Actions for The man who made the movies : the meteoric rise and tragic fall of William Fox

Email RIS file
Bookmark
Report an Issue

The man who made the movies : the meteoric rise and tragic fall of William Fox / Vanda Krefft

Author
Krefft, Vanda
Published
New York : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2017]
Edition
First edition.
Physical Description
ix, 927 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Availability

Browse Nearby on Shelf
I Want It
I Want It

Finding items...

Contents
Part I: Beginnings, 1879-1903 -- Part II: The greatest adventure, 1904-1925 -- Part III: The one great independent, 1925-1929 -- Part IV: Despair, 1930-1943 -- Part V: Acceptance, 1943-1952.
Summary
A riveting story of ambition, greed, and genius unfolding at the dawn of modern America. This landmark biography brings into focus a fascinating brilliant entrepreneur--like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, a true American visionary--who risked everything to realize his bold dream of a Hollywood empire. Although a major Hollywood studio still bears William Fox's 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 Fox's legacy is central to the history of Hollywood. At the heart of William Fox's life was the myth of the American Dream. His story intertwines the fate of the nineteenth-century immigrants who flooded into New York, the city's vibrant and ruthless gilded age history, and the birth of America's 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 genius--until a confluence of circumstances, culminating with the 1929 stock market crash, led to his ruin.
Subject(s)
Genre(s)
ISBN
9780061136061
0061136069
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Source of Acquisition
Purchased with funds from the Paterno Libraries Endowment (Campus College Libraries); 2017
Endowment Note
Paterno Libraries Endowment (Campus College Libraries)
View MARC record | catkey: 22091441