The Man Who Made the Movies

by Vanda Krefft

  * This was not the first use of the shortened version of “female vampire.” The term vamp appears in the press as early as 1910 to describe the persona of Katharine Kaelred, who played the siren’s role onstage (“The Original ‘Vamp,’” Variety, Apr. 23, 1910, 4).

  * In addition to Walsh and J. Gordon Edwards, these included Oscar C. Apfel, Will S. Davis, Frank Powell, Herbert Brenon, Edgar Lewis, and Marshall Farnum. Allan Dwan was also announced, but he does not appear to have joined Fox Film at this time (“Fox Draws 4 More Directors of Note to His Standard,” Motion Picture News, June 12, 1915, 37).

  * A Celebrated Scandal, Anna Karenina, A Woman’s Resurrection, Should a Mother Tell?, and The Song of Hate.

  * Nansen never directed a movie for Fox, as her contract would have permitted.

  * Although only two movies remain from Theda’s career at Fox Film—A Fool There Was (1915) and East Lynne (1916)—the others were widely written about and reviewed.

  * Although it was released in September 1915 after at least four other of her Fox movies, Theda said that The Two Orphans was the fourth movie she made for the studio (Theda Bara, unpublished autobiography, 112, Archives and Rare Books Library, University of Cincinnati).

  * A dynamo is an electrical generator that produces direct current with the use of a commutator.

  * Brenon’s The Fall of the Romanoffs had its first showing on September 6, 1917, but that took place at New York’s Hotel Ritz-Carlton as a private showing. Brenon was so upset when Brady, one of the guests, bragged about his earlier release date that the two got into a fistfight in the hotel lobby; Adolph Zukor helped separate them (“Brady and Brenon in A Fist Battle,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 1917).

  * In 1925, Beyfuss committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in his room at New York’s Shelton Hotel (“Mirror Aids Him in Suicide,” New York Times, Jan. 9, 1925, 19). Beyfuss, thirty-five and apparently in good health, had been out of the movie business for a year or two. No one knew his reasons (“Alex. Beyfuss, Suicide,” Variety, Jan. 14, 1925, 23).

  * The name was changed in 1938 to Laguna Dominguez. (Erwin G. Gudde, California Place Names [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969], 92.)

  * Also known to history as Augustus. In Cleopatra, he is called Octavius (“Cast,” Cleopatra script, courtesy of Phillip Dye).

  * Funkhouser had many other enemies, including D. W. Griffith, whose Hearts of the World he had tried to chop up. (“Ask Wilson to Stop War Film Change,” New York Times, Apr. 29, 1918, 11.)

  * Child labor was a timely topic. On September 1, 1916, President Wilson had signed into law the first federal child labor legislation, the Keating-Owen Act.

  * Les Misérables had been Big Tim Sullivan’s favorite literary work (Alvin F. Harlow, Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street [New York: D. Appleton, 1931], 512).

  * Fellow silent film actor Franklyn Farnum was no relation; his real name was William Smith.

  * Fitzgerald would include the possibility of a background like Fox’s for his character. Although Gatsby is actually from North Dakota, narrator Nick Carraway says he “would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from . . . the lower East Side of New York.” Gatsby may even have been Jewish: his birth name was James Gatz. In creating Gatsby’s world, Fitzgerald borrowed facts from Fox’s reality. Tom Buchanan was rumored to have been modeled after Fox Film investor Tom McCarter, and Gatsby’s gangster friend Meyer Wolfsheim boasts of having been at Herman Rosenthal’s table at the Hotel Metropole on the night of his murder. Wolfsheim, however, mistakenly gives the time of the shooting as 4:00 a.m. instead of 2:00 a.m.

  * The Prussian Cur was based on the memoirs of convicted German spy Captain Horst von der Goltz, who also appeared in the movie as “Otto the Skunk.”

  * In 1906 and 1907, Vitagraph and Edison established sales representatives in Europe. (Kristin Thompson,Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market, 1907–1934 [Great Britain: BFI Publishing, 1985]: 3–4.) Both companies had faded by the mid-1910s and neither aggressively pursued the rest of the world.

  * It isn’t known which particular Fox movies used Trotsky in front of the camera. Perhaps he might still be recognized. A reporter who met Trotsky at the time described him as a “little, sharp-faced man” with a “great pompadour of wheat-colored hair” and “pale, washed out, blue eyes” that looked out angrily from behind thick-lensed glasses (Achmet Hassan, “Inside Picture of Trotsky, Once Known as Braunstein,” Times Picayune, Nov. 9, 1919, 12).

  * Ended June 30.

  * In 1917, Fox Film’s foreign manager estimated that 90 percent of the movies shown worldwide were U.S.-made (“Fox Extends World Service,” Moving Picture World, Apr. 14, 1917, 260).

  * Lawson was born Helen Elizabeth Larsen, the daughter of a Norwegian immigrant. Upon entering show business, she changed her last name to Lawson. (Chris Jacobsen, Sweden, e-mail to the author.)

  * Woods also hoped to sell the movie rights for at least $200,000. Theda, who months earlier was “definitely and permanently” leaving the screen, agreed to star for a half interest in the picture (“Theda Bara’s Stage Salary Exceeds Her Picture Income,” Variety, Mar. 12, 1920, 3).

  * Lehrman denied the accusation and blamed the theft on his private secretary, who had conveniently died several weeks before. Both Lehrman and an alleged Fox Film accomplice were acquitted when the case went to trial in the spring of 1919.

  * In the comedy realm, Charlie Chaplin had earned $10,000 a week for fifty-two weeks under contract with the Mutual studio (“Mix’s $2,000,000 Fox Job,” Variety, Jan. 21, 1925, 1).

  * By contrast, in the summer of 1917, Fox advertised that his movies could be booked individually “and there is no obligation for you to take any picture that you do not want” (Fox Film ad, “Attention Exhibitors!”, Motion Picture News, Aug. 18, 1917, 1077).

  * The time capsule box is apparently still intact in the building’s cornerstone.

  * Among them were Allan Dwan, Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett, Maurice Tourneur, and Marshall Neilan.

  * The relative told Fox he was angry at the New Jersey investors and wanted to upset the financial balance of power they had arranged. (Transcript, 68.)

  * Godsol was exonerated in March 1919 because although French law prohibited such commissions, apparently no U.S. law forbade Americans from influencing foreign officials in awarding war supply contracts. (“Charge Goldsoll [sic] Stole Millions,” New York Times, Mar. 17, 1918, 3; “Godsol’s Brother Suicide in Hotel,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 1921, 1.)

  * Farnum later reignited his film career, appearing in more than twenty movies between 1930 and 1952, although mostly in small supporting parts. He never came close to reclaiming the first-class stardom he’d known at Fox Film.

  * Mix’s claim to have done all his own stunt work has been disputed.

  * In buying the land, Fox again confronted the meanness of prevailing social attitudes: the corporation grant deed required him never to sell or rent any part of the property to “any person who is not of the white or caucasian race” (Corporation Grant Deed, May 1924, Fox Legal Collection). Such restrictive covenants were common in Los Angeles at the time.

  * Upon learning that Grainger was about to leave, M-G-M executives panicked, met his demands, and pleaded with Fox Film to cancel Grainger’s contract. Sheehan refused, saying, “This is business, not a tea party” (“Inside Stuff on Pictures,” Variety, Apr. 1, 1925, 34).

  * At the time, it wasn’t unusual for a company to issue two classes of stock, but customarily the “A” was the voting stock and the “B” nonvoting. Fox thought his company ought to be different, and reversed the order (Transcript, 69).

  * Since buying 10 shares from the disgruntled relative of one of the New Jersey investors, Fox had acquired another 91 shares above his original allotment of 50,000.

  * In 1953, the Curb Market became known as the American Stock Exchange.

  * The other 500,000 Class A
shares remained in the Fox Film treasury, available for later sale.

  * The Ingleton collection included not only many rare books obtained worldwide, but also forty years’ worth of national and international magazines, postcards, prints, drawings, and copies of architectural designs dating back to ancient Rome. Fox hired Ingleton as director of the new Fox research library (“George Ingleton Research Library Acquired by Fox for Coast Plant,” Moving Picture World, Feb. 6, 1926, 554).

  * The property couldn’t be touched until after the December 31, 1929, expiration of iron-clad leases with ground-floor merchants (Transcript, 214). Due to changed circumstances, Fox never built his own theater. Instead, after demolishing the existing structure, he put up a twelve-story office building and leased part of the property to H. L. Gumbiner, who built the Los Angeles Theatre there (“Gumbiner to Lease in L.A.,” Motion Picture News, May 17, 1930, 45).

  * West Coast owned 21,000 shares of First National’s 75,000 shares as well as all of the First National franchise for Southern California and about 80 percent of the New York franchise.

  * After the arrangement came to light in 1932, Fox wasn’t criminally charged.

  * Others were Fair Play, the father of Man o’ War; The Finn, winner of the 1915 Belmont Stakes; and the French stallion Negofol.

  * In April 1927 the Warners would buy out Rich’s interest for $1 million (Earl I. Sponable, “Historical Development of Sound Films,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers [April 1947]: 418; “Jackson Jury Fails,” Daily Argus, [Mount Vernon, NY], Mar. 25, 1931, 1).

  * Much of the work on these devices was done by Case’s assistant, Earl I. Sponable.

  * Case would later sell the stock back to Fox for $1.5 million, but continued to run the Fox-Case laboratory until July 23, 1930 (Transcript, 171; E. I. Sponable, “Historical Development of Sound Films,” JSMPE 48, no. 5 [May 1947]: 413).

  * Western Electric engineers had also been working on sound-on-film since the early 1920s, but the company believed that sound-on-disk was more reliable (Edward W. Kellogg, “History of Sound Motion Pictures, First Installment,” Journal of the SMPTE, June 1955, 296–97).

  * Sunrise was Hollywood’s first feature film with an optical soundtrack. The score was composed by leading movie theater music director Dr. Hugo Riesenfeld.

  * Instead of using the Movietone score, the Los Angeles premiere had a live performance of the Carthay Circle orchestra (Janet Bergstrom, “Murnau, Movietone and Mussolini,” Film History 17 (2005): 197).

  * As an accommodation to the owners of several thousand U.S. theaters who had installed disk-only projection equipment—it was the cheapest system and, initially, Vitaphone had superior sound quality—other studios issued disk versions of their movies. Even Fox did so, beginning in April 1929. However, the disks were made by dubbing from the optical soundtracks. (Kyle Westphal, “On the Vitaphone: Show Girl in Hollywood,” Aug. 8, 2011, www.chicagofilmsociety.org; “Fox Talkers Available On Discs in Two Weeks,” Film Daily, Apr. 4, 1929, 1.)

  * In July 1928, Western Electric began to relax that rule when it allowed Cecil B. De Mille’s King of Kings, which had been made with RCA Photophone equipment, to be played on Western Electric equipment at the Rivoli Theatre in New York. By the end of 1928, Western Electric had formally agreed to allow interchangeability, so that movies made with other companies’ equipment could be played in Western Electric-equipped theaters and movies made with Western Electric equipment could be played in theaters that had installed rival equipment. (W. E. Theisen, “Pioneering in the Talking Picture,” Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, 36 [Apr. 1941]: 441.)

  * The Mussolini speech and Italian Army scenes were filmed months earlier, on May 6, 1927 (E. I. Sponable, “Historical Development of Sound Films,” JSMPE 48, no. 5 (May 1947): 409).

  * According to Fox-Case’s head of engineering, Earl I. Sponable, Western Electric did not commercially perfect the light valve method until 1930 (E. I. Sponable, “Historical Development of Sound Film,” International Projectionist, Nov. 1947, 31). Film historian Donald Crafton has written that Western Electric began offering the light valve in 1929 and introduced a new improved version in December 1930 (Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926–1931 [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997], 32 and 152).

  * The cost was often reported as $10 million, but that figure was misleading because it included $3 million as the current value of the land, even though Fox had bought the entire site in 1923 for $300,000. (“Fox Erecting Large Plant,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1, 1928, A3; “Mr. Fox Entertains 50,000 at Model Movietone Plant,” Washington Post, Oct. 28, 1928, A3.)

  * Once before, by phonograph only, King George’s voice had been recorded for the royal archives (“A Washingtonian Relates Experiences With Great,” Washington Post, Nov. 25, 1928, A2).

  * Ground noise is electronic noise that manifests as a hum, hiss, or other distortion.

  * Fetchit had also played a supporting role in the Fox comedy The Ghost Talks, made shortly before Hearts in Dixie (“Lincoln Perry’s Letter,” Chicago Defender, Sept. 29, 1928, 7).

  * The voodoo woman was played by A. C. H. Bilbrew, founder of the Bilbrew Chorus.

  * Equivalent to $70,363 in 2017.

  * Bellamy later identified her assailant as Los Angeles real estate broker Logan F. Metcalf. After being discarded by Sheehan in favor of another Fox Film actress, whom she did not name, Bellamy retaliated by marrying Metcalf in January 1928. The marriage lasted four days (“Madge Bellamy’s Husband Gets Divorce,” Lewiston Daily Sun, Apr. 26, 1928).

  * Fox Film had owned some of Fox’s theaters before the 1925 formation of Fox Theatres.

  * “Daily-change” theaters changed their film program every day and were at the bottom of the prestige scale.

  * By the time Fox actually consummated the deal, on February 28, 1929, Loew’s share price had risen to $84.

  * The Meehan syndicate also paid $24,915 to a newspaper syndicate to tout Fox Theatres stock. (Bradford Ellsworth testimony, Stock Exchange Practices Hearings, U.S. Senate, Part 3, June 1932, at 1065.)

  * Section 16(c) of Securities Exchange Act of 1934 makes it unlawful for directors and executive officers to engage in “short-selling” transactions.

  * The $20 million figure was Harry Stuart’s rough estimate. (“Broker for Insull Made $20,000,000,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 1934, 21.) Evidence suggested the actual amount may have been much higher: in one day’s trading in Insull securities, Halsey, Stuart made a paper profit of more than $36 million. (“Traces Millions In Paper Profits to Insull Bankers,” New York Times, Feb. 18, 1933, 1.)

  * Receivership proceedings can be instituted when a company cannot pay its debts. The purpose is to preserve the company’s assets in order to reimburse creditors as fully as possible. A court removes the existing management from authority and appoints a third party, or receiver, to take charge.

  * Fox evidently was not invited to the inauguration.

  * Mayer would deny the conversation.

  * The average price of sound installation in the U.K. was $25,000 (William Fox testimony, Stock Exchange Practices Hearings, U.S. Senate, Part 8, Nov.–Dec. 1933, at 3691).

  * Nationwide prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920.

  * Lucky Star, which opened on August 18, 1929, was released as both a silent and part talking movie, but only the silent version has survived.

  * In the long term as well, Fox was right. Although widescreen would not catch on for decades—in the case of Grandeur, for reasons that had little to do with merit—it was, as Fox had understood, the precise answer that the movie industry needed to fight back against the near-murderous blows dealt by television in the mid-1950s.