Nicholas Schenck — studio head (mgm) with roots in the Russian Empire
Nicholas Michael Schenck was born on 14 November 1881 in Rybinsk, a town on the Volga in the Yaroslavl Governorate of the Russian Empire, one of seven children of a Jewish family. In 1892 or 1893 the family, including his elder brothers George and Joseph, emigrated to New York, settling in a tenement on the Lower East Side and later moving to Harlem.
Nicholas and Joseph ran errands and sold newspapers while studying at the New York College of Pharmacy at night, and their first job was in a pharmacy in Chinatown; before long they owned drugstores of their own. They turned to amusements, running concessions at Fort George Amusement Park, and with capital advanced by the theatre owner Marcus Loew bought Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, which they kept until the 1930s. Working with Loew in the theatre business, the brothers then parted ways: Joseph went to Hollywood, while Nicholas stayed in New York as Loew's second-in-command.
As vice-president and general manager of Loew's Inc. he helped Loew build the combination of Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures that, with Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, providing Loew's large chain of theatres with a steady flow of films. When Loew died suddenly in 1927, Schenck became president of Loew's Inc., MGM's parent company, which he ran closely from New York; by the 1930s it employed some 12,000 people, and by some estimates he was among the richest men in the United States. He was also a charter member of the board of Technicolor, Inc., the pioneer of colour film. In 1929 William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation made a deal to acquire control of Loew's, a move that, by one account, deepened the strain between the two brothers.
He remained president until the 1950s, when Arthur Loew, Marcus Loew's son, succeeded him, and stayed on as chairman of the board; the Supreme Court's antitrust ruling requiring the studios to divest their theatre chains reshaped the company in the same years.
He died in Miami Beach, Florida, on 4 March 1969, aged eighty-seven; the lawyer Louis Nizer gave his eulogy. The brothers' lives are told in Michael Benson and Craig Singer's Moguls.
"Emigrated with his family, including his elder brother Joseph, to New York in 1892 or 1893, settling on the Lower East Side."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Governorate (Russia)
Born in Rybinsk, in the Yaroslavl Governorate, in 1881, one of seven children of a Jewish family, he came to New York with his parents and his brothers George and Joseph 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.