PRESIDENT OF BIG FILM CONCERN

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26869, 23 October 1952, Page 10

PRESIDENT OF BIG FILM CONCERN

RISE TO WEALTH FROM OBSCURITY Mr Spyros Skouras. president of the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corpontion. who will arrive in Wellington on November 12 to spend six days in New Zealand, was born in Skouohorion, Greece, in 1893. He was educated at various schools and a monastery. When he was 17 he left Greece and went to America to join his older brother, Mr Charles Skouras. Mr Skouras was first employed as a busboy in St. Louis. Four years later he, Mr Charles Skouras, and another brother bought a controlling interest in a theatre in St. Louis. Within the next year they had bought an interest in the Lafayette Theatre, and by the end of 1914 had acquired the Pageant Theatre. In 1917 Mr Skouras enlisted in the United States Air Corps, but the war ended before his flight training was completed, and he was discharged in

1919. He returned to St. Louis. Seven years later he and his brothers controlled 37 theatres. During the next two years the theatres were sold to Warner Brothers, and in 1929 Mr Skouras joined the Warner company as general manager of the theatre circuit. In 1931 he joined the Paramount film organisation as president of a subsidiary formed to operate all Paramount theatres. With his two brothers, Messrs Charles and George Skouras, he beaded the Wesco Corporation. a company in which all Twentieth Century-Fox theatre interests were merged. In 1942, when he was elected president of Twentieth Century-Fox, the company controlled 564 theatres. During the Second World War Mr Skouras was head of a Greek relief organisation and the film industry's "Red division