Alexander Pantages

Alexander Pantages
Pantages, c. 1914
Born	Pericles Pantages 1867 Andros, Greece
Died	February 1936 (aged 68–69)
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California 34°07′32″N 118°14′27″W / 34.125499°N 118.240807°W / 34.125499; -118.240807
Nationality	Greek American
Occupation	Impresario and vaudeville/film producer
Known for

Alexander Pantages (1867 – February 17, 1936) was a Greek American vaudeville and early motion picture producer and impresario who created a large and powerful circuit of theatres across the western United States and Canada. At the height of his empire, he owned or operated 84 theatres across the United States and Canada. He was known as a tireless operator and a particularly ruthless one. In 1929 he was accused of raping a native 17-year-old dancer named Eunice Alice Pringle; the negative publicity led to the selling of his operations and he ceased to be a force in exhibition or vaudeville ever again. Despite his pioneering spirit and promoting of the "movie palace" concept, he is largely forgotten today in historical accounts of the early development of motion pictures. He died in 1936 worth only a fraction of his original net worth.

There is dispute about his year of birth, but it is likely that he was born in 1867 on the island of Andros, Greece. It is suggested that he was born "Pericles" Pantages but changed it to "Alexander" when he heard about Alexander the Great. In a personal correspondence between Rodney Pantages, son of Alexander, and Arthur Dean Tarrach, Pantages biographer, this claim is denied. At the age of nine he ran away while with his father on a business trip in Cairo, Egypt. He then went to sea and spent the next two years working as a deck hand. His ties to his homeland seem mercurial; he never set foot on Greece again although he did assist his relatives financially and even brought his brother, Nicholas, to live in the United States. He used to call himself "King Greek", perhaps in emulation of Louis B. Mayer's "Super Jew".

After having been at sea for two years he disembarked in Panama and spent some time there helping the French to dig the Panama Canal, but after contracting malaria he was warned by a doctor to move to cooler climates. He headed north, stopping briefly in Seattle but eventually settling in San Francisco where he worked as a waiter and also, briefly and unsuccessfully, as a boxer. He left San Francisco in 1897, and made his way to Canada's Yukon Territory during the Klondike Gold Rush, ending up in the mining boom-town of Dawson City.