I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six.

Mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.

Shirley Temple.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music of the 20th century. Episode 405 on the good Ship Lollipop.

This is the fourth episode in our series on the Hollywood film industry in the 30s and 40s.

I've been working through the five major studios from smallest to largest,

and today it's time to talk about number three, which is 20th century Fox.

I already told you the story of how 20th Century Fox came to be. The production company 20th Century Pictures was formed in 1933 by Darrell F. Zanick, who left Warner Brothers after a salary dispute with

Jack Warner, and Joseph Skink, former president of United Artists. From 1933 to 1935, 20th century

pictures did quite well for itself. It released 24 films, almost all of them commercial successes.

The list includes the musical Moulin Rouge and the biographical film, The Mighty Barnum,

about Circus Impressario P.T. Barnum. It also includes literary adaptations,

Les Miserables from the novel by Victor Hugo, and Call of the Wild, from the novel by Jack London.

It also also includes the House of Rothschild, loosely based on the famous European banking family.

This is the film that was remade into an anti-Semitic propaganda film in

Nazi Germany. 20th century was a production company, but it was not a studio. The difference is that a

production company doesn't own its own sound stages and filmmaking equipment and doesn't do

distribution to theaters. It raises money, hires people, and rents filmmaking facilities where the

picture is shot and edited, then contracts with a distributor to distribute the film to theaters.

In the case of 20th century, they relied on United Artists to distribute their film to theaters. In the case of 20th century,

they relied on United Artists

...