When I was growing up in New York, every Sunday afternoon my grandfather, a first generation Greek immigrant who spoke barely any English, would take me to the movies, so he could spend some quality time with me, and so he could learn the language of his new country. He loved the movies—all of them—and his passion was contagious. We saw everything, from cartoons to classic westerns, war films, romances and thrillers. (My grandfather wasn’t particularly discerning in his choices and often he was guided as much by the proximity to a theater than by what was playing.)
The whole world seemed to be up there on the screen, especially worlds beyond our own, populated by swashbuckling pirates, mysterious aliens and femme fatales. To a pre-teen kid from Brooklyn, it was heaven! I spent the long days between Sundays imagining I could talk to the animals like Doctor Dolittle, or go on a Fantastic Voyage with Raquel Welch.
I wasn’t a ten year-old kid on a subway; I was one of the Those MagnifIcent Men in Their Flying Machines. I was Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan’s Express, Paul Newman in Hombre, Charlton Heston in The Agony and the Ecstasy, and Brooklyn was Arabia, Siberia, the moon.
Now, many years later, in a turn of events right out of a Hollywood script, I spend many more of my days watching movies. As Chairman and CEO of Twentieth Century Fox, I am in the business of helping a new generation explore new worlds and appreciate their own, through the timeless magic of film.
I am incredibly honored and grateful to be working on one of the great, legendary Hollywood movie lots. When I look out my window I see the sound stages where Julie Andrews sang, as Maria Von Trapp, “Do-Re-Mi” in The Sound of Music, and Peter Boyle as The Monster in Young Frankenstein croaked out “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” I see the stages where decades of incredibly talented actors, cameramen, musicians, costume designers and so many other artisans turned dreams into movies, and I see the home base for the legendary writers and directors behind such classic films as Star Wars and Avatar.
I walk down the magnificent New York street built for Hello, Dolly!, past a bungalow once occupied by Shirley Temple and the old dressing room buildings frequented by stars like Marilyn Monroe. I eat lunch at our commissary, where, in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev engaged in a lively debate with then Fox President Spyros Skouras over communism vs. capitalism (after Frank Sinatra invited Khrushchev to Stage 8 to visit the set of Can-Can). As I walk back to my office, I look upward at the source of the giant shadow cast across the lot and see “Nakatomi Plaza,” where Die Hard’s John McClane crawled through ventilation ducts—in what is actually the nearby office tower known as Fox Plaza. I stroll past the two story Swiss chalet now known as the Old Writers’ Building, and think of authors like John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald and their contributions to some of Fox’s most famous films. I work at a true dream factory, a place where, for me, every day feels a little bit like a Sunday afternoon in 1965.
This book imbues the reader with that kind of feeling. Also, it offers the opportunity to spend some time here at Fox, exploring its backlot looking for treasures and memories, rummaging through its corners for glimpses of the past, and sneaking peeks at its future. It’s a passport to a place where everything is possible, where people conjure whole new realities into being every day. A place that can take you anywhere. A world full of wonderful worlds.
Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO,
Twentieth Century Fox