The Last Time America Was Made Great

And we told them we'd make them great!

You can trace the name Fox in the news industry back through various corporate iterations until you get to the Fox News Service, part of Fox Film, which merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935 to form 20th Century Fox. Fox News Service was in the newsreel business, as Fox News today is in the televised news business. And in 1927, it had a problem.

“The Fox News Service,” Donald Crafton wrote in his book The Talkies, “was far behind the leader, Pathé. [Company Vice President Winfield] Sheehan saw immediately that adding sound” — itself a new technology — “would give his company’s product a singular advantage, since the only other studio with sound capabilities, Warners, had no newsreel.” He dispatched camera and sound crews around the world to film newsworthy events. “Fox News officials,” Crafton wrote, “saw that a transformation in the newsreel was about to take place.” The company created a new tagline: “Fox Movietone News: It speaks for itself.”

Fox News wasn’t the only group to recognize the value of the combination of sight and sound. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist prime minister of Italy, at one point reportedly said that were he to broadcasting his speeches “in twenty cities in Italy once a week” he would “need no other power.” When he was approached about filming a statement for the newsreel, he agreed.  (more...)

In 1927, Fox News Service filmed Benito Mussolini telling immigrants to ‘make America great’

And the favour was returned:

Frank Gigliotti: Minister, Freemason, OSS and CIA

Isn't greatness great?