Moe Mark (1872 – November 14, 1932) was the brother of

Mitchel H. Mark Mitchel H. Mark a.k.a. Mitchell Mark a.k.a. Mitchell H. Mark (born as Mitchel Henry Mark) (1868 – March 20, 1918) was a pioneer of motion picture exhibition in the United States. Early life Mitchel Henry Mark was born in 1868 in Richmond Virgi ...

. Together they opened the first known permanent, purpose-built motion picture theater in the world,

Vitascope Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins' patented Phantoscope, which cast images via film and electric light onto a wall or screen. The Vi ...

Hall Vitascope Theater or

Edisonia Hall Edisonia Hall was a generic name for exhibition halls that displayed the various inventions of Thomas Alva Edison's company. These included the phonograph, the Vitascope, the Kinetoscope and other such devices. The Edisonia Hall opened by Mitchell ...

in 1896

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from South ...

, and the first

movie palace A movie palace (or picture palace in the United Kingdom) is any of the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 192 ...

, the Strand Theatre (1914) in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. They founded Mark-Strand chain of theaters which operated dozens of theatres in the United States. His brother died in 1918. In 1926, Mark sold part of the chain to Stanley Company of America (founded by

Jules Mastbaum Jules Ephraim Mastbaum (July 7, 1872 – December 8, 1926) was a Philadelphia movie theater magnate and philanthropist. He donated the Rodin Museum and its collection to the city of Philadelphia. His daughter, Peggy Solomon, was a bridge champion ...

and later run by his wife

Etta Wedell Mastbaum Etta Wedell Mastbaum (September 6, 1886 – November 1, 1953) was an American philanthropist, department store executive, art collector, and director of a national chain of motion picture theaters. Biography Born Etta Lit Wedell to a Jewish famil ...

) and in 1929, he sold the remainder to

Warner Brothers Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American Film studio, film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, Califo ...

which had purchased the Stanley Company in 1928. In 1953, Warner's theater holdings were spun off as Stanley Warner Theaters and in 1967 merged with

RKO RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...

Theatres to become RKO-Stanley Warner Theatres. Moe Mark became a member of the board of

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Di ...

His letters are in the archive at

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

External links

Moe Mark obituary
in ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine Cinema pioneers Movie theatre chains in the United States Businesspeople from Buffalo, New York 1872 births 1932 deaths {{US-film-bio-stub