Leon levy fellow in 2009, 2010. And i have just learned that she spends only 10 years on this book. [laughter] maybe a little bit more. But i am very sympathetic. My first biography on john mccloy took me 10 years, although my wife claims it was really 12 years. A biography takes a long time, it is a massive endeavor. Most biographers get biography disease and they cannot stop researching. [laughter] years roll by. Andresult is often rich deeply detailed account of not only a life, but of a time. To my mind, the best part of history. Vandas article on the Entertainment Industry and social issues have been published in articles and in newspapers, including redbook and the los angeles times. Her project explores the life and times of the forgotten movie mogul, or maybe not so forgotten, whose contributions to the art, technology and business of the film laid the foundation for Popular Culture today. So with that very brief enter judgment brief introduction, i will turn over the event to thad. [applause] welcome back. Vanda thank you very much. Congratulations on finishing the book. Ive been reading it. It is completely engrossing and have learned a great deal. I am not a pretty sound film buff and i learned a lot about the silent era. Vanda thank you. I did too, doing the research. Did you have this experience, he mentioned about becoming addicted to researching . Vanda totally. There is always another library to go to, why dont i look there it could be never ending, it could have easily been another 10 years, but at some point you have to finish it. At what point did it occur to you that this should be a biography, a fullscale biography, as opposed to an article . Kai i started vanda i started out really wanted to write a book, rather than writing more articles. I got burnt out on the magazine business, it has been dying for a long time and it was dying before i started writing the book. Then i went to graduate school and i had to write a thesis and that is when i realized that i loved doing the Indepth Research into put the idea in my mind to write a book. And i thought, what will i write a book about . I thought, work with what you have got. One of my very Close Friends was angela fox done, who was his niece. She was the daughter of his youngest. And she actually knew him, she spent time with him while he lived in new york, he never moved to california, and he would come off for several months of the year and her family lived in california said they would visit a lot. Family,supported their as he supported the families of all of his brothers and sisters, so she knew him well. And she had a mini stories many stores, not only from her own experiences, but also from what her mother told her. Was a greate she storyteller as well in one interesting thing in researching was when i would find his quotes, it was her voice too, so she really was the family influenced by him. But there was a sense of tragedy, i really had the sense that there was this tragedy about the family and i just, it was intriguing and i wanted to explore it, so i thought, lets see if anybody has done this, has done william fox. Nobody had. I sort of raised my hand, i will do it. Thad did you have any biographies in mind that u. S. Buyers to you aspired to write in the tradition of . Vanda like many other people i admire robert caro and the Lyndon Johnson biography, it does not really get any better than that. I also really loved richard ohmans oscar wilde. So those were the ones i really of out with and i think kind where like my guiding stars on what i wanted to do. Thad would you like to write us through his career . I think people need a bit of a primer. Vanda let me just so i started off really with the idea that william fox was hollywoods forgotten founding father. And that picture of william is a rare photo of him. In 1915, or taken he16, and he is so hated s so hated publicity, that you will see this in the trades in the 1920s, because nobody had any other pictures of him. He has been if forgotten for so long, why should we bother to remember him . Mostld say that he was the important of all the early studio founders, and many of his contributions really shaped the way that the movie industry developed, and without him it might have been very different. This is his major in during a couple shouldnt, which a calm bushman, which was the studio, originally called the fox corporation. 1935, fox film, after fox lost control of the companies, his company merged with 20thcentury pictures and it was taken over, but fox was out of the picture at that time. The studio is it still on the property that fox bought in west los angeles. It is on an amazing piece of property and it is adjacent to beverly hills. I could not even estimate how many billions of dollars the property would be worth, but he bought it when it was a being filled and the studio was still there. The other studios are in, in not as good neighborhoods. Thad can you Say Something about the name fox and where comes from . Vanda fox, that is not his birth name. His family name was they were from hungary. His parents brought him over when he was about nine months old, 1879. And they had what was referred to as america fever, this sort of enchantment with the United States that was sweeping a lot of europe, as the land where the streets are paved with gold, you can make great fortunes, and the family was really, the father especially was dazzled with it that myth. And brought his family over. The father was 201i think when they came over 21 i think when they came over. They settled in the west side. Thad and i grew up with a boy, we called him fuckes, it is too close to a profanity, so we forget that they are completely cognitive words, but wasnt there a shift away from the fathers name to the mothers . Vanda it is sometimes reported that way, that the original name was read. Reid. But that is not true. Thad ok. Vanda so now, this is just a brief overview of some of the most famous movies he made. This is the most famous one that fox film made it that he directed bynrise, who he had brought over from germany with instructions to make an artistic masterpiece. It certainly is. Although at the time it was a commercial, i would not say failure, but i would say a profound disappointment for fox. And it led to a falling out with murnau. But it is a wonderful film, it endures, and it will be screened tomorrow at the museum of the moving image. So at 3 00 p. M. That is my ad. [laughter] ok, then we will dial back to the early years. S is. Or of the gods daughter of the gods, made in 1916. According to william fox, this was the first milliondollar movie. And that was an astronomical amount at the time to spend on a movie. What it was actually, whether it was 1 million is a question, but the director later said, he really had nothing to gain by saying this, that fox spent about 800,000, which was still astronomical. And it was a big sensation. It was very famous. Sadly, it is lost. I think that is one of the reasons why people are not aware of it, we cannot watch it. And here we have the wonderful cleopatra, another lost movie. This was probably at the height of her career, a spectacular production. A huge hit. And you can see all the money invested in it, the costumes and the scenery. While this is lost, there is i think some hope we might find it, because it went all over the world. Supposedly it even went into china. So who knows. Thad fox was one of the first to go into the asian market, right . He took film out of the United States and into asia. Vanda around the world, because what he recognized was that when world war i started, the great europeat at that point was the leader in the film industry, considered to make the best movies. He realized that they are shutting down production and did have to spend their money fighting a war. And use their manpower fighting a war. So the film industry, there were movie theaters around the world at that point and he realized, what are they going to show . There was an opportunity. And unlike other studios, which were cautious about, how will we get the money out, will the people respond to american movies, there is too much red figured we will solve the problems as they come. Thad which is characteristic of how he did business. That is an impressive thing to me about your book, how much financial stuff you do. You need, it seems like, an mba to do justice to his financial dealings. Were you intimidated by that, or were you a money person . Vanda i did not know anything about the stock market or transactions, but one thing i thought is, i am not as smart as william fox, but if he figured all this out with a third grade education, i had more schooling than that and if i apply myself i could figure it out. But the movie industry runs on money and people, i think tend to think you have to have creativity and talent, and you connect with an audience and that is enough, but the money discounted inbe that the movies are very expensive and it is very easy to lose your shirt and go out of business. Fox was always aware of that. Thad and the third grade education came to me as a shock. I knew that people of the early, the previous generation of tycoons had dropped out of school, carnegie and rockefeller i do not know if he was one. Who were the others . Vanda um, carnegie thad they all dropped out. Vanda henry ford. Thad none of them dropped out at age 10, that shocked me. He took upon himself to become a patriarch of his family because he had an intellectual father. And that is such, you do a great job of tracing the narrative of that, the early days where he worked in the garment district. Can you say a little about his relationship to his father and what drove him to become the man of the family . Vanda i think that was really a crucial relationship, because he he always try to be the opposite of his father. He perceived his father as being irresponsible, lazy, because he said the father worked when he felt like it. And didnt work when he did not feel like it. It put the enormous misery on the family. Mother was the mainstay of the family. And i think they had originally 13 children, but six of them died. And they just lived in a abysmal conditions and fox perceived his father is not carrying. And caring. And that is why he dropped out of school. The father was not doing his job, thinking i will have to do it. He was the oldest son so he went to work and i think that he never his feelings toward his father never really softened. There are stories of later on in life where he does things that are rather cruel to the father because he has not forgiven him, so i think that was a profound motivation, was not to be like his father and to be responsible for the people in his care. That was not just his family members, but people who worked for him and that is also why he was so concerned with the finances, because if the company failed those people would be out of work. And he was responsible for them. He took onemed that a superhuman amount of pressure to be the provider. And this went on multigenerationally. This person who is your source, who alerted you to his sense of humor and the stories, was she somebody that was living off of his money too . Because they all did, right . They were in fear that they would offend him and to be cut off, but he never did. It struck me that it went on for two or three generations. Vanda yes, angela, who was his niece, she and her mother, her parents divorced at that point, and she and her mother and brother were supported by fox, he sent them to private schools, he would take the money, he would take them on shopping exhibitions. And there was a story about the mother, asking if it would be possible to get a new car, and he said sure. They go down to the dealer and he picks out a blue car that matches her eyes. And in 15 minutes it is paid for and she has it. Did not even drive it around the block. So everybody was supported. But that also engendered a lot of nervousness about, what if we Say Something that will offend him, then we will be cut off. Thad it also incapacitates everybody so they are dependent on him and they get used to depending on him, they do not acquire a career so they are always dependent. There were a lot of true dependence that he created. Vanda right. Go outve no incentive to and make their own way. And face the harsh realities of the world. I think he wanted to protect them, because his own upbringing had been so brutal in many ways, how could you expose people that you love to those sort of conditions . It was a difficult choice, i think, but i think that they were incapacitated. He wanted to protect them. Thad he also wanted to be the sort of super father, so everybody is a child around him. , he could be them the super father. Vanda i am not sure that it quite went that far. I did not really find any evidence that he wanted everybody to be sort of flattering toward him. Thad maybe not to do anything to make their own money. Vanda ok, yeah, in the sense that he did not say thad go out and get a job. Vanda right. Or throw them into the deep end of the pool. Thad go ahead. Vanda we will continue. A tale of twond cities, with the biggest male star of the 1910s. This is a dual role. That is him. It is sophisticated and the movie still survives. And there are scenes where he is walking arm and arm with himself. I thought, they would not be put thoughtat in 1917, i it was another actor, but it wasnt. This was a large production. It still exists. Now widely available, but it does exist. Horse which was john fords breakthrough movie. Fox was ready to make another big movie. He had a few years where the studio had to take a step back and make mostly b pictures and this is where fox was ready to move back into the big leagues, and he gives young john ford a chance. And it was, it was publicized to the health and it was a very hilt and it was publicized to the hilt and has everything you want any movie. And it still exists. Movie from have a 1926. A rather biting antiwar movie about the great war. You see maclachlan. Price glory. These are really wonderful movies. And they all exist. They are romances. And with seventh heaven, street angel, and lucky star, same movies, different settings. [indiscernible] good question, yes they are. Four street angel and lucky star i think they did have talking versions, but they do not exist anymore. What remains are the silent ones. They are really lovely. They are heartwrenching and just, i like them. And now we have, anybody recognize that handsome young man . His, Young John Wayne in first starring role. The big trail. We see that it is the most important picture ever produced. Fox said that about almost every movie he made. It was an important movie. And if you watch it, it is a sound picture. Even though it is john waynes first starring role, he does a fantastic job. You can see that this guy is going to be a big star. And he is really handsome, too. So, so that is an overview of the most famous, most significant movies fox made. He made hundreds of others. Most of his work is unfortunately lost, it went up in flames in a warehouse fire. So that is maybe one of the reasons he has not been as fully recognized as maybe he should be, is we do not have a lot of the work to speak for him. Ok. And now oh. This is another contribution for which he really has not gotten, i think, appropriate credit, which is his role in the development of sound. When we think of sound movies, the sound revolution, we think of warner bros. And the jazz singer. That was the First Talking picture released, the first hollywood talking picture, however it used to technology called provide a phone, which was a record playing along with the movie and fox knew it would never work. Exhibitor, an theater owner, and he knew that the projectionists are going to drop the discs, they are going to mismatch of them, lose them, and also, once you make the movie with the disc, you cannot edit it. So not only can you not make creative changes, but what would happen a lot of the time is individual theater owners would cut sections from the film. If there was a scene they might think was objectionable to the audience, they would cut it out. Then you do not have synchronization. So fox really pushed the development of sound on film, which was the winning technology. He pushed at ts western electric division, which was manufacturing the equipment, he pushed them to adapt the equipment for sound on film and it was initially marketed as fox movie tone. When the other studios adopted sound in 1928, this is what they chose, they did not choose Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers transferred over in 1930. Major deserves credit, credit, because i would question ld they have done on a widescale basis. And then we have do you want to Say Something . No. Ok. Foxse you background on personal life, this is the lower east side. Actually, this is the street where his family lived at one point. So these are the rather awful conditions he grew up in. One can romanticize it, but this was the reality. Ok. Picture we have a rare of his family. That is his wife and those are his two daughters, mona and belle. This is from 1911. Eva. Ere is foxs wife, they married when fox was 20 and eva was only 15. There are many remarkable things about the romance, but one of them was she was his only love. There is no talk about girlfriends before that, he fell in love with her when he was 14 and issue is 10, or Something Like that, and he remained true to her throughout his life. And there were never any rumors that he was unfaithful or that he even flirted with any of the beautiful actresses he had under contract. Making him very unusual, not only in that time, but certainly today as well. With what we hear. And this was their house. Fox hall, it was on long island. And considering how wealthy he was and what a major mogul he was, it is really rather modest. Retreat fromhis the hustle and bustle of the film industry. [indiscernible] no, they tore it down. Va died. E, when e fox died in 1952, she died 10 years later and i think it was torn down. Now i think it is a subdivision, many houses there. [indiscernible] you mean [indiscernible] ok. He also had a 20 room apartment on park avenue, so he would stay there, and he had a chauffeur to drive his rollsroyce. Yes . They were married, they married in 1899 and then they he passed away in 1952, so 50 plus years. So and by all reports there was never any, there is one brief period of dissension, but it was because they were under stress and a sort of did not understand each other, they did not understand each others behavior, but i think it was the matter of a week or so. Pretty remarkable. She was totally devoted to him and he was very devoted to her as well. He really only spoke of her in terms and he gave her credit for doing things that i am not sure that she deserved to that degree of credit, but it was just that he adored her so much. This is his one and only hobby, playing golf. Why is heht say, holding the golf club with only one hand . Why is the left arm jauntily placed in his pocket . That is because it is crippled. Andad a childhood accident the joint was removed from the elbow. But he learned how to play golf and he made a couple of holes in one. This was at the country club across the street from fox hill. At fox hill. Finally, here we see him in 1929. And you notice that there is quite a difference in his weight. The last shot was 1924, 5 years later now, this is october 1929. Fox had been in a very bad car accident in july and he was out of commission, recuperating for three month, so he lost a lot of weight. And here he is with two journalists. He is trying to convince them that he is in perfect health. There had been a rumor he suffered a serious brain injury and he had gone crazy, because he had been out of the public eye. And so these rumors proliferated, so he was trying to reassure everybody that he was fully competent. He was not completely recovered, but he made a good show of it and everybody believed he was. Thad this was near the low point of his life, right . He had a real low point. Talk about that. Vanda this was in midoctober, wely october, and of course know it is coming at the end of october, 1929. Yearad earlier in the purchased a controlling share of the Parent Company of mgm. He was planning on merging the companies. In order to buy it, he bought a block of stock from the family car because the father had died in 1927 and the family did not want to run the company anymore. Fox news that if he took it over he would be number one in the industry. And that meant it that he would paramount in first place and that is what he wanted to do, he wanted the largest film company in the world, so he bought the stock. 50rder to do it, he paid million for that block of stock. Hired wasothers higher, but fox came in with cash. And Warner Brothers had come in with stock, but mgm decided cash was better. He had a number of the millions of dollars himself, but to get the remaining money he borrowed a 27 million from a banking firm and also from at t. He borrowed that money for a year. And what he did in early 1929, it was looking like there would be no problem for longterm financing, because the stock market is roaring, and almost nobody saw what was coming. And so he the stock market is about the crash in a couple of weeks here i think, one of the problems was he was out of commission for three months and he really could not see what was happening, he was not paying attention, so he did not take precautions. Maybe he would have locked in the longterm financing more quickly, but he did not have it at that time and then the stock market crashed. Bankers and at t decided they did not want their money back, they wanted control of Fox Enterprises and it became a vicious battle in an atmosphere of financial chaos and paranoia, nobody knew what to believe, so his adversaries were accusing him of mismanaging the companies and just sort of playing around with him, treating them as if they were a personal plaything. They would File Lawsuits against the companies. This leads to his losing the company, because they told him, if you do not sell the controlling stocks to somebody that we approve, that we like, we will ruin your company. And you will be gone. So it would kill him. He loved fox film and he loves fox theaters and rather than seeing them smashed to bits, he sold his interest to the person that they basically appointed. They promised, you can still have a hand in it, we will create an Advisory Board and you can be the head of it. And he believed it, because it was the only thing to do. But of course, they had no interest in having him around anymore. He would make suggestions and they would say, go away, we know what we are doing. And they didnt. That was really the start of his downfall, i think. Thad he was really interesting to me psychologically, because he strove for respectability and he kind of was, yet he was really drawn passionately to film, which had that kind of reputation of, sort of unsavory in this and sketching this un sketchiness, and so did the theater, but he went with that. He purchased a nickelodeon and he got into film very early. In fact, from your description film isirst into interesting, because it is just the image of a tree, with the leaves flickering and he was so intrigued by the image that he had this relationship with film, that everybody is going to love film. In the early days, there was some much controversy around it as a pastime. Can you talk about the resistance . Interested me that he could withstand the scorn of the clergy and the politicians who are saying, you are purveying a trashy kind of entertainment. He had to believe in his artform and he also, but he also had to deal with it against his desire for respectability. Vanda i think he always saw film as having potential to be a major fullfledged artform. He was really a great visionary in many respects. And so i think, yes, he ran into obstacles. I think around 1908 there was an elaborate Newspaper Campaign accusing the movies of being schools for crime. This is where the boy learns how to steal, this is a girls first step to being on the street, she accepts an invitation from a strange man to go to the movies, so it was corrupting children and there was an uproar over that. And the clergy, they were upset, you show movies on sundays, and sunday is supposed to be the lords today. And lords day. And i think was sustained him was he believed in his own vision and he had a longrange vision of this has potential to become an art form. And as a fledgling industry, it was something he could get into and be great at. Where as he started off in the Garment Industry and that was already formed. But the movie industry needed people, it needed builders, so it was an opportunity for him. Thad it also interested me what you say about the early audiences for film and why people went into the theater. It would be to just sit down. You know . You can site where down with your children and be safe from the streets. And so forth. I thought that that was really kind of, like the whole sketch of that early period of film and how people Found Community in film, like in an audience, it was not like they were in isolation, in the early days the experience was like a church kind of community. Which is i think something we have lost, subsequently. The early days had a different social force to it, a different connotation. Vanda as you say, the films were short at that point and this was a novelty, watching pictures, watching moving pictures. They would be short and run on a continuous reel. There would not be a set showtime. You would come in at any time and to leave at any time. And as you say, sometimes it was mothers with children, who wanted to get off the street and sit down. It was a cheap way to do it. Awayt was in a safe place, from the dangers of the street. Thad william fox is interesting as a man, because he had this, he was an optimist and, but he had this high moral vision for himself and i think this was against his father, but it was, he was part of a temple and he was striving for moral exemplary nuts that comes out of the jewish tradition. But then there is that moment at the end when he has gone bankrupt, where he tries to bribe a judge. That to me was the real low point for him, because and that is how truly tragic and unnecessary of a mistake, as opposed to the other struggles, to be supreme in the industry you could say that he was involved in but that is ok come up at the attempt to come back from bankruptcy by bribing the judge, i might beginning it wrong, but there is a moment where he is trying to avoid paying people who are tried to take his money, so he says to himself, i can justify winning this case whatever it may take, if it means that these people who are wrongfully after my money can thwarted. He tries to bribe a judge. Vanda he does not just try. Thad the hilarious thing about how corrupt it seems to become a the judge that he bribes to b e, the judge he bribes, it reminded me of the Michael Flynn thing today. He pleaded guilty, but all the other people are probably going to plead not guilty. But the judge he actually bribed, he was corrupt, he pleaded not guilty and he got off. William fox did a year in prison. This man, this upstanding pillar of the community did almost a year in jail, because even the way that he underwent the trial was too upright for his own good, wasnt that the irony . Vanda the judge had been corrupt for a long time. The fbi had launched an investigation of federal judges, and it stems back to the stock market crash, because several of these guys, the one that fox bribed and another one that he was involved with, they lost their shirts in the stock market crash and they owed, the one that fox bribed, he wowed to the banks and he could not pay it back. His salary was 12,000 a year. What did he have to sell . Justice. Fox was not bankrupt, he still had millions, but there were creditors coming after him for claims that, he had made promises when he was running companies, look, i will pay you on the money and i will personally guarantee you a million dollars. Takenis companies are over and he was not supposed to be held to those agreements, but when the Companies Went into ruin because the people who took over did not know what they were doing and they plundered the companies, they pulled money out, there was no point in going after them, they did not have money, so they go after fox. He thought, wait a minute, the contract says i should not be responsible for this, and i made those promises based on the assumption i would be running the companies and i did not ruin them, somebody else did, so he really felt that he had lost enough already, he had lost his dream, he lost these companies, and he did not just lose control of them but they were wrecked by the successors. So i think that he was just heartbroken, that is my interpretation, and he really went off the rails at that point, he became somebody he did not like and he did not want to be, just the anger and bitterness over his experience led to that break, and that is why he bribed the judge, but the judge did solicit the bride. And when fox was caught, he never could say the word bribed, he kept saying loans. We should all have access to loans, there is no due date, no collateral, there is no interest or expectation of repayment, everything that looks like a bribe. But he immediately confessed and he was, he was the star witness in two trials. And one of the prosecutors said, it is difficult to get these judges, these cases to go to trial because the people who know what went on our guilty too. So the fact fox was willing to testify, it made it possible to try those, the judge and his bagman. Thad there are all kinds of technical ironies in the trial i will not go into, but a fascinating story. I thought i could of walk around around forwalk anybody who has a question. Does anybody have a question . I wonder if you could speak about how he got into the business and he must have been young. Vanda he was. He was in his 20s. And he had been, he started his preparingy, which was made into garments. He was not happy with the company because the clothing industry was already set up, so he was looking around. He had a little bit of money to anest and he walked patst arcade of a different game machines on 14th street, and he thought, that is a good sideline business, it looks like they are making a lot of money. So he started a similar business, bought or rented a property in brooklyn. And it did not do very well, the arcata business, then he decided arcade business, then he there was a moving picture display and he thought, why doesnt he start a theater on the second floor and see if it brings in business . That was the start of it all, because people flocked to that peter. So that theater. Ande began as an exhibitor when he saw the potential for growth, he got all the money he made and he turned around and he bought other properties. And he kept building from there. For several years, he was an exhibitor, then he became a distributor, then a producer. Ok. Sorry, that was a good question. 1904, he purchased his first theater, 1908 he started distributing, and then in 1914 he began producing, the company was not called fox film, it was the box Office Attraction ispany, but how history interwoven, the a brick of the war in europe, it dried up money in the United States and they had to refinance the company and became fox film. He took an investment from some rich guys in new jersey and in february of 1915, the Fox Film Corporation started. [indiscernible] yes. Unlike the other moguls who moved to california, fox stayed in new york because that is where the money was. I would like to preface my question with a few words of unreserved praise. I think you know the reasons why. You and i were fellows at the same time and i think in that experience we learned a lot about what it is to be a biographer, even though i had one under my belt already, but that unreserved passion and discipline, both, that had to go into it, because i just remember the boxes upon boxes of documents that kept coming into your cubby area. A first grader could have built of all ofood fort out the stuff built up around you. This isee it turn into fantastic and everybody who even caught a glimpse of you doing it, i know is deeply proud. There is a question. And the question is this, fox was someone who wanted to turn movies into a very high art form. And as i recall, one of his frustrations was the fact that you couldnt really bring your area up to the level that he wanted to get to. So i am curious, in european, who won that battle finally . Was it the kind of mott and pocketable culture that he was catering to, or did he actually succeed in sort of raising the cultural level in some style . Vanda i think he did succeed. He kept trying and he would make a lot of sort of lowbrow movies because they would make money, but i think he never adjust sort of said, that is it, he never became cynical in that respect. That that was all they were to bubble of appreciating. So he kept pushing. And he became more knowledgeable and more sophisticated. The goodhow to find directors who could achieve both. For instance, john ford with the iron horse. He saw that he could achieve the artistry, and he had a great commercial touch, so that is what, i think that was the ideal for fox, somebody like that. Or frank, who had Street Angels and lucky star. And that was his disappointment with murnau, he was a great artist but he did not have an emotional connection with the audience. Or he didnt have it yet. So i think i would like to think, that fox did not do it alone, many others were pushing that, but the audience gets more sophisticated as well. So this is my wonderful john madison, a great biographer. Excuse me, my father was hungarian, so when i looked it up, the of michigan there was a community and the first movie house and i was absolutely amazed. I thought that the film was a city of sin. They said there were so many jews there that the city was just [indiscernible] and they would walk in the streets. Rbd they invented the black ga of the dissident jews. I know this. Jesus did not have this, i know for sure. And there was a hungarian vanda he was. He ended up very well. I would like to hear about the third inning of ending of, the heartbreaking ending of the fox. And every prophet has one prophecy. What was his prophecy . It is difficult to imagine the power of the movies in the world and it was the movie industry that was open to the jews when they came at the beginning of the 20th century. What was his prophecy . It was a traditional one from many generations, what was his message other than imagination and taking people to another world . It is impossible to look at the human condition. I think i heard that the movies are second only to airplanes in income of exports. Up, sure, i did not make it i do not remember where i read it. What was his prophecy . Vanda i am not sure i know what you mean by prophecy . What about his theme . Tolstoys is tolstoy. Vanda ok, i think he believed was a uh, that there moral message behind movies. Honest, that to be to be responsible, he really believed in also the redemptive power of romantic love. And there are a lot of movies about that. And family, family is really important, which is why he is so angry that there are many irresponsible fathers in movies and he is working up that anger, and on the other side you see these wonderful selfsacrificing mothers, so the family is really the center of society and it must be the anchor. And reallyly romantic love, i would say. Two questions. Did his family, his wife and children, go out to california to three months he went every year . And what was his opinion of . Vanda his wife, when he would come out to california, his wife and at first the two daughters did, but then the daughters got married and the marriages did not last long because somebody explain to me that it was really hard to measure up to william fox, the husband, so by all accounts he was a very devoted family man and the girls, the two daughters, really idolized him. So an ordinary man, great as he might be, will not be to them what the father was. When they got married they each had a son, and the each called the son william fox and after the divorces dispensed with the fathers last names. Andfter they were married, divorced, they can buy to live on the property at fox hall. There were guest houses on the property. They did not come out in the later years, because fox continued to come out in the 1940s after he had been released from prison. They would stay there. They had Health Problems as well. His wife, basically they were inseparable. In terms of foxs opinion of , i did not find anything on that. That he ever said anything on that. But he was, you know, he really wanted to get back into the movie industry, fox did, and in the 1940s he had this ambition to start another studio and it never went anywhere. He was, i think time had passed him by it is health was not great, so it never materialized. He had millions. Yes, he had millions. Sometimesptcy filing, it is written that he lost all his millions, but it is not true. I think it was an emotional expression. He had lots of money. What was his relationship withjoseph kennedy and meyer. Louis b. Mayer. Vanda i did not find anything about his relationship, or knowing kennedy. S, they did have conflict when fox purchased the shares of loews. Was angry that he was not cut in on the deal, that because when fox paid the family, he paid twice with the market price was for the stock. And he thought, why is all the probably going to them, i am running the company. The fact was, according to fox, mayer did not own any stock, he wanted the opportunity to buy some stock and sell it to fox. Fox said if you do not believe enough in your own company and of to have stock, why should i pay you . That was not really the right thing to say. He had always claimed he went to his close friend and supported him in the election and he always said he would to Herbert Hoover and through a monkeywrench into to antitrust, brought the Justice Department to start pursuing antitrust charges against fox. That probably was not true, but probably a useful thing for mayer to complain, the charge. So they had a moment of tension, but then fox had a meeting with him. And when he realized that he was that angry, he had a meeting, and he said i paid at the family 50 million. It could have easily been 52 million. If if it all goes through, there is no antitrust objection, then i will pay you and the two other key figures at mgm, i will pay you the 2 million. So that settled everything. Yes . Oh. Sorry. Did he have any interest in politics in the sense that fox made it somewhat political pictures during the new deal period, roosevelts first couple terms. And just as importantly, during withar, and after the war, the cold were coming and all of the dissension in hollywood over the unions and communist influence, and at the hollywood 10, how was fox involved . Vanda fox himself was out of it at that point, since 1930, but speaking of the war, world war i he made a lot of propaganda movies, prou. S. And antigerman movies. He was very patriotic. He went over the top, but everybody was doing it and it was a way to legitimize the industry and it show that we are supporting a war effort and its also Good Government cooperation and favored status for the movie industry, because they were in danger of having their business comes as at if it service industry, different rules apply. Was he political . From a pragmatic point of view he was. In new york, he was a democrat. Leanedtional level, he toward her the republicans and he said that he had put the fox news service, basically in service to hoovers campaign. And there is correspondence after the election where he promises that he will have the fox news cover hoover favorably and Herbert Hoover sends him in autographed picture. [indiscernible] the was about saying, lets lets make aing, picture to show how good the new deal is. Vanda he spent those years struggling to try to get back into the movie industry, so, yeah. Thad one more question. Who gained control of 20th century fox after him . And why do they continue to use his name to build the company . Vanda good question. It was not 20th century fox at that point, it was fox film, but that is a long and complicated question. The person who took over was harley clark, who was in chicago utilities magnate, who had been in cahoots with a big family, with which there was a big financial scandal, but he put together a Holding Company and one component, of which was a film equipment company, a sales company, he had watered the stocks. He had, in the financial statements, he said what he thought it was going to be worth, instead of what the sales potential was as opposed to what they actually were, so he was after the stock market crash desperate for customers. And fox theaters, they put in lots of orders, and so did fox film. He wanted control of the companies and he told the banking firm and at t that he would play ball with them. He becomes the candidate that they back. Chase Bank Actually gave him the money to buy the stock, the controlling stock from fox. He had never made a movie, he was the utilities man, power and electricity and gas, and he had no idea what he was doing and not only was he incompetent he was basically draining the money out of the company in order to support his other businesses. So, it really, fox theaters was bankrupt. From the height of prosperity in 1931 fox handled them over, they were both earning more than they had before, and whaone could say had we know the consequences of the depression . But as fox said, he had hired a wrecking company, it would have it could not have cost more and it would have taken a longer time to do that. So. Tragedy. Thad thank you very much, that was terrific. [applause] thank you everybody for coming. [chatter] announcer this weekend on American History tv on cspan3, sunday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, from the west point center for oral history, Kenneth Carlsen talks about growing up in a military family and his service in vietnam. We go out to this bunker and it had a natural viewpoint where you could see what was going on over the base. We are watching the rockets coming in and miss arkansas is on one side and miss new jersey on the other entities women are scared to death. But miss arkansas says, it looks like the fourth of july. And i said, no it doesnt. I said, people were dying when those things land. That does not happen on the fourth of july. Announcer and at 4 00 p. M. , we are featuring two films, the 1953 film rebirth of seoul. And a film on the eight Winter Olympics in california. Excitement here. They were pregame underdogs, and now they have upset all predictions by winning the game with the russians. Earning them the first gold medal ever won by a u. S. Team in hockey. Theuncer and on presidency, scholars explore the relationships between Ronald Reagan, george h w bush, and gorbachev during the end of the cold war. When you look back at 1989, when bush comes in, and you look at bush and gorbachev in 1991, from gorbachevs point of view, bush is not measuring up to what Ronald Reagan had been. Announcer watch American History tv every weekend on cspan3. Week, from a consumer electronic show in las vegas, Technology Industry leaders discuss their latest developments in Artificial Intelligence. You can have Artificial Intelligence in something as simple as your music playlist, those use technologies that is Machine Learning to help figure out what movies you love to watch and what music you like to listen to. It can be in your internet email system, filtering out the spam, the Automated System is not a person marking things spam or not, but a computer algorithm using Technology Like learning within Artificial Intelligence. On the other end you can have other Artificial Intelligence powering self driving cars. It uses the vision and Machine Learning to help the car navigate the street. Announcer next weekend, they cspans tour takes you to virginia. We will explore the rich literary scene and historic sites. Atch next weekend, beginning 5 00 p. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2 and sunday at 2 00 p. M. On American History tv on cspan3. Working with our cable affiliates, as we explore america. Announcer next on lectures in history, Johns Hopkins University Professor Ronald Walters teaches a class about the Anarchist Movement in america. He talks about albert parson, a confederate soldier who became a leader in the Anarchist Movement. He uses the 1886 haymarket affair, a bombing, as a case study in describing anarchist violence and the governments response. His class is just under one hour
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