Wilhelm Fried Fuchs (Hungarian: Fried Vilmos; January 1, 1879 – May 8, 1952)[1], commonly and better known as William Fox, was an 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 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.
Following the 1927 death of Marcus Loew, head of Loews Incorporated, the parent company of rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 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 MGM holdings, unbeknownst to MGM studio bosses Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg who were outraged, since, despite their high posts at MGM, they were not shareholders. Mayer used his strong political connections to persuade the Justice Department to sue Fox for violating federal antitrust laws. During this time, in mid–1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in October 1929 had wiped out virtually his entire fortune, ending any chance of the Loews-Fox merger going through even if the Justice Department had approved it.
References[]
- ↑ Szabo, Istvan (2004). The Cinema of Central Europe. London: Wallflower Press. ISBN 1904764215.
External links[]
- William Fox at Find a Grave
- William Fox at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page William Fox (producer). The revision history lists the authors. The text on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Wiki and Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA). |