Movietone News evolved from an earlier newsreel established by
Fox Films called
Fox News which was founded in 1919. It produced silent newsreels. When Fox entered talkies in 1928 with
Mother Knows Best, the name
Fox Movietone was applied to Fox's sound productions. In the U.S. as
Fox Movietone News it produced cinema sound
newsreels from December 1927 to 1963, and from 1929 to 1986 in the UK (for much of that time as
British Movietone News), as well as 1929 to 1975 in Australia. One of the earliest in the series featured
George Bernard Shaw Talks to Movietone News, released on June 25, 1928. One of the known early producers of these newsreels was Abraham Harrison also known as Harry, father of notable black and white photographer
Dody Weston Thompson who also found a brief career in film making. An early conductor of the Movietone News orchestra was Harry Lauder II, nephew of entertainer Sir
Harry Lauder, who was contracted by the company for eighteen months before
William Fox took him to his Hollywood studio. Sir Harry Lauder also appeared in test sound films made at the
Fox Studios in
New York City during the winter-spring of 1927. '', on Vitaphone, and a Fox newsreel, on
Movietone, together on the same bill. One installment,
Fox Grandeur News, was released on May 26, 1929, in Fox's short-lived
widescreen process
Grandeur and shown before the
feature film Fox Movietone Follies of 1929.
Hearst Metrotone News initially leased the
Case Research Lab patents from William Fox for its sound newsreels. Each of these studios used this system of recording
sound film for news items because it was an easily transported single-system of
sound-on-film recording. Fox's first use of recording a news event was on May 20, 1927:
Charles Lindbergh's take-off from
Roosevelt Field for his historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean was filmed with sound and shown in a New York theater that same night, inspiring Fox to create Movietone News. A regular narrator of the newsreels was broadcaster/journalist
Lowell Thomas. After Fox Films merged with 20th Century Pictures in 1935 to form 20th Century-Fox, the name of Fox Movietone News was shortened to Movietone News. The company's last regular broadcast occurred in 1963, although it existed as a legal entity set to preserve important filmreels until
Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the parent company 20th Century Fox and the subsequent liquidation of Movietone in 1984 and 1986 respectively. In
Australia, Movietone and
Cinesound were competitors for newsreel coverage, but later combined under the Australian Movie Magazine name. ==Status and licensing==