William Fox

Wilhelm Fried Fuchs (; January 1, 1879 – May 8, 1952), 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. Early life Fox was born Wilhelm Fried Fuchs 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. With his family largely destitute, William found himself as a youth forced to sell candy in Central Park, work as a newsboy, and in the fur and garment industry. At eight, he fell off the back of an ice truck, breaking his left arm; subsequent treatment left it permanently impaired. Film career In 1900, Fox started his own company, which he sold in 1904 to purchase his first nickelodeon. Always more of an entrepreneur than a showman, he concentrated on acquiring and building theaters. Following the purchase of his first nickelodeon, Fox would then use it to create a chain of movie theaters and purchase film prints from major film companies at the time such as Biograph, Essanay, Kalem, Lubin, Pathé, Selig, Phonoson-Coles, Tsereteli and Vitagraph. 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. Beginning in 1914, New Jersey-based Fox bought films outright from the Balboa Amusement Producing Company in Long Beach, California, for distribution to his own theaters and then for rental to other theaters across the country. He formed the Fox Film Corporation on February 1, 1915, with insurance and banking money provided by the McCarter, Kuser and Usar families of Newark, New Jersey, and the small New Jersey investment house of Eisele and King. The company's first film studio was leased in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where many other early film studios were based at the beginning of the 20th century. He now had the capital to acquire facilities and expand his production capacity.