Mitchell Mark
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Mitchell Mark (1868-1918) was an important pioneer and visionary of motion picture exhibition. He founded the Vitascope Theater (a special attraction of his Edisonia Hall in the Ellicott Square Building) arguably one of the very first dedicated movie theaters in the world in 1896 (Monday, October 19, 1896, according to local papers) in Buffalo, New York.[1]
His obituary notes that he was the first American to have a distribution arrangement with Pathe Freres and to import Pathe films to the United States. This is bourne out by the fact that nearly the entire program of October 19, 1896 was comprised of Lumiere films.
With his brother Moe Mark, he founded The Automatic Vaudeville Company in 1906 uptown in New York City. Among the partners they brought into the business as investors were Adolph Zukor (co-founder with Jesse Lasky of Paramount Pictures) and Marcus Loew (founder of Loews Theatres). It was based in form upon Edisonia Hall and the Vitascope Theater in Buffalo.
The Mark Brothers built and operated dozens of important theaters in the United States after their auspicious start in Buffalo, New York.
In 1914, Mark opened the Mark Strand Theater at 47th Street and Broadway in New York City. Costing one million dollars, this theater was the first genuine Movie Palace, audaciously built only to show motion pictures. It was designed by Thomas Lamb and served as a model for the many film theaters that soon followed it. The New York Times favorably reviewed the opening of this theater and established its importance. To manage the theater, Mark personally hired Samuel Roxy Rothafel, who went on to become the best known motion picture showman in New York City.
By 1917, Mark was so important in motion picture exhibition that Cecil B. DeMille complained in his auto-biography that exhibitors were protesting the high price of Hollywood movie rentals citing solely as the worst offenders Mitchell Mark and Thomas L. Tally. .[2]
Mitchell Mark is credited with installing the first church organ to be used for the movies at Cleveland's Alhambra Theatre in 1907.[3]
Mark died at his family's home in Buffalo, New York in 1918 from an unfortunate accident and is buried there in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
[edit] References
- ^ A Million and One Nights by Terry Ramsaye, 1925
- ^ Autobiography by Cecil B. Demille
- ^ Hollywood Rhapsody by Gary Marmorstein, 1997
[edit] External links
- Biography of Mitchell Mark with photos
- Obituarary of Mitchell Mark, 1918 - html
- Scan of Obituary, 1918
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