20th Century Fox - Logo and Fanfare

Logo and Fanfare

The Art Deco 20th Century Fox logo, designed by landscape artist Emil Kosa, Jr., originated as the 20th Century Pictures logo, with the name "Fox" substituted for "Pictures, Inc." in 1935. The logo was originally created as a painting on several layers of glass and animated frame-by-frame. Over the years the logo was modified several times.

In 1953, Rocky Longo, an artist at Pacific Title, was hired to recreate the original design for the new CinemaScope process. In order to give the design the required "width", Longo tilted the "0" in 20th. In 1981, after Longo repainted the eight-layered glass panels (and straightened the "0"), his revised logo became the official trademark. (The 1953 logo, however, would be used in tandem with the newer logo until 1987.)

In 1994, after a few failed attempts (which even included trying to film the familiar monument as an actual three-dimensional model), Fox in-house television producer Kevin Burns was hired to produce a new logo for the company — this time using the new process of computer-generated imagery (CGI). With the help of graphics producer Steve Soffer and his company Studio Productions (which had recently given face-lifts to the Paramount and Universal logos), Burns directed that the new logo contain more detail and animation, so that the longer (21 second) Fox fanfare with the "CinemaScope extension" could be used as the underscore. This required a virtual Los Angeles Cityscape to be designed around the monument. In the background can be seen the Hollywood sign, which would give the monument an actual location (approximating Fox's actual address in Century City). One final touch was the addition of store-front signs—each one bearing the name of Fox executives who were at the studio at the time. One of the signs reads, "Murdoch's Department Store"; another says "Chernin's" and a third reads: "Burns Tri-City Alarm" (an homage to Burns' late father who owned a burglar and fire alarm company in Upstate New York). The 1994 CGI logo was also the first time that Twentieth Century Fox was recognized as "A News Corporation Company" in the logo.

In 2009, a newly updated CGI logo, done by Blue Sky Studios, debuted in the film Avatar. A 75th Anniversary version of this new logo was used to coincide with 20th Century Fox's 75th anniversary; it made its official debut with Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and last appeared in Gulliver's Travels.

The Fox fanfare was originally composed in 1933 by Alfred Newman, who became head of Twentieth Century-Fox's music department from 1940 until the 1960s. It was re-recorded in 1935 when 20th Century Fox was officially established.

In 1953 an extended version was created for CinemaScope films, first used on the film How to Marry a Millionaire, released in the same year. The Robe, the first film released in CinemaScope, used the sound of a choir singing over the logo, instead of the regular fanfare.

As television grew as a medium, the practice of placing production logos at the end of programs became commonplace. For Fox's television arm, a truncated version of the Newman fanfare has been used with a brief shot of the Fox logo. Syndicated programs would overlay "Television" over "Century" in an animation, resulting in the logo reading "20th Television Fox". Today, CGI logos are used, with 20th Century Fox Television primarily for Fox network programming, and 20th Television for other programming (such as cable and syndication).

By the 1970s the Fox fanfare was being used in films sporadically. George Lucas enjoyed the Alfred Newman music so much that he insisted it be used for Star Wars (1977), which features the CinemaScope version. Composer John Williams composed the Star Wars main theme in the same key (B♭ major) as the Fox fanfare as an extension to Newman's score. In 1980 Williams conducted a new version of the fanfare for The Empire Strikes Back. Williams' recording of the Fox fanfare has been used in every Star Wars film since. Since the introduction of the CGI Fox logo, Star Wars episodes 1 through 6 (beginning with the Special Editions of the original trilogy in 1997) have used a static angle version of the new logo, to allow for the animated Lucasfilm logo to appear during the extension.

The Fox fanfare was re-orchestrated in 1981, as Longo's revised logo was being introduced.

As the CGI logo was being prepared to premiere at the beginning of James Cameron's True Lies (1994), Burns asked composer Bruce Broughton for a new version of the familiar fanfare. In 1997 Alfred's son, composer David Newman, recorded the new version of the fanfare in Anastasia (1997). This rendition is still in use as of 2010.

Parodies of the fanfare have appeared at the start of the films Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (played by a small band, imitating the silent era of films), The Cannonball Run (cars drive around the logo and knock out the searchlights), White Men Can't Jump (rap version of the fanfare), The Day After Tomorrow (thunderstorm on the set), Live Free or Die Hard (where the searchlights go out as a result of a power outage), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (featuring a piano-rock version of the fanfare), The Simpsons Movie (Ralph Wiggum "sings along" with the fanfare; in trailers and commercials, the "0" in the tower is replaced by a pink, half-bitten doughnut of the type Homer eats), Daredevil (the picture morphs into a negative image of the logo – as if perceived by the main character's radar sense), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (with snow and volcanoes covering the logo, but the regular 20th Century Fox logo was shown on the film's DVD and Blu-rays release instead) and Minority Report (where the logo, alongside its DreamWorks counterpart, appears immersed in water, similar to the film's "precog" characters). A variant appears on most of the 2010 films, in which a 75 forms from lights, in recognition of the 75th anniversary of the merger, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the logo will become dark). The fanfare was also used within What a Way to Go!, as the theme of Lush Budged Productions, opening Shirley MacLaine's fantasy of her marriage to Robert Mitchum.

In the X-Men films of the 2000s, the "X" in "Fox" remains ghosted on the screen as the scene fades out. In Moulin Rouge! the logo appears on a stage behind a red curtain with a conductor directing an orchestra playing the fanfare. In the 2003 production of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the logo appears as a huge unlit monument dominating the nighttime London skyline. In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the studio placed a cartoon version of the 20th Century Fox structure on the main studio logo.