Chart Industries: link here.
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The Book Page
The Man Who Made The Movies: The Meteoric Rise And Tragic Fall Of William Fox, Vanda Krefft, c. 2017.
Notes on Chapter 21: background
- William Fox, born January 1, 1879
- In 1910, he was 31 years old
- 1905 - 1920: heyday of Hollywood; movie enthusiasm explodes
- Fox Film Corporation, founded by William Fox in 1915, became a major film supplier by the end of the decade
- 1915: the bankers pounce
Regardless of internal changes at Fox, the big changes were external with regard to the movie industry.
We are now entering the age of the Roaring 20's and the end of WWI.
Internally: huge problems for William Fox.
Externally: movie industry with major changes with regard to its financial foundation.
In the mid- to late 1910s, Wall Street came calling.
The bankers had been watching the movie industry to see if the industry had legs. In 1915, the banks pounced.
1915: Harriman National Bank, p. 285.
- one of NYC's most conservative financial institutioins;
- sees the movie industry as having probably the fastest growth rate in American history.
J. P. Morgan & Co, 1917, had reportedly earmarked $100 million for investment in the industry.
Following the Armistice, the industry surged and the banks' profits from movies were enormous.
Three factors:
- movies now respectable;
- capital much more fluid wiht end of the war
- prohibition, ratified on January 16, 1919, those who went to bars now had to go somewhere else -- to the movie theaters.
Of all the changes occurring, none understood them better than Adolph
Zukor, who would become Fox' chief rival. Zukor: Famous Players-Lasky
(later Paramount Pictures). Adolph Zukor would become Fox's chief rival,
the one to catch up with and overtake, the only other studio head whom
Fox considered his equal in intelligence, p. 286.
Zukor: six years older than Fox; born in the town of Risce in the same
Tokay grape district of Hungary as Fox's Tolcsva -- truly amazing. Both William Fox and Adolph Zukor were born in Hungary, come to US and build Hollywood.
Zukor partnered with Marcus Lowe in a chain of nickelodeons. Remember: the book opened with William Fox ready to announce that Fox was going to buy substantial ("majority") number of shares in Loew's MGM.
April, 1912: Zukor formed Famous Players to import Sarah Bernhardt's Queen Elizabeth; later Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, and soon-to-be Fox star William Farnum.
This was well ahead of United Artists which formed in 1919: Mary Pickford, DW Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin.
Now the story of how fast Zukor rose.
Famous Players-Lasky (FPL), by 1917: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, John Barrymore, Dorothy Gish, directors D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Note these names -- soon to come -- United Artists.
By mid-1919: FPL was by far the largest American movie studio.
With the help of JP Morgan, Marcus Loew took his firm public, 1919.
1919 - 1920: Fox plodded on. Were his best days behind him?
Fox News, idea came in summer of 1919.
Fox was starting to lose it. He began taking time off twice a year to rest at a sanatorium.
In 1920, William Fox was 41 years old.
