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MRS. FOX and
$780,000,000
By a tremendous whirl of the wheel of fate, William Fox, once head of a mighty film company, now returns to the industry in greater power than ever before. How the faith and bravery of Mrs. Eve Fox, his wife, helped him to assume this position is one of the most fascinating stories in all movie history
By EDWIN C. HILL
Famous News Commentator of the Air and Metrotone Globe-Trotter
Hal Phvte
Edwin C. Hil the author
International
Above, at the top of the page, is Mrs. William Fox. Due to her, the man who was once a poor immigrant boy is now practically the dictator of the motion picture industry. Directly above, William Fox as he looks today, perceptibly aged by his long battle in the courts.
WILLIAM FOX believes, and quite sincerely, I think, that he stands pretty well with God. Saved from absolute ruin on more than one occasion by the miraculous appearance of vast sums of cash out of nowhere, he has arrived at the conclusion that the Lord is with him when he is right — which, in most cases, he holds himself to be. His conviction that he enjoys at least a defensive alliance with the Almighty must have been strengthened by the recent decision of the highest court in the land in refusing to review the dictum of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals which confirmed him in the exclusive ownership and control of the vital patents covering the photo-electric process of recording sound on film. That decision by the Supreme Court of the United States would seem to elevate the pioneer motion picture producer of New York and Hollywood to domination of the whole motion picture world. By a tremendous whirl of the wheel of fate, the man who was forced out of the control of his own company, Fox Film Corporation, early in 1930, is lifted up out of the obscurity to which he had been condemned to the very heart and center of motion picture production. If competent judges are correct he stands on top of the mountain. He is the Boss. All of them must go to him, Fox, if they continue to make pictures with sound recorded on film. This is so because the supreme arbiter of law and the facts in these more or less United States confirm him in the absolute ownership of what are known as the Tri-Ergon patents, German processes for photographing sound on motion picture film by the photo-electric method, a process essential to the making of sound pictures and without which, indeed, they could not be made.
That is the grip William Fox would seem to have on the industry, a grip apparently unassailable and unbreakable now that the Supreme Court has washed its hands of the whole bitter, involved dispute between Fox and his ancient enemies. And the tale of how he acquired those vital key patents, of how he almost let them slide out of his hands and was saved only by the furious interposition of Mrs. Fox, of how through all the buffets and vicissitudes of fortune, when driven to desperation and near-panic by disastrous turns in his affairs, he clung to them, is one of the most fascinating tales in motion picture history. For $60,000, a bagatelle, a handful of loose change to this man who dealt in millions and tens of millions, he acquired the monopoly, the absolute ownership of the indispensable
The New Movie Magazine, January, 1935