Odeon Theatres of Canada Nathan Nathanson attempted to create a theatre chain with
Fox Film, but was unable to due to the company entering
receivership. Nathanson returned to the board of Famous Players and became its president in May 1933, resulting in the rest of the board resigning in protest. Holt and Ross, who left alongside Nathanson, returned with him. Zukor agreed to give control of the company back to Nathanson after the expiration of the voting trust on 8 March 1939.
Barney Balaban replaced Zukor as president of Paramount-Publix Corporation in 1936, and rejected the agreement. Nathanson resigned from Famous Players on 14 May 1941, and Balaban selected J.J. Fitzgibbons to replace him. Nathanson worked on creating a new theatre chain while serving as president. His brother, Henry Nathanson, formed Odeon Theatres in April 1941. It initially started with four theatres in Vancouver and expanded using equal partnerships with Henry Morton's four theatres, Jack Barron's theatre, and Henry Friedman's theatre which were later bought out. Famous Players sued Nathan over the ownership of Regal Films, managed by Henry, in 1942, but the case was dismissed in 1948. Nathan attempted to hire
Nat Taylor, but he rejected Taylor's demands and Taylor was instead hired by Famous Players to manage 25 theatres.
Nicholas Schenck, the president of
Loews, whose company owned
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer met with Nathanson, Fitzgibbons, Balaban, and other people in New York to allocate MGM films between Famous Players and Odeon months after Odeon was formed. Famous Players retained MGM's films, but they would be distributed by Regal films. Theatre construction fell during World War II with nine theatres being built between 1941 and 1944 due to a ban on constructing entertainment facilities. Odeon expanded their amount of theatres from 107 to 180 between 1946 and 1948. Odeon and Famous Players accounted for 60.8% of box-office receipts in 1947. In the 1940s
The Rank Organisation sought to expand into markets dominated by American companies.
J. Arthur Rank became fifty-fifty partners with Nathanson on 24 November 1944. Paul Nathanson, Nathan Nathanson's son, became the president of Odeon following Nathan's death and served until he sold his 50% stake in the company to The Rank Organisation in April 1946. Odeon grew from 107 theaters at the time of Rank's acquirement in 1946, to 180 theatres by 1948.
Earl Lawson, a former
parliamentarian and member of Prime Minister
R. B. Bennett's cabinet, was selected to replace Paul as president in 1946. The board under Rank included president of
Canadian Pacific Railway D.C. Coleman, president of
Imperial Oil R.V. LeSueur, and Rank lawyer
Leonard Brockington.
Leonard Brockington was appointed as president following Lawson's death in 1950. Rank controlled Odeon until January 1977, when they sold it, as Rank had stopped its activities in film production, to Michael Zahorchak for $31.2 million. Zahorchak combined his chain of 47 theatres with Odeon's 131 theatres. He died in 1982, leaving control of the company to his family. The Zahorchak family sold the company to the Cineplex Corporation on 28 June 1984.
Acquisition by Cineplex Corporation Taylor and
Garth Drabinsky formed Cineplex in 1977, and started operating in April 1979 with the opening of its first theatre. The company received financial backing from the
Bronfman family,
Cadillac Fairview's chair and chief executive officer John H. Daniels, and received a $1 million line of credit from the
Toronto-Dominion Bank. The company grew to 202 theatres by July 1983. Taylor and Drabinsky also founded Pan-Canadian Film Distributors. Drabinsky threatened to sue American companies under the
Sherman Antitrust Act if they did not provide first-run films to the Beverly Center. The first Cineplex location, an 18-screen complex in the basement of the
Toronto Eaton Centre, earned a place in the
Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest cinema at the time of its opening. In July 1982 they opened their first theater in the United States, with a 14-screen multiplex in the newly built
Beverly Center in Los Angeles, the largest in the US at the time. Cineplex acquired Odeon on 28 June 1984, for $22 million and taking on Odeon's $35 million in debt. This increased its property ownership to 143 theatres, 383 screens, and 29 drive-in theatres. A lease with
Landmark Cinemas in February 1985 added 22 screens. The Bronfman family was a major investor in the Odeon purchase. The company was listed on the
New York Stock Exchange in May 1987. Controversy surrounded the practices of both Cineplex Odeon and Famous Players in 1998. The two companies had been accused of operating as a duopoly, and choking off the film supply so smaller theatres could not show the same products. Cineplex's control over the market allowed them to increase prices. They were criticized, including by Mayor
Ed Koch, for raising ticket prices from USD$5 to USD$7 in New York City. In April 1998, Cineplex Odeon Theatres merged with
New York City-based
Loews Theatres (founded in 1904 by
Marcus Loew) to form
Loews Cineplex Entertainment.
Alliance Atlantis purchased Cineplex Odeon Films assets along with its home video division the same year.
Post Loews Cineplex Entertainment After the merger, the company ceased to exist and was merged into the operations of Loews Cineplex Entertainment. In 1999, Ellis Jacob and Steve Brown, former executives who left Cineplex Odeon Corporation during the ownership change, created
Galaxy Entertainment designed to bring big-city entertainment to mid-sized markets across Canada. In 2001, Loews Cineplex Entertainment, the company that merged with Cineplex Odeon, filed for
chapter 11 bankruptcy. Lowes Cineplex was later acquired by
Onex Corporation and
Oaktree Capital Management in 2002. In 2004, Onex decided to sell Loews Cineplex and retain the Canadian operations, merging then with Galaxy to form
Cineplex Galaxy Income Fund (now
Cineplex Entertainment). At the time of the merger, Cineplex Odeon operated 40 locations in Canada. Cineplex Galaxy bought Famous Players for $500 million in June 2005. ==Gallery==