And vanda krefft was herself a leon levy fellow in 20092010. 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] and thus the years roll by. The result is often rich and 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] thad welcome back. Vanda thank you very much. Thad 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. Thad 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. Thad at what point did it occur to you that this should be a biography, a fullscale biography, as opposed to an article . 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 dunn, 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. And fox supported their family, 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. So these were she was a great 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 set out with and i think kind of 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. And this was taken in 1915, or 1916, and he is so hated he so hated publicity, that you will see this in the trades in the 1920s, because nobody had any other pictures of him. So we go to if he has been forgotten for so long, why should we bother to remember him . I would say that he was the most 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. White in 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 fuchs. 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 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 produced sunrise, directed by 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. This is 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 war, that at that point europe 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 tape fox 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 factor cannot be discounted in 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 as not 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. Thad it seemed that he took on 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. They have no incentive to go out 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 give them, he could be 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. Cleopatra, and a tale of two 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 to do that in 1917, i thought it was another actor, but it wasnt. This was a large production. It still exists. Now widely available, but it does exist. And iron 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. Ok, then we have a movie from 1926. A rather biting antiwar movie about the great war. You see maclachlan. What 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 . Yeah, Young John Wayne in his 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. He had been an exhibitor, a 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. So fox deserves credit, major credit, because i would question how well would they have done on a widescale basis. And then we have do you want to Say Something . No. To give a bit of background on foxs 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. And here we have a rare picture of his family. That is his wife and those are his two daughters, mona and belle. This is from 1911. And here is foxs wife, eva. They married when fox was 20 and eva was only 15. There are many remarkable things about this 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 she was 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. Hey called it fox hall could was on long island. And considering how wealthy he was and what a major mogul he was, it is really rather modest. But this was his retreat from the hustle and bustle of the film industry. [indiscernible] no, they tore it down. Lets see, when eva died 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