Nicholas M. Schenck

Nicholas M. Schenck, a Russian immigrant who became head of the largest film company in the world, died of a stroke on Monday night in Miami Beach. He was 87 years old.

For nearly 30 years, until 1955, Mr. Schenck, a founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and its predecessors, was a major figure in the motion-picture industry. When he spoke, Hollywood listened.

"What does Nick think?" was a standard question in Hollywood in the nineteen-twenties, thirties and forties.

The man who became M-G-M's president after the death of Marcus Loew was supreme commander of the star-studded studio until his retirement. He made decisions without bluster or flamboyance from a desk in New York, periodically visiting Culver City, Calif., to check on plans and new productions.

As head of a huge corporation embracing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios and Loew's Theaters, Inc., his judgments affected the investment of millions of dollars, the careers of dozens of screen stars and the power of the studio's West Coast production chiefs, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg.

Like many people in Hollywood, Mr. Mayer and Mr. Thalberg heeded "The General," a nickname that Mr. Schenck acquired in his years in the industry.

Mr Schenck, a mild, friendly man, rather short and slightly plump, rarely interferred with department heads. He made suggestions in broad generalities, saying things like "Get behind it." After viewing one of his studio's sentimental movies, he indicated his throat, saying, "No lumps here."

Although he had full control of the vast M-G-M empire, Mr. Schenck had a soft spot for the Palisades Amusement Park in Fort Lee, N.J., which he bought in 1911 and continued to operate until 1935 in addition to his film activities.

Mr. Schenck had bought the amusement park with his older brother, Joseph, who also became an important figure in the film industry. Their early career, as partners, suggested little of the glamour and make-believe they would come to know in cinema.

Nicholas Schenck, one of seven children, was born in Rybinsk, a Volga River village, on Nov. 14, 1881, two years after Joseph. The family arrived here in 1893, settling in a Lower East Side tenement and later in Harlem.

Joe and Nick worked as a team, first selling newspapers, then in a drug store. In two years, they owned the drug store, and were looking for other lucrative endeavors.

One hot summer day, the Schencks, like many others in New York, took a trolley ride to Fort George in northern Manhattan. There they found a few thousand people milling about with little to do except wait for a return trolley.

The Schencks astutely rented a beer concession and provided vaudeville entertainment.

One steady customer was Marcus Loew, a theater operator, who watched the Schencks' concession grow in size through several seasons. He befriended the brothers and advanced a sum of money to help them establish a larger resort at Fort George, called Paradise Park.

The Schencks joined Mr. Loew in his theater operations, starting with one in Hoboken, N. J., sharing in the profits and profitably investing in real estate for nickelodeons, vaudeville and, increasingly, motion pictures.

This was the pattern from 1907 until Mr. Loew acquired a studio in 1919. With Nicholas growing closer to Loew's Inc., Joseph departed for Hollywood and later became president of United Artists Corporation.

When Mr. Loew died in 1927, Nicholas took charge at a critical period of industry change. Silent pictures and limitless prosperity were soon to give way to sound tracks and financial uncertainty.

Mr. Schenck was now head of a thriving theater circuit and of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a production combination of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures (Samuel Goldwyn) and the Louis B. Mayer Company.

In 1932, Mr. Schenck was masterminding an entertainment empire that employed 12,000 people. From his New York headquarters, he kept a close watch on the West Coast operations. A tight production schedule was demanded.

This sometimes precipitated harsh exchanges between Mr. Schenck and Mr. Mayer, the operations chief, and Mr. Schenck and Mr. Thalberg, the production chief until his death in 1935.

Yet, M-G-M was remarkably successful. It was the only film company to pay dividends throughout the Depression.

The studio produced a cavalcade of films and stars, including Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, the Jeannette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy team and many others.

Mr. Schenck was a wealthy man. In 1927, he and his brother, between them, were reported to have $20-million, with a combined income of more than $1-million a year.

Nicholas's power and prestige reached its peak in the aftermath of World War II, but trouble lay ahead. Television loomed formidably over the movie industry. The public was demanding exceptional pictures instead of routine glamour.

Mr Schenck stubbornly favored formats of more prosperous years and he scorned television.

His difficulties with Mr. Mayer [began] when he ruled against Mr. Mayer in his bitter dispute with Dore Schary, who succeeded Mr. Thalberg as production chief.

Later, as stockholders grew restless, profits fell. Finally, on Dec. 14, 1955, Mr. Schenck was succeeded as president by Arthur M. Loew, 28 years and 3 months after he assumed control on the death of Mr. Loew's father.

Although he was named chairman of the board, Mr. Schenck became restless.

In 1956, he briefly came back into action when Mr. Loew resigned to spare his health. Mr. Schenck openly defied the other directors in maneuvering to find a new company president. Upon the ascension to the presidency of Joseph R. Vogel, who died last Saturday at the age of 73, Mr. Schenck was named honorary board chairman. He retired altogether later in 1956.

In 1961, Joseph M. Schenck, who had also founded 20th Century Productions with Darryl F. Zanuck, died at the age of 83. The elder brother had been married to Norma Talmadge.

Nicholas Schenck divided his later years between his estates at Sands Point, L. I., and Miami Beach. The former, whch he purchased in 1942, was a 20-acre property with a main house of 30 rooms and luxurious appointments that included a movie theater and a 200-foot dock.

Mr. Schenck's first marraige ended in divorce. He leaves his second wife, Pansy Wilcox, who was a sister of Mrs. Edgar Selwyn, the wife of the playwright-producer.

He also leaves three daughters, Marti Stevens, supper-club and theater singer; Mrs. Joanne Brandt of Southern Pines, N.C.; and Mrs. Nicola Dantine, wife of Helmut Dantine, the actor; a sister, Mrs. Anne Nayfack of New York and six grandchildren.

A funeral service will take place on Friday at 11:30 A.M. at Frank E. Campbell's, 81st Street and Madison Avenue.

Nicholas M. Schenck, a pioneer of the motion picture business, is dead following a stroke in Florida. Of all the pioneers he remained, by choice and design, possibly the most remote from public gaze. But he dominated the industry to such an extent that he was dubed "The General" long before his half century of active leadership ended.

For years, he was the only film company president who could talk turkey with the one-time czar of the American Federation of Musicians, james C. Petrillo, on musicians' contract matters.

A showbusinessman more than a showman, Schenck surrounded himself with complementary executive, production and artistic talent. Hard-headed, shrewd and cold, he was as tolerant of personal and professional excesses in loyal and productive subordinates as he was merciless when they failed him. He knew what he wanted--a successful film organization--and his gaze never wandered from the target.

Born in the Russian village of Rybinsk on Nov. 14, 1881, Schenck came to America in 1893 with his parents and brothers, the late George and late Joseph M. Schenck. Nick and Joe ran errands and sold newspapers by day while studying nights at N.Y. College of Pharmacy. After graduation they got jobs in a Bowery drugstore which they owned by 1901, later adding another on Third Ave. at 110th St.

The decade prior to World War I spawned over 400 amusement parks in this country, and after getting their feet wet in a Fort George beer concession, the Schencks got in on the ground floor with the opening of Paradise Park, located at Fort George.

One of the concessions at Paradise was a small "theatre" (more accurately a sort of boxcar) used for exhibiting one-reel "scenic tours" then popular. The lessee was Marcus Loew, already involved in nickelodeons and penny arcades, who eventualy bought a $10,000 piece of the park. In turn he persuaded the Schencks to acquire control of two suburban film houses. Thus the brothers were joined in a 20-year association with Loew until his death in September, 1927.

In 1910 Loew grouped his interests into Loew's Consolidated Enterprises, and the Schenck theatres were among the properties. Following year the name was changed to Loew's Theatrical Enterprises, and expansion began outside of New York area. Loew was adding vaude to his exhib activities, while in 1910 the Schencks purchased Palisades Park in New Jersey across the Hudson River from Upper Manhattan. They owned this money-making amusement park for a generation and it was always one of Nicholas Schenck's favorite projects.

About this time the different personalities of the brothers began to show. Joe, the more extrovert, became head of various Loew talent booking offices (assisted in some by later-producer Edward Small), before going into active indie film production. Nick remained at Loew's side as chief lieutenant in charge of theatre operations and developing his genius at assessing real estate values. Among his subordinates was the late Edgar J. (Eddie) Mannix, who had joined the brothers in Paradise days as part-time bouncer and aide.

By 1919 the Loew circuit exceeded 50 houses, and another corporate name change brought about Loew's, Inc., with Nick posted as first veep and g.m. These post-World War I years were marked by the forging of production, distribution and exhibition as integral components of all the major film companies.

Adolph Zukor, associated with Loew for some years before the Schencks, had developed a strong prod-distrib outfit from his Famous Players-Lasky-Paramount series of mergers, but by 1919 he needed theatres as guaranteed outlets for pix. William Fox, on the other hand, had by 1915 added production to his distrib-exhib activities, but was buying theatres as fast as he could.

Loew was in a third position, that of a growing major exhib who needed an orderly flow of film product. He found it in the amalgamation of three floundering prod-distrib companies. In 1920 he took over Metro pictures from Richard Rowland and associates, which gave him some product (although from many different sources, since Metro was mainly a distributor), and he also got a small downtown Hollywood studio in the deal.

This was insufficient, for Loew felt that an efficient producing company needed a centralized studio. Thus when Frank J. Godsol offered in 1924 to unload the Goldwyn Company (with its large ex-Triangle Studio complex in Culver City), Loew snapped it up, with Nick handling the detailed arrangements. Godsol was possibly the first of the fiscal, wheeler-dealers who have frequently controlled giant film organizations with the slightest aptitude for production or showmaship. Godsol had taken over from Samuel Goldwyn, by then out of the company which still bore his name. Among the assets were Howard Dietz and the lion trademark which he originated.

Loew's home-grown product was then labelled Metro-Goldwyn Pictures. The final addition shortly thereafter was the talen (great) and assets (small) of Louis B. Mayer Productions. mayer, one-time Massachusetts exhib who went into distribution and later production, had gravitated to Hollywood. Compared to Zukor, Fox, Loew, the Schencks and Carl Laemmle, Mayer was an upstart newcomer, but one with ability to recognize trends and talent.

Impressed with Mayer's ability and organization (which included producers Irving Thalberg and Harry Rapf and a sharp lawyer named J. Robert Rubin), Loew placed Mayer's group in overall charge of the producing subsid. The construction of Loew's, Inc. was then complete, and nearly all credit belonged to its founder. The company ran smoothly, for Schenck could administrate effectively while Mayer could produce effectively.

Before his death in 1927 at 57, Loew presided over the first of many arguments between his two key subordinates, centering about preferential film rentals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pix to Loew's Theatres, which made Schenck's books look better than Mayer's. Money was the balm in this beef, as it always was to be.

Loew was a beloved figure whose concern for efficiency sprang from deep-rooted sense of responsibility to stockholders. At the same time, being a former exhib he had solid identification with that industry segment, and for decades Loew's was known as "the friendly company." Schenck succeeded to presidency in 1927 and maintained the company image, although never becoming particularly beloved himself.

In "Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox," author presents the many facets of a spectacular 1929 deal engineered by Fox and Schenck by which former would take over Loew's. Bosley Crowther details the Mayer faction response to this later-aborted move in "Hollywood Rajah," as well as recurring intra-mural feuds btween the Manhattan and Coast toppers which extended over a generation.

Suffice it to say that Schenck controlled Loew's, legally and properly as principal officer, while Mayer (for all his alleged waste and traits) managed to gather into one studio the largest array of film talent ever assembled.

An interesting sidelight to the Schenck-Mayer relationship concerns the creation of a competing company. This requires a review of brother Joseph's activities since striking out on his own. From status of indie producer for Paramount and First National, Joe had risen to presidency of United Artists (his hirng an attempt by Pickford-Fairbanks-Chaplin interests to generate a supply of quality product for UA which couldn't survive on the occasional pix made by its founders). No one lasted very long at UA then. Personal and professional vanities of its owners taxed the abilities of even the Solomon-like figure that was Joe Schenck.

Money-tight Depression years stalled Joe's plans for production with Darryl F. Zanuck, who had ankled Warners after a meteoric and Thalberg-like rise to success there. Initial financing was needed, and Joe got half of it from Nick. Other half came from Mayer, on condition that son-in-law William Goetz get executive post. Thus, brotherly love and a father-in-law's affection created what became, in a few years the merged 20th-Fox company.

The Schencks also figured in a behind-the-scenes labor issue that eventually exploded into the daily press. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees had effectively organized the film crafts years before the talent guilds arose in the '30s, by which time IATSE leadership included Willie Bioff and George Browne.

With recurring threats to call strikes in the studios or to authorize walkouts by projectionists in theatres, the later-repudiated Bioff-Browne IATSE regime was reported to have extorted annual bribes for several years prior to exposure in 1941. Nicked for $50,000 each year was Loew's, as reported by Bosley Crowther in "The Lion's Share," a company history which is virgually a Schenck biog.

The fancy fiscal footwork by which the companies masked the payoffs later sent Joe to Federal prison (for income-tax irregularities), but he was quickly released and later pardoned for having assisted the Government's prosection. In a sense Joe took the rap for a temporizing industry leadership.

While Mayer presided on the Coast over a glittering stable of thoroughbreds (figuratively at first, then literally as he became a horse-breeder). Schenck's New York distrib-exhib team included Charles C. Moskowitz, Rubin, David Bernstein, William F. Rodgers, Dietz, Joseph R. Vogel (who also died a few days ago), Charles M. Reagan, Si Seadler, John F. Murphy, Eugene D. Picker, Leopold Friedman and Marcus' son, Arthur M. Loew.

Under Schenck's helm (steadied in part by Manhattan banking interests administering the hefty block of shares originally sold to Fox), Loew's escaped the financial reverses of the '30s, and its stock was a staple in "window-and-orphan" portfolios. Shrewd management, money-making pix and boom war years successfully absorbed the huge studio overhead occasioned by Mayer's "in-depth" hiring policies.

With the post-World War II advent of television, huge Loew's suffered in spades the fiscal grief of all the majors. Mayer's studio interests were waning, and Schenck brought him up short. Dore Schary was brought in from RKO to be "another Thalberg," and the figures began to brighten. At the same time, the general tightening up extended to the sales force, whereby the "friendly company" image became tarnished. In a showdown over prestige, Schenck (his eye still on the company) preferred Schary, and Mayer resigned in 1951. In "Picture," Lillian Ross depicts company tensions of that period.

Six months later the Consent Decree for Loew's was signed, in which Loew's Theatres and radio station WMGM in New York were eventually spun off from a new prod-distrib company known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. Latter firm retained the MGM Records arm formed after World War II, also control of Robbins-Feist-Miller music companies, and tv subsids.

Actual implementation of Government-induced divorcement dragged on for years, largely due to nagging problem of how to distribute to successor companies the funded debt of Loew's which ran about $40,000,000.

Reorganization was complicated by many unsuccessful pix, a reluctance by Schenck to enter either vidfilm production or studio-indie co-production deals, plus a spectacular assault on the company by Wall Street speculators fronted by a vindictive Mayer.

Aided by much press-agentry, intra-mural bloodbath spilled over from company corridors into trade papers and finally the daily and slick press. Crowther's books and Louis Nizer's "My Life In Court" detail Leo's fallen days and deliberate harassment by outsiders. Schenck was forced upstairs to board chairman post in 1955, Arthur Loew taking over for an uneasy year until Vogel was upped to prexy from head of Loew's Theatres.

Vogel successfully rescued Metro from plunder and dissolution in a free-for-all that brought the entire industry to his side. Schenck could only watch from virtual exile, and he retired completely from the company in 1958 to his home in Florida.

At the end Schenck's career was blighted by muck-raking charges of nepotism and profiteering made by Mayer and assorted bankers and politicos. But nepotism is a word used almost exclusively by the vain, envious and greedy who want what another possesses. In another frame of reference, it is almost a virtue and is practiced (with about the same batting average) in many organizations still endowed with the personal stamp of their founders.

Surviving Schenck are widow, the former showgirl and his second wife Pansy Wilcox, and three daughters, Nicola Dantine (wife of actor Helmut Dantine), Joanne Brandt (no relation to the theatre family) and one-time nitery singer Marti Stevens. Indie producer Aubrey Schenck, longtime Metro exec Marvin Schenck (both nephews) and brother-in-law Fred Wilcox, director, also survive as does a sister and six grandchildren.

Joe and George, died in 1961 and 1962, respectively.

Nicholas Schenck, 87, former head of Loew's in the pre-divorcement period of theatre control, and hence of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, died in Florida March 4, three days after Joseph Vogel, the embattled head of Metro in its proxy wars.

He is survived by his wife, Pansy three daughters, Marti Stevens, Joanne Brandt (no kin of chain owners) and Nicola Dantine; a sister, Mrs. Annie Neyfack; and six grandchildren.

Services will be held Friday morning (7) at Frank E. Campbell's, New York. Rabbi Perilman of Temple Emmanuel will conduct services. Interment will be in Maimonides Cemetery, Brooklyn.

Full details on Schenck's career appear on Page 4.

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