John Loeks (family name formerly Loekis) (1918 – February 22, 2004) was an American movie theatre pioneer, born in

Grand Rapids, Michigan Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County, Michigan, Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the List of municipalities in Mi ...

. Loeks opened the single screen Midtown Theatre in The downtown Grand Rapids, in 1944.

Career

Loeks opened

Studio 28 Studio 28 was a cinema multiplex located on 28th Street in Wyoming, Michigan, operational from 1965 to 2008. Expanding to a maximum of 20 screens, it was the first megaplex, and was once the largest multi-screen cinema complex in the world. It was ...

. He also opened several drive-in movie theaters in

West Michigan West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for an arbitrary region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most narrowly it refers to the Grand Rapids- Muskegon-Holland area, and more broadly to most of the region along the Lower ...

, and also opened a number of other cinemas across Michigan. Loeks also participated in a lawsuit against Hollywood which opened the way for privately owned theatres to show first-run Hollywood movies. Loeks had two sons, Jim and John Jr. Jim broke off from the Jack Loeks Theatres company and started his own movie theater, Star Theatre. John Loeks, Jr. has since become the owner and CEO of Loeks Theatres, Inc., which is now known as Celebration! Cinema. Loeks also had 2 daughters, Lannie Loeks and Merie Loeks, who live in New Mexico.

1980s

During the mid and late 1980s, Loeks maintained a vacation home on Mackinac Island, Michigan. The island had no dedicated movie theater and traveling to the mainland for shows wasn't convenient for the island's residents, so Loeks partnered with a local hotel (named the Mackinac Hotel at the time) whose approximately 500 seat auditorium, complete with balcony, was used for weekly summer screenings. Loeks would ship the movies from one of his Grand Rapids, Michigan area theaters to the island each week by small aircraft, and the weekly movies were a favorite event among the island's summer residents and visiting tourists. (Mostly the weekly shows operated at a loss, which Loeks himself personally absorbed.) Before each movie, Loeks would walk down the aisle to the front of the auditorium to introduce the week's picture and talk about the next week's show, always to thunderous applause and raucous cheers from appreciative island movie fans.

References

External links

Celebration! Cinema
{{DEFAULTSORT:Loeks 1918 births 2004 deaths American entertainment industry businesspeople Businesspeople from Grand Rapids, Michigan 20th-century American businesspeople