When Greek Meets Greek

Even in Hollywood, the glittering new green & gold Cadillac of a young man named Nick Spanos caused pedestrians to stare. But the real eye-stopper was the photostat of a check which Spanos proudly showed friends as he drove about. The amount: $1,333,605.22. Lawyer Spanos, 33, had collected it for a client from Cinemogul Spyros P. Skouras' famed 20th Century-Fox and eight other movie companies, after winning one of the biggest legal awards in Hollywood's history.

Spanos, born in Greece and raised in Pittsburgh, decided while still attending Harvard Law School in 1946 that he would make his fortune in the movie business. To get a foot in the door, he wrote a thesis on the antitrust suits against the industry (TIME, Aug. 1, 1938 et seq.), marshaled arguments to answer all the Government's charges. Spanos' strategy worked. After he got his degree, the Motion Picture Association in New York hired him, and soon he joined a Hollywood firm which was defending exhibitors in antitrust suits.

Spanos' big chance came in the fall of 1948 when he met William D. Fulton, who had formerly run a theater in Kansas City, now ran one in Pacific Palisades. Spanos' antitrust knowledge interested Fulton, who felt that big theater interests had victimized him. In 1937 Fulton had sold his Kansas City theater to a Fox subsidiary because he was losing money. Reason: Fox and other distributing companies refused to provide him with films unless he agreed to show them later, and charge more, than a neighboring theater which Fox controlled. After Fulton sold his theater, it made $375,000 in the next twelve years for Fox's National Theatres, run by Skouras' brother, Charles. Spanos decided to quit the law firm and file an antitrust suit against the industry.

In December 1950, after a seven-week trial, a Kansas City federal jury awarded Fulton treble damages of $1,250,000. Fox and the others appealed. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court refused a review; meanwhile, the sum had grown, with interest, to $1,333,605. (Spanos' share as a fee: $220,000.) Last week Spanos had eight similar suits pending against Fox, its subsidiary National Theatres Corp., and other companies charging them with the same kind of activities against six other independent theater owners.

Spanos is finding things a bit tense on Sundays, when he attends Los Angeles' Greek Orthodox Church. Charles Skouras is also a member. "At church recently," Spanos says, Skouras "called me a racketeer and yelled that I was trying to get rich off him. I told him: 'Why, you have always been one of my heroes. There's nothing personal in this. I don't wish you anything but the best of luck.'"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.