Fox Film

The Fox Film Corporation was formed by William Fox on February 1, 1915, as the corporate successor to his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film Company.

On July 23, 1926, the company bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound on to film.

When rival Marcus Loew died in 1927, Fox offered to buy the Loew family’s holdings. Loew’s Inc. controlled more than 200 theaters, as well as the MGM studio. When the family agreed to the sale, the merger of Fox and Loew’s Inc. was announced in 1929. But MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer was not included in the deal and fought back. Using political connections, Mayer called on the Justice Department’santitrust unit to delay giving final approval to the merger. Fox was badly injured in a car crash in the summer of 1929, and by the time he recovered he had lost most of his fortune in the fall 1929 stock market crash, ending any chance of the merger going through even without the Justice Department’s objections.

Overextended and close to bankruptcy, Fox was stripped of his empire in 1930 and ended up in jail. Fox Film, with more than 500 theatres, was placed in receivership. A bank-mandated reorganization propped the company up for a time, but it soon became apparent that despite its size, Fox could not stand on its own.

In 1935, a merger with Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck’s Twentieth Century Pictures created Fox Film’s successor, 20th Century–Fox (the dash would get dropped in 1985).