Cinema history features plenty of famous brothers: Lumière, Marx, Warner. Although Constantinos, Spyros, and George Skouras aren’t exactly household names, their influence on the film industry was significant—and their path to Hollywood started in St. Louis.
The city’s first theater, World’s Dream, opened on Market around the time the Skouras family immigrated to St. Louis from Greece. It had 120 folding chairs and standing room for 200.
“Orchestras and presentations were unheard of, and ushers were unnecessary, for the crowds took care of themselves,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recalled years later. At the time, the only other competing theater was the Dreamland Theater on South Broadway. Within a year or two, there were hundreds.
By 1913, the Greek immigrant community had realized theaters made great investment opportunities. The Skouras Brothers pooled together $3,000 and, with three other Greek immigrants, opened the Olympia Theater in the fall of 1914. After purchasing two buildings on Market, they built it out with 1,100 seats and put up a sparkling marquee. They parked their theater across from World’s Dream, which closed within a year. In the meantime, the Skourases added a four-piece orchestra (soon upgrading to a Wurlitzer), screened films nearly all day, and charged half of what other movie houses did. The Olympia also opened its doors to everyone: It was one of the few places in St. Louis where people of different races and classes could sit elbow to elbow, watching the stars of the era perform their hijinks.
By 1923, the Skourases were the undisputed movie theater kings of St. Louis, with more than three dozen theaters across the region, including the Missouri Theatre, where the Rockettes (then the Missouri Rockets) made their debut in 1925. When the brothers opened their opulent six-story Ambassador Theatre in 1926, congratulations poured in from New York to Hollywood.
It was the Great Depression that pushed the brothers out of St. Louis. They sold their company to Warner Bros. and went to manage theaters in New York before heading to Hollywood. Eventually, Spyros became the longest-running head of 20th Century Fox and is credited with helping the film industry push back against TV by introducing the CinemaScope format. Constantinos (known as Charles) went to Fox West Coast. George became president of United Artists Theaters.
Their impact on Hollywood was immense, and their influence continues to resonate here more than a century later: You can still watch movies in two Skouras theaters, The Tivoli and The Hi-Pointe.
