Spyros Skouras - Rise To Fame

Rise To Fame

In May 1935, Spyros helped merge Fox with Twentieth Century Pictures. He later served as president of the merged company 20th Century Fox from 1942 to 1962. Spyros was also a major stockholder of 20th Century Fox. In the 1950s he, together with his brothers, controlled 20th Century Fox, National Theaters, Fox West Coast Theaters, United Artists Theaters, Skouras Theaters, Magna Corp, and Todd AO. Skouras assets in 1952 amounted to a dazzling $108,000,000, a point of power never before attained by any other theater or movie mogul, including the Schencks, Warners, Schuberts, or his countryman Alexander Pantages.

Skouras oversaw the production of such classics as Don't Bother to Knock, The Seven Year Itch, The Hustler, The King and I, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Robe. One of his biggest achievements is that he managed to sign a young model named Norma Jean Baker to 20th Century Fox, who after changing her name to Marilyn Monroe, would rise to fame and become the most famous Hollywood sex symbol of the 20th Century. Skouras developed a special relationship with Marilyn, who often called him "Papa Skouras".

During Skouras' tenure - which was the longest in the company's history - he worked to rescue the faltering movie industry from the lure of television. 20th Century Fox's famous advertising slogan, Movies are Better than Ever, gained credibility in 1953 when Spyros introduced CinemaScope in the studio's groundbreaking feature film The Robe. With his introduction of CinemaScope, Skouras did much to save the entire movie industry from its newly invented competitor - television. This new technology soon became the standard of the whole industry.