Background
He was born on March 28, 1893 in the village of Skourahorian, Greece, to Panagiotes Skouras, a sheepherder. He was the second boy in a family of five brothers and five sisters.
He was born on March 28, 1893 in the village of Skourahorian, Greece, to Panagiotes Skouras, a sheepherder. He was the second boy in a family of five brothers and five sisters.
In 1908, at age fifteen, he entered the Greek Orthodox seminary in Patras, in order to prepare himself for the priesthood. At the same time he also took classes in English and accounting, with a view of joining his older brother, Charles, who had immigrated to the United States in 1907 and had settled in St. Louis.
To prepare himself for the role of a business manager, Skouras took classes in business administration and business law at Jones Commercial College from 1914 to 1916. He also took classes in motion-picture finance, real estate, and theater management. In 1960 he received an honorary degree from the University of Mexico.
Skouras arrived in America in 1910 and began his career as a busboy at the Planter's Hotel bar in St. Louis. In 1912, with their combined savings, the Skouras brothers brought a younger sibling, George, to the United States, and in 1914 the three brothers invested their total savings of $4, 000 in a nickelodeon hall, which they converted immediately into a movie theater, renaming it the Olympia, after Mt. Olympus near their hometown in Greece. In 1917, Spyros and George joined the United States Signal Corps, leaving Charles in charge of their business interests. In 1919, Spyros received an honorable discharge and rejoined the family business.
By 1926 the Skouras brothers owned thirty-five theaters in St. Louis and, in partnership with Paramount Publix. In 1928 Warner Brothers bought out the Skouras theaters and retained Spyros Skouras as general manager of all Warner Brothers theaters countrywide. In 1931 Skouras left Warner Brothers for a brief stint as head of all Paramount theaters on the East Coast.
In 1932 he became head of Fox Metropolitan Theaters, which was failing financially; it made a spectacular recovery under his leadership. Concurrently, the Skouras Brothers made a similar deal with the RKO theaters, whose holdings included the Roxy in mid-Manhattan.
In 1942, due to a vacancy at the head, Skouras was made president of Twentieth Century-Fox, a position that he held continuously until 1962. Wendell L. Wilkie, who had run unsuccessfully for president against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, was his first chairman of the board. In the meantime, big studios' ownership of large theater chains was hurting the independent operators. In 1932, southern California independents filed four suits against Fox West Coast theaters, claiming monopoly and restraint of trade. Skouras's proposal, a compromise agreed upon by the heads of all the major studios and the independent operators, called for the sale of at least one theater where the studios owned three or more houses. This fulfilled the Court's order for competition.
Soon after the end of World War II, Skouras was faced with the havoc inflicted upon the studios by the development of television as a new medium of entertainment. By December 1953, more than 6, 000 movie theaters countrywide had closed as a result of this competition, causing a panic from which the movie industry could not seem to recover. At first Skouras thought that by owning a television network he would be able to control trends in this new medium. He offered to buy ABC-TV, but withdrew his bid when "they wanted too much. "
He pioneered CinemaScope, a technique that remained associated with Twentieth Century-Fox ever since, showing off the results in the much acclaimed film, The Robe, which helped pull Fox's sagging profits out of the slump.
Indeed, in the postwar years the European motion-picture industry barely existed, and the American industry was the only serious supplier of movie entertainment. The European market windfall, however, did not last long. The film Cleopatra, filmed on location in Italy, was his last giant effort to prove his point. Under pressure from concerned stockholders Skouras in 1962 resigned. He became chairman of the board and Darryl Zanuck replaced him as president of Fox studios.
He served as chairman until 1967. Still feeling fit to have a fresh start in a new business, Skouras had formed in 1965 the American Prudential-Grace Shipping Lines, with a vision to build, with the promised equal participation of the U. S. government, a fleet of eighteen cargo ships that would revolutionize the shipping industry. The new ships would introduce a much enlarged container capacity and travel at a speed that would cut time between the United States and European and Mediterranean ports by half. Skouras did not live to fulfill this vision, but his idea was picked up by the U. S. Navy Logistic Fleet in the 1980's, and the resulting larger-capacity, high-speed vessels demonstrated their utility in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War.
During his presidency at Fox he oversaw the production of many films that made motion-picture history. Among them were The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Keys of the Kingdom (1947), The Snake Pit (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), and All About Eve (1950).
From 1946 to 1947 he served as chairman of the Motion Pictures Committee of American Brotherhood, an international benevolent organization, and from 1950 to 1951 he served as its chairman. In 1950 he was named pioneer of the year by the board of the Directors Guild for his contributions to the advancement of cinematic technology with the invention of CinemaScope. In 1956 he became vice-chairman of the American Museum of Immigration.
Spyros Skouras died of a heart attack at his home in Rye, New York.
Spyros Panagiotes Skouras and his brothers owned thirty-five theaters in St. Louis and, in partnership with Paramount Publix, they also owned theater chains in Kansas City and Indianapolis. Skouras helped to effect a merger between the Fox theaters and the Twentieth Century movie studio on the West Coast. He played a driving force in the development of big-screen color television for theaters, with a view toward converting the big screen into television. He organized the phenomenal food-and-medicine-assistance fleet to occupied Greece, raised the money to build the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New York and donated large amounts of money to its charities. In 1951 the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission selected him to be the recipient of its annual Human Relations Award. In 1958 the Screen Producers Guild presented him with its annual Milestone Award. In 1962 he was given the Humanitarian Award by the Motion Picture and Amusement Division of the Joint Defense League. In 1968 he was the recipient of the annual Walt Disney Memorial Award of the Association of Theater Owners, in recognition of the Center for the Creative Arts in Brookline, Massachussets, which he had launched. In 1970 the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry honored him with a tribute for his role as chairman of the Prudential-Grace Lines.
Skouras led his relentless battle against the threat of television. First, Skouras waged a losing campaign against the sale of films to television, which he maintained was undercutting the motion-picture industry's natural market. He castigated other studio heads, calling these sales a "tragic mistake", "ruinous to film business. " Second, he protested loudly the Department of Justice antitrust suit to compel the release of sixteen-millimeter films to television as "a menace to every industry and business in the country, " further cautioning that the "application of the antitrust laws must be tempered with a little horse sense. " Finally, Skouras warned that "a successful prosecution of a pending government suit to compel the sales of first-run feature films to television would destroy the motion pictures industry. "
Skouras hoped to compete with television by means of innovative research and development, which would offer the public technologically superior products that could not be duplicated on the small screen.
Another source that Skouras wanted to tap as a counterbalance to sagging domestic profits was the foreign market. He was convinced that Hollywood could recoup its losses abroad. He maintained that overseas profits equalled those made in the United States and could be multiplied if the American motion-picture industry went multinational, not only selling but also investing in production abroad. Skouras wanted to fulfill his dream of a global multinational motion-picture industry.
His opinions stemmed from his deep religious convictions and his belief in family values.
In 1920 he married Sarah ("Saroule") H. Bruiglia. They had five children: Spyros P. Skouras, Jr. , Plato A. Skouras and others.
