LOEW, MARCUS

LOEW, MARCUS (1870–1927), U.S. motion picture executive. Born in New York, Loew rose to a powerful position in the American film industry. He began his career in motion pictures by setting up penny arcades in New York City. Loew expanded these electric vaudeville machine parlors to other major U.S. cities and upped the penny ante equipment to nickelodeons, which showed films for five cents. He also began to purchase theaters and convert them into vaudeville-film houses. The idea of combining vaudeville with films proved so lucrative that in 1921 he opened the Loew's State Theater on Broadway with a seating capacity of 3,200. In 1919 he bought Metro Pictures, Inc., and in 1924 acquired Goldwyn Pictures. To eliminate the cost of renting films, Loew came up with the idea of producing films for use in his own theaters. With the appointment of Louis B. Mayer as vice president of the film company, the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film studio was formed, with Loew's Inc. gaining controlling interest. By 1927 Loew had a chain of 144 deluxe theaters across the country, including several in Canada. At his death, Loew was president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios of Hollywood and of Loew's Inc., one of the largest cinema chains in the United States. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Naylor, American Picture Palaces: The Architecture of Fantasy (1981); B. Crowther, The Lion's Share: The Story of an Entertainment Empire (1957). (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)