By the late 1920’s Pantages was worth the equivalent of approximately $300 million in current dollars.  That kind of money can change a person’s living circumstances.  But what about a person’s character?  Pantages was a baffling combination of native good sense and imprudence.  In his case imprudence that verged upon foolishness.  He had a goat-like appetite for an endless stream of oh-so-available stage-struck young women.  And he chose quite a number.

Without immigrants like Alexander Pantages to lead the way, Hollywood might have resembled the oil industry in the late 1880’s dominated by one individual, John D. Rockefeller.  Pantages’ circuit faced vigorous competition, but the Vaudeville theater business was anything but monolithic.  After the mid-1910’s, and certainly after Edison’s vise grip on the industry was broken, rather than a single domineering light, the movie business was composed of thousands of small lights that collectively turned a struggling art form into a major American industry.  Pantages stood at the center of this development.  Despite his pioneering spirit, Alexander Pantages is largely forgotten today in historical accounts of the early development of motion pictures.