George Panagiotes Skouras was an American theater executive.
Background
He was born on April 23, 1896 in Skourohorion, Greece, the youngest of Panagiotes and Costoula Skouras' ten children. When George Skouras was still quite young, his father died. The family decided that Demetrios, the eldest son, would remain in Greece and tend the family sheep farm, while Charles, the next oldest son, would attend language school and then immigrate to the United States. In 1907, Charles Skouras settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was joined by Spyros, the next son, in 1910 and by George in September 1911.
Career
In 1914 he and his brothers, pooling $4, 000 saved from their work as busboys at the Jefferson Hotel, leased and subsequently purchased a nickelodeon, which they named the Olympia Theater. At the Olympia, George sold tickets and guarded the door.
In 1919 the three brothers expanded their operations by purchasing other entertainment properties in St. Louis. Within three years they had accumulated facilities worth $1. 5 million. They also opened an importing business that sold Greek olives and olive oil produced by brother Demetrios.
By 1926 the Skouras chain included thirty-seven St. Louis-area theaters. The seventeen-story, $5 million Ambassador Theater became its flagship house. Charles, the oldest and most business-minded, directed office operations; Spyros, the most gregarious, handled public relations and sales; and George, the most reserved, managed the neighborhood theaters. In their movie "palaces" the brothers introduced on-stage orchestras, high-kicking chorus lines, and Saturday matinees for children.
In April 1926, Demetrios Skouras sued his Americanized brothers, claiming they had denied him his rightful share of the benefits arising from the family's original agreement to share American and Greek incomes equally. But the controversy was never settled because his visa expired before the case reached court. Although the intrafamily squabble subsided, the three brothers' financial problems did not end when Demetrios left the country.
After the stock-market crash in 1929, the St. Louis Amusement Company went bankrupt with liabilities of $5, 086, 410 and assets of $342, 462. Prior to the stock-market crash of 1929, the Skouras brothers sold Skouras Brothers Enterprises to Warner Brothers and after the crash managed to facilitate a merger between Warner-First National Theaters and the Stanley Company of America. The resulting Stanley-Warner Company established Warner Brothers as one of the top theater circuits in the country.
When Warners hired the brothers to head different divisions of the company's theater operations, George moved to New York City as general manager for the eastern section. In 1931, after a series of jobs with different companies, George then became president of a new Skouras Circuit of fifty theaters in the New York City area.
Meanwhile, brothers Charles and Spyros filled more lucrative and attractive positions on the West Coast, and Spyros soon became president of Twentieth Century-Fox. Despite intrafamily conflicts, George Skouras "adopted" Demetrios' son Thanos and supported him through undergraduate and law degrees at American universities.
George gathered American and Canadian contributions totaling $150 million. After Pearl Harbor, George enlisted in the Organization of Strategic Services. Following the war he directed the Animals for Greece drive, which delivered domestic animals, seeds, and farm implements to Greece. George then reassumed the presidency of Skouras Theatre Corporation, and in 1952 accepted the presidency of the United Artists Theatre Circuit. The following year, acting on behalf of the companies he headed, he filed an $87, 960, 000 lawsuit against RKO, Warner Brothers Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and United Artists Corporation, alleging a conspiracy to monopolize all first-run theaters in the New York City area. In 1958, after most of the companies had settled out of court, United Artists Theatre Circuit absorbed Metropolitan Playhouses, United of California, United Theatres of Texas, Randforce, and others to form a theater circuit with more than 400 houses coast to coast.
Early in the 1950's, when television challenged the entertainment supremacy of motion pictures, studio executives resorted to technological gimmicks like 3-D and Cinerama to woo customers back into the theaters. Spyros Skouras, as head of Twentieth Century-Fox, convinced his studio to acquire the patent for CinemaScope.
George thought the trend in motion pictures would be toward the three-hour spectacle, the historical costume drama, and the wide screen. In 1953 he founded Magna Theatre Corporation (later renamed Magna Pictures Corporation). The company's first product, Oklahoma! (1955), was shot in Todd-A-O. It displayed all three attributes, but it lost $4 million. Undaunted, George remained as the "unpaid president" of Magna, guiding the enterprise through a lucrative leasing of its Todd-A-O process to Twentieth Century-Fox for the highly profitable South Pacific (1958). By 1961 payment of the six-year debentures incurred from the company's Oklahoma! disaster left Magna's indebtedness at $1 million. But the company's real problem remained with its expensive rights to Todd-A-O. The licensing fee for the operation was $200, 000, a sum that most producers shunned when offered Twentieth Century's CinemaScope process for only $25, 000.
In December 1963, after a steady decline in Todd-A-O productions and company profits, Skouras retired as president of Magna Corporation. Legal battles and circuit growth at United Artists Theatre Circuit had not resulted in adequate profits for dissident stockholders, who nearly ousted Skouras in the same month. Within a few months, George had sold his stocks and retired to his New York City, apartment where he died.
Achievements
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
A funeral eulogist labeled George Skouras "the quiet one who shunned publicity and kept in the background. "
Connections
He married Julia Ghiglione in September 1926. They had two daughters.