Motion Picture News (Jan-Feb 1922)

January 21, 1922 635 Left — Fourteenth street. New York, where William Fox began his picture career. Center — Picture of Mr. Fox. Right — The new Fox Film Corp. New York studios and offices, on SSth street Fox’s Eighteenth Anniversary : IGHTEEN years of Motion Picture Progress. To celebrate his eighteen years of motion picture industry, 1 William Fox has set aside the seven days from January 29 to February 4, inclusive, as “Fox Anniversary j Week’’ — for which hundreds of exhibitors throughout the country have booked Fox pictures solid. The following dates tell the story of Mr. Fox in the picture business : i 1904 to 1913 — Greater New York Film Rental Company. 1913 to 1915 — Box Office Attraction Company. 1915 to 1922 — Fox Film Corporation. “Fox Anniversary Week’’ will, in a great measure, be a tribute to a man who not only is a pioneer of the silent drama, but who has fought _ for its progress — who has helped immeasurably to make it the best entertainment for the peoples throughout the world. Mr. Fox got his ideas of what the people wanted from his early experience as a theatre patron and subsequently as the owner of several playhouses in New York City. He had keen visions far into the future, and saw the possibilities in the motion picture industry. He proceeded, along lines entirely original and independent of all trusts and combinations, to honestly achieve his goal — to secure a fair return on his great investments; to entertain and enlighten the people ; and, best of all, to attain the place he now enjoys throughout the wworld. That is the Fox personal triumph! Along with it has been the extraordinary success of the entire Fox Film Corporation, encircling, as it does, the globe ; reaching out to the most remote units of civilization with the character of motion picture which appeals to every tongue and enlightens and entertains the universe. There is no abatement in the “Forward With Fox” ideas ! Always on and on to greater endeavor ! That has been the slogan from the humble beginning eighteen years ago. To do something nobody else had done and to do everything else better than anybody else has. attempted ! With this determination in mind, Mr. Fox defied the men and the combines which controlled the motion picture industry in the old days. He questioned their claim to the ownership of patents and rights that compelled abject submission to their rule. At that time nearly every film exchange had been bought up or put out of business. The trust left Mr. Fox for the last. Flattering offers were made to buy him out. When he refused, the combines declined to give him any more film. But Mr. Fox was not to be subdued. Within a few months he had turned up so much evidence that the Department of Justice at Washington took steps which resulted in the trust methods being wiped out entirely. Mr. Fox then determined to go into the motion picture industry on a greater scale than ever before had been attempted. He knew what the public wanted. He had been the owner and manager of several theatres, including the old Academy of Music on East Fourteenth Street, New York City, where stock productions were presented at popular prices. Mr. Fox organized the Box Office Attraction Company. He sent Winfield R. Sheehan, General Manager, to organize exchanges throughout the country. He dispatched J. Gordon Edwards, his stage manager at the Academy of Music, to Europe to learn how pictures were made there and to get the best ideas as to studio construction. When everything was in readiness, a studio was rented in Fort Lee, N. J., and there the first Fox picture “Life’s Shopwindow” was made. Picture followed picture, and in a short time Mr. Fox was issuing fifty-two pictures a year, or one a week. Those first pictures called forth all the energy, all the resourcefulness, all the daring that Mr. Fox and his small corps of assistants possessed. While other men believed in the slow, steady, careful methods of building, Mr. Fox, with a firm faith in his knowledge of what the public wanted, plunged into picture-making on a big scale, at times having many thousands of dollars invested in a host of productions awaiting release. It was only a short time after he bagan picture-making that he signed a contract with Miss Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimmer, to star in a picture called “A Daughter of the Gods.” The cast of this picture, with the stupendous advertising campaign put behind it, staggered motion picturedom. And when this was released to the public Mr. Fox had another picture ready — “The Honor System.” “A Fool There Was,” “Carmen,” “Regeneration” were a few of the other pictures of those early days that stand out in the memory of producers and exhibitors. They were milestones on the way to modern pictures. The growth of the Fox Company was so steady and so rapid that additional floors were taken over in the building at 130 West 46th Street for offices. British branch offices with headquarters in London were opened. Exchanges were organized in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, in South America and finally in France. And in addition, Fox representatives were traveling throughout the far east arranging with agents to handle the Fox product, which is as popular in Japan and China as it is in the United States. During all this time, Mr. Fox never hesitated to give to the world motion picture public the best in pictures that money and brains could develop. He had William Farnum star in “A Tale of Two Cities,” which, after four years, is still being called for by exhibitors for special runs. It is today, as it was then, a classic in motion pictures. Among the Fox other pictures that have received world-wide praise from both exhibitor and public were “Cleopatra,” “Les Miserables,” “Salome,” “If I Were King,” “The Spy,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp,” “Du Barry,” “Checkers,” “Evangeline,” “ Ali Baba,” etc., etc. Early in 1919, when Fox Film Corporation had grown so big that more rigid efficiency methods were necessary to keep supplyying the demands of the world for Fox Film, William Fox began the building of his present headquarters at Tenth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street. When the offices were in 46th Street, he had studios in Fort Lee., N. J., and several in New York and other places, in addition to the big studios in California. The laboratory for all the studios was also in Fort Lee. To Mr. Fox this meant much valuable time wasted. He wanted all the branches of production under one roof. Today he has accomplished that desire, for in the 55th Street, New York studio, he turns out a completed picture, from negotiation with the author, the engagement of star and cast. • • • and the taking of the scenes on the third floor, to the final printing of the positive film in the most modern laboratory in the world, on the ground floor. The studios in California have been maintained to diversify the scenery and because western pictures should be made in the west. The latest venture of Fox Film Corporation was to open studios in Rome, where J. Gordon Edwards began the making of pictures that would show great events and great figures of world history. It is possible that other studios will be opened in the eastern hemisphere — in England, in France, in Russia. For Fox pictures have become international, like literature. Mr. Fox made “ Cleopatra,” “ Salome,” and now he has brought forth “ Queen of Sheba.” But the triumph to date of all the unique achievements of Fox Film Corporation is the realization of the great aim of Mr. Fox to get into the very heart of the home, to accomplish something of perpetual benefit to humanity, to give to the present and leave for posterity the lessons of the most powerful human-interest story ever screened, ‘‘Over the Hill.” Nothing gives Mr. Fox keener satisfaction than the endorsement by the press, the laity and the clergy of the world, of this masterpiece. “ Over the Hill ” had an uninterrupted run of an entire year on Broadway, New York. Its intense human appeal was responsible for capacity audiences at every performance. It had a record in six of the Broadway theatres and is now being produced throughout the world. “ Over the Hill ” is destined to stand pre-eminent as a Fox achievement of lasting benefit and incomparable worth to the industry and to humanity. Other big special pictures that Mr. Fox has for the millions of motion picture followers the world over are “ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” “ A Virgin Paradise.” “ Shame,” “ Perjury,” “ Footfalls,” “ Thunderclap,” “The Last Trail.” Gratified by the world-wide commendation his efforts have met with, Mr. Fox plans productions that will surpass even his stupendous successes of the present day. The Fox Sunshine Comedies are known, too, throughout the world, and share the restige enjoyed by the popular Mutt and eff animated cartoons and the Fox News service. Bollman and Shipman Become Associated Henry O. Bollman, the young manager of the Dial Film Company, which fostered “The Light in the Clearing,” announces that Ernest Shipman with offices at 17 West 44th St., N. Y. City, has been appointed New York representative for his company. Mr. Shipman will represent the interests of Bollman in his two former productions “King Spruce” and “The Tiger’s Coat” as well as in his new masterpiece.