St. Louis Movie Theaters and Palaces from the Golden Age of Cinema

Attendees at this presentation will be given an audio-visual tour of St. Louis cinema houses from the first stand-alone theater opened in 1906 through the end of the Golden Age of movies by the mid-1960s.

We will look at how movie theater houses began as nickelodeons and expanded into neighborhood theaters and grand architectural palaces with the improvement in quality and length of feature films. We will also touch on the phenomenon of how vaudeville and stage acts performed back-to-back with feature films and launched the careers of many movie stars, a tradition which faded away with the advent of sound motion pictures and the economic repercussions of the Great Depression.

Finally, we will discuss the forces that brought the demise of these once thriving early St. Louis movie theaters, how only a handful remain from the glory days of early and mid-20th century cinema, and how renewed interest keeps them alive.

The Skouras Brothers and the Making of the Immigrant American Dream

Driven from their native Greece by family impoverishment in 1910, three young brothers – Charles, Spyros, and George Skouras – immigrated to America seeking dreams of a new life and prosperity. The brothers settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where they initially found work waiting tables and bar tending at St. Louis hotels. As they sought out opportunities to start a business, they turned to the new and booming movie theater industry. This presentation explores the origins of American cinema, corporate rivalry, family loyalty, and the pursuit of the immigrant American dream.