Vilmos Fried (; January 1, 1879 – May 8, 1952), known professionally as William Fox, was a Hungarian-American film industry executive who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s. Although he lost control of his film businesses in 1930, his name was used by 20th Century Fox ( The Disney Company) and continues to be used in the trademarks of the present-day Fox Corporation, including the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News, Fox Sports, and Foxtel.

Early life

He was born in Tolcsva, Hungary. His parents, Michael Fuchs and Anna Fried, were both Hungarian Jews. The family immigrated to the United States when William was nine months old and settled in New York City, where they had twelve more children, of whom only six survived. To help the family financially William found a job selling candy and newspapers in Central Park. At the age of eight, he fell off the back of an ice truck, breaking his left arm. This accident left him with a permanent impairment. He also found employment in the garment industry. In 1910, Fox managed to successfully lease the New York Academy of Music and convert it into a movie theater. He also continued to focus his concentration in New York and New Jersey. He would also sign lead Western actor Tom Mix to his company in 1917, with the move significantly boosting Mix's popularity.

In 1925–1926, 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 (Josef Engl (1893–1942), Hans Vogt (1890–1979), and Joseph Massolle (1889–1957)), 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: A Song of Two Humans. Sound-on-film systems such as Movietone and RCA Photophone soon became the standard, and competing sound-on-disc technologies, such as Warner Bros.' Vitaphone, became obsolete. From 1928 to 1964, 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). Despite the fact that his film studio was based in Hollywood, Fox opted to instead remain in New York and was more familiar with his financiers than with either his movie makers or movie stars. Prominent Fox Film Corporation actress Janet Gaynor even acknowledged that she barely knew William Fox, stating "I only met him to say how do you do." Years after his prison release, U.S. President Harry Truman would grant Fox a Presidential pardon.

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References

Sources

  • Historical Article on William Fox