Nicholas M. Schenck (14 November 1880,[1] Rybinsk, Russia – 4 March 1969, Florida) was a Russian-American film studio executive and businessman.

One of seven children, Schenck was born to a Jewish household[2] in Rybinsk, a town on the Volga River in the Yaroslavl Governorate of Tsarist Russia.

With his parents, he and his brothers, George and Joseph, emigrated to the United States in 1892[1] where they settled in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side.

Upon his arrival in the United States, he and his older brother Joseph worked as a team running errands and selling newspapers while studying at the New York College of Pharmacy at night.

Within two years they had saved up enough money to buy out the drugstore's owner and opened another store on Third Avenue at 110th Street[3] and began casting about for other business ventures.

One summer day, the Schencks took a trolley ride to Fort George Amusement Park, in uptown Manhattan, and noticed that thousands of people were milling around idly waiting for the return trains.

[3] Loew, having noted the brothers' success, advanced them capital, permitting them to purchase Palisades Amusement Park in Bergen County, New Jersey, directly across the river from Manhattan, in 1910.

[citation needed] Schenck eventually became Loew's right-hand man, helping him manage what rapidly grew into a vast theater chain.

Nonetheless, thanks to Schenck's stringent management, MGM was successful, becoming the only film company that continued to pay dividends during the Great Depression.

[citation needed] Under Schenck's leadership, the studio produced a great quantity of films, and the studio system allowed it to retain a wide array of talent under its roof: Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Robert Taylor, the Jeanette MacDonald–Nelson Eddy team and many others.

[citation needed] Although Schenck's power and prestige were at their peak after World War II, times were changing, as television loomed on the horizon.

The following year, when Arthur Loew resigned for health reasons, Schenck defied the other directors in the efforts to secure a new president.