Spyros Skouras

Spyros Skouras (1893 to 1971) was a Greek-American film executive who led 20th Century-Fox as president from 1942 to 1962 and stayed on as chairman for several more years. Born in the village of Skourochori in Greece to a family of sheep herders, he emigrated to the United States in 1910 with his brothers Charles and George. In St. Louis the brothers saved money from hotel jobs and built a nickelodeon called the Olympia, grew into a chain of more than thirty local theaters and opened the Ambassador Theatre Building in 1926. After selling their interest to Warner Brothers in 1929 they moved east, and in 1932 the brothers took over management of the Fox West Coast Theaters chain. Skouras took the initiative for the 1935 merger of Fox with Twentieth Century Pictures. In 1953, as television threatened cinema attendance, he introduced CinemaScope with the film The Robe, and the wide screen became an industry standard. Cost overruns on Cleopatra led to a shareholder revolt and to Darryl F. Zanuck replacing him as president. He also owned the shipping firm Prudential Lines.