The Bell & Howell 2709 B Serial Number 132

"FOX STUDIO'S FIRST CAMERA"

Price on Request

 

 

 
 
     

As with all motion picture cameras this one was upgraded as newer technology made the old obsolete. It has a set of Cooke Speed Panchro lenses from about 1925, it has a Mitchell side finder from the 1920's. It replaced the old Bell & Howell side tube that was nearly unusable when it came from the factory new.

It has an original Bell & Howell tripod and head which is very unusual. Almost immediately this was usually replaced with an Akeley tripod and head or a Mitchell tripod and head. Both were easier to operate than the Bell & Howell.

Some photographs of Theda Bara also come with the camera. (See Next Page)

J. Gordon Edwards directed Theda Bara in all of the following Fox features

1.Camille (1917)
2.Cleopatra (1917)
3.Darling of Paris, The (1917)
4.Forbidden Path, The (1918)
5.Galley Slave, The (1915)
6.Heart and Soul (1917)
7.Her Double Life (1916)
8.Her Greatest Love (1917)
9.Light, The (1919)
10.Madame Du Barry (1917)
11.Romeo and Juliet (1916/I)
12.Rose of Blood, The (1917)
13.Salome (1918)
14.She Devil, The (1918)
15.Siren's Song, The (1919)
16.Soul of Buddha, The (1918)
17.Tiger Woman, The (1917)
18.Under the Yoke (1918)
19.Under Two Flags (1916)
20.Vixen, The (1916)
21.When a Woman Sins (1918)
22.When Men Desire (1919)
23.Woman There Was, A (1919)

 


Both cameras belong at Fox Studios or Fox TV. Either in their main entrance or in a senior executive's reception, displayed for all to see. The Bell and Howell 2709 and the Williamson are two extremely striking cameras and would be show stoppers where ever they are displayed.






 


Fox Sales Card.


 


 
 


 


There are many items that come with the Fox Studio camera. Here is probably the second most important item, second only to the copy of the original sales receipt.

This is not a copy or reproduction. This is an original 8X10 photograph of William Fox and his staff in 1916-17. The photo is mounted on its original cabinet card. The cabinet card is 11.75 inches by 13.75 inches. It is purported to be at the Los Angeles Studio.

Mr. Fox is easily found as he is seated in the foreground. Fascinatingly the man seated in the background just in front of the file cabinet is Sol M. Wurtzel. Mr. Wurtzel was the head of Fox Studios West Coast. He headed the Los Angeles studio while Mr. Fox headed the entire Fox Studios and Fox theaters from the East Coast. Mr. Wurtzel worked for Fox Studios for nearly thirty eight years. William Fox amassed a fortune estimated at three hundred million dollars by 1929, lost control and ownership of Fox Studios after the stock market crash and, Martha Stewart listen up here, in 1942 William Fox went to Federal Prison for a year and a day for obstructing justice in a bankruptcy case.


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