Man Who Made the Movies

This biography of a forgotten film-industry titan with a still-famous name is both “a great American success story and a shudder-provoking cautionary tale” (The Wall Street Journal).

A Huffington Post Best Film Book of the Year

A major Hollywood studio still bears William Fox’s name—but the man himself has mostly been forgotten by history, even written off as a failure. This vivid biography, drawing on a decade of original research, corrects the record, explaining why Fox’s legacy is central to the history of Hollywood.

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.

At the heart of 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.

“[The author’s] attention to detail makes for gripping storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly

“Stunningly researched, lucidly told, and consistently illuminating.” —Brenda Wineapple, award–winning author of The Impeachers

“Krefft captures both the culture of the origins of cinema as a business and the many fascinating personalities at play within the narrative. No longer Hollywood’s forgotten pioneer, William Fox now has the history he deserves.” —The Washington Post