Pioneer Motion Picture Executive. As founder of the Loew's theatre chain and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, he played a major role in the emergence of Hollywood as the world's movie capital. Born Max Loew in New York City, the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants, he grew up in poverty and dropped out of school at age nine to help support his family. What he lacked in education he made up for with ambition, working his way up from menial jobs to find success as a furrier and through real estate investments. In 1905 he purchased several Manhattan penny arcades in partnership with a former associate from the fur business, Adolph Zukor. Realizing that greater profits were to be made in showing films, he began buying and then building nickelodeons and by 1912 Loew's Theatrical Enterprises had over 400 cinemas in the United States and Canada. To keep his growing theatre chain steadily supplied with films he bought Metro Pictures in 1920, but poor management at that company led him to seek other means to bolster production. In 1924 Loew acquired controlling interests in Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions and consolidated them into one giant studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), as a subsidiary of Loew's, Inc. At the time of his death, from a heart attack at 57, Loew was the most powerful man in the American motion picture industry. Curiously, he had little interest in films and never set foot in Hollywood; he saw himself as a real estate developer, with audiences paying rent for the picture palaces he built. "People buy tickets to theatres, not movies", he claimed. In 1954, a US Supreme Court anti-trust ruling forced Loew's and MGM to split into separate companies. Following several changes of ownership, Loew's was merged into AMC Theatres in 2006.
Pioneer Motion Picture Executive. As founder of the Loew's theatre chain and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, he played a major role in the emergence of Hollywood as the world's movie capital. Born Max Loew in New York City, the son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants, he grew up in poverty and dropped out of school at age nine to help support his family. What he lacked in education he made up for with ambition, working his way up from menial jobs to find success as a furrier and through real estate investments. In 1905 he purchased several Manhattan penny arcades in partnership with a former associate from the fur business, Adolph Zukor. Realizing that greater profits were to be made in showing films, he began buying and then building nickelodeons and by 1912 Loew's Theatrical Enterprises had over 400 cinemas in the United States and Canada. To keep his growing theatre chain steadily supplied with films he bought Metro Pictures in 1920, but poor management at that company led him to seek other means to bolster production. In 1924 Loew acquired controlling interests in Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions and consolidated them into one giant studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), as a subsidiary of Loew's, Inc. At the time of his death, from a heart attack at 57, Loew was the most powerful man in the American motion picture industry. Curiously, he had little interest in films and never set foot in Hollywood; he saw himself as a real estate developer, with audiences paying rent for the picture palaces he built. "People buy tickets to theatres, not movies", he claimed. In 1954, a US Supreme Court anti-trust ruling forced Loew's and MGM to split into separate companies. Following several changes of ownership, Loew's was merged into AMC Theatres in 2006.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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