A View from the Vaults 2023: A Fox Dozen

Founded in 1915 by the self-educated entrepreneur William Fox, the Fox Film Corporation became home to the most dazzling lineup of directorial talent in the studio era. As silent film transitioned into sound, Fox’s stable of directors included Frank Borzage, Allan Dwan, John Ford, Howard Hawks, William K. Howard, Henry King, William Cameron Menzies, F. W. Murnau, Alfred Santell, Raoul Walsh, and many other important filmmakers. Yet this legacy was almost lost when a 1937 vault fire at Fox’s New Jersey storage facility destroyed all of the Fox Film negatives and most of the positive prints. That any of the Fox Film inventory survives today is largely thanks to Eileen Bowser of The Museum of Modern Art, who worked with the producer Alex Gordon to rescue the nitrate work prints and reference copies stored at the studio in Los Angeles.

This series brings back a dozen of the rarest and most frequently requested titles from our extensive Fox retrospectives in 2018 and 2019, few if any of which have been made available on home video, cable TV, or streaming platforms.

Organized by Dave Kehr, Curator, Department of Film.

Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL.

Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black, with major contributions from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, and Karen and Gary Winnick.