Jack Foley (sound effects artist)
American sound effects developer

Jack Donovan Foley (April 12, 1891 – November 9, 1967) was an American sound effects artist who was the developer of many sound effect techniques used in filmmaking. He is credited with developing a unique method for performing sound effects live and in synchrony with the picture during a film's post-production. Accordingly, individuals engaged in this trade are called "Foley artists".
He worked on pictures such as Melody of Love (1928), Show Boat (1929), Dat Ol' Ribber, Dracula (1931), Operation Petticoat (1959), and Spartacus (1960). For his work in Hollywood, Foley received the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Award.
Early life
Jack Foley was born on April 12, 1891, in Yorkville, New York, to Irish immigrants Margaret Donovan and Michael Foley. Foley was raised in the area of Coney Island. Foley's parents were separated as Margaret lived with her father and four sisters. When Foley was sixteen, Margaret married Michael Gilmartin, the son of Sligo immigrants. Foley's biological father worked at the docks and was a volunteer firefighter as well as a singer and songwriter for local pubs.
“Jack Foley (sound effects artist)” enters the record as american sound effects developer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jack, Foley and sound can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jack Foley (sound effects artist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.