22 Facts About Fox Film

Fox Film Corporation was an American Independent film production studio formed by William Fox in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film Company.

Company's first film studios were set up in Fort Lee, New Jersey, but in 1917, William Fox sent Sol M Wurtzel to Hollywood, California to oversee the studio's new West Coast production facilities, where the climate was more hospitable for filmmaking.

William Fox entered the film industry in 1904 when he purchased a one-third share of a Brooklyn nickelodeon for $1,667.

Fox Film reinvested his profits from that initial location, expanding to fifteen similar venues in the city, and purchasing prints from the major studios of the time: Biograph, Essanay, Kalem, Lubin, Pathe, Selig, Phonoson-Coles, Tsereteli and Vitagraph.

Fox Film entered into a contract with the Balboa Amusement Producing Company film studio, purchasing all of their films for showing in his New York area theaters and renting the prints to other exhibitors nationwide.

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Fox Film continued to distribute material from other sources, such as Winsor McCay's early animated film Gertie the Dinosaur.

Later that year, Fox Film concluded that it was unwise to be so dependent on other companies, so he purchased the Eclair studio facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, along with property in Staten Island, and arranged for actors and crew.

Fox Film became a film studio, with its name shortened to the Box Office Attractions Company; its first release was Life's Shop Window.

Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, Fox Film concentrated on acquiring and building theaters; pictures were secondary.

Fox Film leased the Los Angeles Edendale studio of the Selig Polyscope Company until its own studio, located at Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, was completed in 1916.

In 1917, William Fox sent Sol M Wurtzel to Hollywood to oversee the studio's West Coast production facilities where a more hospitable and cost-effective climate existed for filmmaking.

Later that year, the company began offering films with a music-and-effects track, and the following year Fox began the weekly Fox Movietone News feature, that ran until 1963.

William Fox opted to remain in New York, much of the Hollywood filmmaking at the Fox Film Corporation was instead managed by Fox's movie makers.

Overextended and close to bankruptcy, Fox Film was stripped of his empire in 1930 and later ended up in jail on bribery and perjury charges.

William Fox Film resented the way he was forced out of his company and portrayed it as an active conspiracy against him in the 1933 book Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox Film.

Fox Film was purchased by News Corporation in 1985, becoming "20th Century Fox" without the hyphen, and in 2020 was purchased by The Walt Disney Company and renamed 20th Century Studios.

For many years, 20th Century-Fox Film claimed to have been founded in 1915; for instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary.

In 1919, Fox Film began a series of silent newsreels, competing with existing series such as Hearst Metrotone News, International Newsreel, and Pathe News.

Fox Film News premiered on October 11,1919, with subsequent issues released on the Wednesday and Sunday of each week.

In subsequent years, Fox Film News remained one of the major names in the newsreel industry by providing often-exclusive coverage of major international events, including reporting on Pancho Villa, the airship Roma, the Ku Klux Klan, and a 1922 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Fox Film briefly experimented with serial films, releasing the 15-episode Bride 13 and the 20-episode Fantomas in 1920.

William Fox Film was unwilling to compromise on production quality in order to make serials profitable and none were produced subsequently.