In Theda Bara's Tent (as Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly)

I always bragged of the fact that no second of those contained in the twenty-four hours ever passed but that the name of Fox was on the screen in some part of the world.   

       - William Fox, 1925

PREFACE

My father, Harry Sirkus, could not walk down the streets of Manhattan without being stopped for an autograph. He was the face of television news. Although he was a modest person, he knew that his own story might have some historical value. Wounded in 1941 when he was covering the London blitz for Fox Movietone News, he wrote the tale of his childhood on Royal London Hospital stationery. It was a labor of love for me to read those yellowed, handwritten pages. I’ve never read a more intimate account of the birth of the American film industry and of the men who built it. My father was among them.

Franklin Sirkus, Esq.
Larchmont, New York, 2009