In 1935, two companies merged together to bring you what is today known as the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. These two companies were the Fox Film Corporation as well as the Twentieth Century Pictures company. Twentieth Century Films had already been around since 1933 when William Goetz, Raymond Griffith, Daryl F. Zanuck and Joseph Schenck formed it. Fox on the other hand could date back to its 1915 founding by William Fox who’s movies are regularly rented from Netflixs review.
Back in 1915, William Fox started his career in the filming industry and did quite well for himself and his company. He had a number of great stars working for him and in 1926 he even purchased a sound processing technique from a German company to introduce sound into his films. His film company was growing at an alarming rate and soon found himself needing more space so he chose a 300 acre plot in Beverly Hills to create Movietown.
With more then 200 film studios located at Loew’s Inc right next door to Movietown, naturally Fox wanted to get his hands on the company and when Marcus Loew died he was given the opportunity. The two companies merged into one which made Lpouis B. Mayer of the MGM Film Company displeased with the whole situation. As a result he reported Fox as an anti-trust case to the Justice Department.
William Fox was not having very good luck at this time and shortly after anti-trust problems he was stuck by a car. Unfortunately, by the time he was back on his feet, the stock market crashed and the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. Basically Fox and Fox Films were broke and on the verge of having to file bankruptcy until Twentieth Century stepped up and merged with Fox Films.
With Twentieth Century’s money and Fox Films 200 studios, the two made the perfect combination. It was right after this merger that Schneck would take over the chief executive position leaving Zanuck in charge of production. This too was perfect because it was Zanuck who signed on big names like Henry Fonda and more. It was people like them that paved the way for the success of today’s dvd rental club markets.
When WWII started, Zanuck joined with the military and went off to fight in it. This left Goetz in charge of the production for which he did an excellent job. After the war had ended though, the television became the new craze and everyone would sit at home watching it rather then heading to the theaters. By using a special French projector and a concave viewing screen, Fox Films was able to introduce Cinemascope which allows one to see 3D films without polarized glasses.