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May 1904: William Fox Buys The Automat
Upton Sinclair, in his self-published book on the life of William Fox entitled Upton Sinclair presents William Fox, paints a colourful picture of the penny arcades that dotted the turn-of-the-century streets of Brooklyn. He describes the Automat on 14th Street as filled with ‘phonographs, punching bags, weighing machines, chewing-gum machines and, of course, kinetoscopes’ and it was such a place that William Fox saw as his key to an entrepreneurial fortune.
He made it known that he was in the market to buy such an establishment, and was duly approached by an agent who informed him that J. Stuart Blackton, the president of Vitagraph, owned an arcade at 700 Broadway, Brooklyn, that he was looking to sell. Fox told Sinclair ‘When I went there, by appointment, there was a large crowd. When I went again a little later in the week, also by appointment, there was an even larger crowd. I thought it was a good thing, and after certain negotiations, I bought the establishment. I took charge of it on the following Monday, and only about two persons dropped in all day. I realized that someone had supplied the crowd on the two former occasions when I had gone to see the place. This was somewhere around in May, and I was told that business was always bad in summer’
Sinclair and Fox declined to name the agent that had so succinctly duped the young would-be entrepreneur, but it was not to be the last time their paths would cross. Sometime later, the man, who Fox described as ‘the handsomest man you ever saw; well built, well dressed and always immaculate,’ came to Fox, told him he was broke, and borrowed $50 to go west. Twenty years later, in a broker’s boardroom, the man recognized Fox and repaid the $50. He told Fox that he had discovered land containing sulphur, which he had sold to New York capitalists, and was now worth $7,000,000. He gave Fox a tip: to buy stock in the Texas Gulf and Sulphur Company. Fox spurned his advice, only to discover that the value of shares later rocketed from $40 to $240.
Back in May 1904, Fox was in a quandary: all his money was invested in the empty arcade and he needed to come up with an idea to draw in the crowds. His thoughts turned to the relatively new attraction of moving pictures. His premises were beneath rooms that were used as a dwelling, and it occurred to Fox that, if he rented these rooms, he could turn out its tenants and convert it into a showroom for the moving pictures. He also surmised that if he allowed customers to enter by the front doorway and leave by the rear, they would have to pass all the machines to reach the exit and would no doubt be tempted into spending a few nickels on their way out.
Fox quickly put his plan into action and soon had a showroom with a screen and 146 chairs. He put up posters outside the arcade to advertise the moving pictures being shown inside – but still the customers failed to show.
According to Fox, he was at a loss what to do when he was approached by a man ‘with a great big western hat’ who offered to take charge of the situation. The next day, the man returned with a coin-manipulator, a sword-swallower and a fire-eater in tow, and asked Fox to pick the one he preferred. Fox had no fire insurance, so the fire-eater was immediately out of the frame, and it was possible that sword-swallowing might infringe some little-known employer’s liability law, so Fox plumped for the coin manipulator. Sinclair describes this character as ‘a little fellow, dressed in black satin breeches and a black satin coat, wearing a black mustache and a little black goatee, neither of which belonged to him. All this was in imitation of Hermann the Great.’
The little man set up a table in the doorway to the arcade and quickly drew a crowd with his tricks. Once they were suitably enthralled, he told his audience that he would finish the performance upstairs, and that admission was free for the present. Once they were in, and had seen the wonders of the moving picture, the word quickly spread and within a week there were such crowds clamouring to get into the place (according to Fox) that the police had to be called in to control them.
Fox quickly enlisted the aid of two friends to join him in his new venture and they soon had a number of rented stores on the streets of Brooklyn – each with a seating capacity of exactly 299 seats in order to avoid the fire laws that applied to establishments containing 300 or more seats. [ADD]
(Source: Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox, by.Upton Sinclair, pp 33-35; published by Upton Sinclair, 1933)
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