Pericles “Alexander” Pantages (1867 - 1936)
Pericles Pantages was born at Andros, Greece. He supposedly changed his name after hearing the story of Alexander the great. There are few facts about his early life, but it is believed that he ran away to the sea when he was nine and travelled around the world working on ships. After twelve years at sea he landed at San Francisco and worked as a utility boy in the vaudeville houses. When he heard about the Bonanza gold strike, he joined the stampede to the Klondike.1)
In Skagway, Pantages realized that news of the outside world was a commodity and, because he couldn’t read, he hired a man to read a copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a local dance hall. He charged $1 a head and made $350.2) He settled in Dawson where he boxed as a welterweight for a brief period. Before long he was booking and staging acts in the saloons and restaurants where he worked.3)
He was a bar tender and a waiter before he became the stage manager at the Monte Carlo Saloon. He started a small theatrical company and presented popular plays such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and East Lynne.4) He bought a struggling theatre and renamed it The Orpheum. Pantages was virtually illiterate but he had a keen business sense.5) His General Manager was George Culvert, previously a clerk in the Dawson post office. Culvert stayed with him through his later successes.6)
In 1901, Pantages borrowed money from his mistress, “Klondike Kate” Rockwell, to run his theatre. He married a violinist and skipped town without paying Kate back.7) Kate tried to sue him for breach of promise but dropped the suit.8) Pantages was successful because he offered the best entertainment he could at a very fast pace. He charged $12.50 a table and could gross $8,000 in a day.9)
After leaving Dawson, Pantages developed a theatre circuit across the western United States and Canada and became rich in doing so. In 1914, he built the Pantages Playhouse in Winnipeg and used it as home base for his touring company. He also built theatres in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Victoria. His success was based on his booking top-quality, crowd-pleasing entertainment, and his system of high audience turnover.10)
At the peak of his success Pantages had over seventy theatres including the grandiose Hollywood Pantages, a 2800-seat theatre that hosted the Academy Awards in the 1950s. Pantages theatres suffered a decline in the 1920s as films became more popular. In 1929, he was charged with raping a seventeen-year-old dancer and was sentenced to fifty years in prison. The verdict was overturned on appeal, but the trials were expensive and Pantages had to sell his theatres and retire.11)