, the industry for which he had been so visionary was closed to him. No industry representative came to eulogize at his funeral.

Fox invented the global media newsgathering organization emulated today by CNN, BBC, ITN, DW and others. Fox secured his place in history by commercializing talking pictures and then introducing a larger movie screen.