Joseph Schenck — studio head (20th) with roots in the Russian Empire
Joseph Michael Schenck was born Iosif Mikhailovich Sheinker in Rybinsk, a Volga town in the Yaroslavl Governorate of the Russian Empire, on 25 December 1876, according to Wikipedia; other sources give 1878. His family was Jewish. In 1892, or 1893 by other accounts, he emigrated to New York with his parents and siblings, including his younger brother Nicholas, arriving under the name Ossip Schenker. The family settled in a tenement on the Lower East Side and later in Harlem.
The brothers sold newspapers, worked in a pharmacy in Chinatown and studied pharmacy at night, Joseph also earning a high-school diploma in evening classes; they soon owned pharmacies of their own. They then went into amusements, running concessions at Fort George Amusement Park, and around 1909 or 1910, with capital advanced by the theatre owner Marcus Loew, bought Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. Through Loew they entered the film business, operating a chain of cinemas.
In 1916 Joseph married Norma Talmadge, one of the leading stars of the day, and became a producer. A friendship with the theatre owner Sid Grauman drew him further west. Moving to the West Coast while Nicholas stayed with Loew in New York, he became chairman of United Artists in 1924 and its president in 1927. In 1933 he and Darryl F. Zanuck founded Twentieth Century Pictures, which in 1935 merged with the Fox Film Corporation; as chairman of the new 20th Century-Fox he was one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood.
In 1941, at a trial at which Charlie Chaplin and Irving Berlin appeared as character witnesses, he was convicted of income-tax evasion, in a case arising from payments to union officials, and sentenced to prison; the sentence was reduced after he testified in the related trial, he served four months and was pardoned by President Harry Truman. He returned to 20th Century-Fox, and in 1952 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award for his services to the industry.
He retired in 1957 and died at his home in Beverly Hills on 22 October 1961, aged eighty-four. The brothers' lives are the subject of Michael Benson and Craig Singer's Moguls: The Lives and Times of Hollywood Film Pioneers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck.
"Emigrated with his family, including his brother Nicholas, to New York in 1892 (other sources: 1893), under the name Ossip Schenker."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Governorate (Russia)
Born in Rybinsk, on the Volga, in 1876 into a Jewish family, Iosif Sheinker came to New York with his parents and his younger brother Nicholas in the early 1890s.
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Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Governorate (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.