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For years, one of the major and most frustrating gaps in our knowledge of film history has been that of the old Fox company. Twenty years of product, prior to the mid-’30s merger with 20th Century, were represented only by a handful of mouthwatering highlights such as THE IRON HORSE, SUNRISE, FOUR SONS and CAVALCADE. The filmic saliva thus generated was heightened by the recognition that while 20th Century Fox, especially in the middle and late thirties, was company of fairly limited interest turning out routine star vehicles and assembly-line plots, the old Fox was very different matter.

Stars at Fox in the ’20s were relatively sparse, at least in comparison with the rosters offered by MGM an Paramount. They had Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor, Lowe and McLaglen, Tom Mix, George O’Brien, Buck Jones and, much earlier, Theda Bara, William Farnum and Annette Kellerman. But their strength in terms of directors was second to none: F. W. Murnau, John Ford, Frank Borzage, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks. William K. Howard and William Wellman, to whom were added Henry King, Leo McCarey, Harry D’Arrast, Erich von Stroheim, Frank Lloyd and William Dieterle in the early sound period. Here again, though Will Rogers was a major new name, Spencer Tracy made no less than twenty films, Warner Baxter was boosted to new stardom, and players like Humphrey Bogart made transitory Fox appearances on their way to stardom elsewhere, the stress was less on star dominance than directorial prominence. Moreover, Fox’s team of craftsmen was first-rate: top cameramen like Ernest Palmer, James Won Howe and Lee Garmes, superb art directors such as Ben Carre, and an interesting team of second-echelon directors: William Cameron Menzies, Sam Taylor, Harry Lachman. Fox’s studio facilities and their elaborate and varied standing sets were the best in the business. Admittedly. Fox in the early 30’s lacked positive studio leadership and a clearly defined policy. But if this produced some incredibly bad pictures, made merely to keep stars and directors busy (did anyone ever make as many films as Warner Baxter in this period?) it also, perhaps accidentally, was responsible for some rather good ones too. Off-beat, basically non-commercial properties slipped through because, in essence, there was nobody to stop them!

In short, Fox gave us two decades of film geared to directors rather than stars and many of those directors were major artists. But for years, inquiries about these films (even from archives) were greeted with the response that virtually all the old Fox product had been lost in fires. Since it is a matter of record that Fox did have some disastrous fires in which a great deal of film was lost, one had no alternative but to accept the statement as gospel.

In fairness to the studio – alll studios, and not just Fox this attitude is easy to understand. Many film writers and self-styled historians are literally dilettantes who seem to feel that have an indisputable right to have studio red carpets rolled out for them. They breeze in, are shown considerable courtesy, and then often use their newfound information to knock the Hollywood “system.” Moreover, screening old nitrate film is a nuisance. Prints have to be checked carefully, and are often troublesome and dangerous to project. By law, two projectionists have to be on hand for such screenings. And in recent years when studio staffs have been cut down, this has meant eating up salaries on non-essential work, and perhaps delaying current production duties. Too, old films are often a mass of legal tangles. In many cases, rights have reverted or been passed on to other parties, and for the studio to admit having a print or even having it written about – could be a legal embarrassment for them. While it is unfortunate for the abstract cause of film history that material isn’t generally available, the legalities and mechanics often preclude it. One may deplore Fox’s denial of the existence of this wealth of material for so many years, yet in a hard-headed business sense one must admit too that there are reasons for it. Similarly, one may reproach them for allowing so many films to deteriorate beyond saving, yet at the same time, bearing in mind that when talkies came in, silents seemed totally dead, of no possible commercial use ever, one must cheer that so much did survive and was kept.

It’s a curious thing that film purists always attack the studios for their lack of integrity or lack of “creative pride” in not preserving what they created yet these attacks are never launched against the directors, who surely had much more “integrity” and more positive personal reasons for wanting their work maintained permanently. Directors were well paid, well able to pay for personal prints, and if studios were sometimes temperamental about issuing private prints, directors still had enough access to labs, cutting rooms and work-prints to secure at least one print for themselves. Why, oh why, did not Erich von Stroheim, knowing from experience what was bound to happen to GREED, secrete away at least one print of the full version? Thalberg may well be to blame for the film’s commercial fate, but surely von Stroheim is more to blame for its non-existence!

The Fox treasures began to be revealed in the late ’60s. William Self, a Fox television executive (but a former actor and also a producer, so with a business motivation mixed with personal enthusiasm) assigned Alex Gordon to inventory the Fox vaults to see what was there, in what condition, and what was its potential for television, reissue, archival, remake and non-theatrical outlets. Gordon, who knew and loved films and had a photographic memory, was an ideal man for the job. A former press representative for Gene Autry, he had turned independent producer in the mid ’50s, and had always made a point of using the best veteran directors cameramen and players in his films Broncho Billy Anderson and Tim McCoy were among the horse-opera greats that he’d used in his Westerns. Other Fox executives extended sympathy and pitied him the thankless job of looking at so much “worthless old junk”; had they known it, he’d have probably paid them for the chance to spend weeks in the projection room looking at what were often richly tinted original nitrate prints.

What was originally intended as a short-term assignment became something quite different. Gordon arranged preservation programs with the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Institute and George Eastman House. With those bodies paying for the otherwise prohibitively expensive preservation negatives, Fox thus able to use those negatives to make up prints for theatrical reissue here and abroad, for television, and for non-theatrical distribution. By judicious exchanges, Gordon was also able to bring in from foreign archives Fox material (Ford’s CAMEO KIRBY, the Tom Mix-Clara Bow THE GOOD BAD MAN) that did not exist within their own vaults. His intimate knowledge of the Fox collection has made him a valuable asset for any documentary work involving the use of stock footage. He has ensured that, in one way or another, all of the major films have been preserved, and is still trying to find ways and means of saving what can loosely be termed the “routine” material although, as is becoming increasingly apparent, values change so rapidly in filmic terms that no one interested in preservation can afford to call any film “routine”. Yesterday’s classic has proved to be today’s turkey, just as yesterday’s flop can be today’s classic – and there is a need to preserve both, if not for reasons of artistry, then for documentary content or as examples of fluctuating trends and tastes.

The whole story of Gordon’s crusade to save the films at Fox is unique, since while other studios have had preservation programs, they have not had a man as personally dedicated as Gordon. In order to protect the guilty (and the inefficient) no specific names or stories will be given here perhaps, twenty years safely hence they can vie with the Nixon tapes for behind-the-scenes excitement. Suffice to say that Gordon had to he a master at wheeling and dealing, cajoling charming, wheedling and occasionally threatening to get what he wanted. After being told nine times that a film positively did not exist, it would miraculously appear on the tenth request. Essential films like Murnau’s CITY GIRL and Von Stroheim’s HELL SISTER, non-existent according to all the official records, were uncovered by checking the vaults for later films (not remakes, but “B” movies of the thirties) using the same titles an avenue of enquiry that also turned up a number of important non-Fox films that had been purchased by Fox for remakes.

Although the onus of recouping preservation costs does not come into it, and thus the project must he considered at least a nominal commercial success for Fox, results thus far have been disappointing. Few American tv stations or art houses have been adventurous enough to book much of the material, despite overseas interest and genuine acclaim at archival revivals in New York, London, Brussels, Stockholm, Copenhagen and other capitals throughout the world. The boon to film societies and university courses has been considerable though, and the rediscovered Ford, Hawks, Murnau, Walsh and Borzage films have hooked well. (Some of the edge has been taken off this market by the proliferating film pirates who book films from 16mm distributors, make their own dupe negatives, and re-sell prints. This obviously cuts into the number of bookings a none-too-large market can provide. But the real complaint is more of an aesthetic than a commercial one, namely that scores of inferior dupes will circulate that do a distinct disservice to the pictorial splendors of the originals.) However, there is no time limit on film classics. It took THE MALTESE FALCON, BEAT THE DEVIL and LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN a long time to acquire classic status. At least THREE BAD MEN, ZOO IN BUDAPEST and the others have been saved. Time is no longer running out on them, but is on their side. Audiences will discover them some day.

Some of the Fox rediscoveries make major contributions to film history, most notably the huge block of John Ford films from his first for Fox (JUST PALS in ’20) right through to the mid ’30s. (A valuable adjunct to this material is his first feature for Universal, ’17’s STRAIGHT SHOOTING, recently found in Czechoslovakia). Prior to this cache, all we knew about Ford’s silent period was THE IRON HORSE and the rarely shown FOUR SONS, which is rather like knowing Griffith only via America and WAY DOWN EAST. Seeing him work through humble programmers to “A” features and specials, then making an uncertain and, one senses, reluctant transition to sound, recovering ground quickly, submerging himself for a period in films of an essentially Griffithian nature and structure, and then changing style abruptly when he leaves Fox and his cameraman George Schneiderman behind to go on to the more formal compositions of THE INFORMER and MARY OF SCOTLAND, is a revelation that makes one realize how totally inadequate were all previous appraisals of Ford’s work. One has never taken Ford’s own comments too seriously – especially his own denigration of his value as an artist and his summing up of all of his films as just “a job of work” – but certainly many of his silent Fox films more than refute such statements. HANGMAN’S HOUSE in particular contains a lovely, lyrical lateral tracking shot along an elaborately constructed riverbank set. For reasons of narrative (and certainly economy) the scene could well have been omitted: a dissolve to a linking subtitle would have done just as well – if he were merely a man just doing “a job of work.”

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