The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox

About this book

A riveting story of ambition greed and genius unfolding at the dawn of modern America. This landmark biography brings into focus a fascinating brilliant entrepreneurlike Steve Jobs or Walt Disney a true American visionarywho risked everything to realize his bold dream of a Hollywood empire. Although a major Hollywood studio still bears William Foxs name the man himself has mostly been forgotten by history even written off as a failure. Now in this fascinating biography Vanda Krefft corrects the record explaining why Foxs legacy is central to the history of Hollywood. At the heart of William Foxs life was the myth of the American Dream. His story intertwines the fate of the nineteenth-century immigrants who flooded into New York the citys vibrant and ruthless gilded age history and the birth of Americas movie industry amid the dawn of the modern era. Drawing on a decade of original research The Man Who Made the Movies offers a rich compelling look at a complex man emblematic of his time one of the most fascinating and formative eras in American history. Growing up in Lower East Side tenements the eldest son of impoverished Hungarian immigrants Fox began selling candy on the street. That entrepreneurial ambition eventually grew one small Brooklyn theater into a $300 million empire of deluxe studios and theaters that rivaled those of Adolph Zukor Marcus Loew and the Warner brothers and launched stars such as Theda Bara. Amid the euphoric roaring twenties the early movie moguls waged a fierce battle for control of their industry. A fearless risk-taker Fox won and was hailed as a geniusuntil a confluence of circumstances culminating with the 1929 stock market crash led to his ruin.