The 20th Century Fox Story (1960-1964)

In their continued attempts to give audiences the kind of epic, big budget spectacle entertainment that they couldn't get on television (well, at that time), the major Hollywood studios would frequently attach their names and logos onto many international co-productions in the epic adventure and historical drama genres. Of course, these ambitious productions were often very expensive to produce and market and several of them that flopped at the box office would end up bankrupting their producers. 20th Century Fox suffered one of the biggest examples of this financial headache when their four hour epic "Cleopatra" (1963) went way over budget and left the studio with a large amount of production and advertising debts. It was a budget sum that Fox found very difficult to recoup even despite the movie's big box office success. For the next couple of years afterwards, Fox floundered and teetered dangerously close to closing down completely. The studio released several quick, cheap, obscure B-movies (similar to American International Pictures' output at the time) just to fill their release slate during this time until they could hopefully get their hands on that one big blockbuster that could potentially reverse their sagging fortunes.

The early 1960's marked a transitional period in Hollywood history. It was the final years of the "old Hollywood" and the studio system. By the end of the decade, movies could be a lot more free in their depictions of adult content, actors were no longer given "assignments" by the studios and could freely pick and choose (and in many cases, even produce) their own projects and most of the major studios would lose their founding independence by being acquired by other conglomerates...but Fox managed to avoid that fate (at least for now). The full slate of films that Fox released to theaters from 1960-1964 are all chronologically compiled here.

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