Mitchel H. Mark

Mitchel H. Mark aka Mitchell Mark aka Mitchell H. Mark (born as Mitchel Henry Mark) (1868-1918) was a pioneer of motion picture exhibition in the United States.

Early life

Mitchel Henry Mark was born in 1868 in Richmond Virginia. Early in his life, he moved to Buffalo and began in the wholesale hat trade, keeping a store in Buffalo the rest of his life.^[1]

Career

Early career

Along with his brother, Moe Mark, Mitchel founded the Vitascope Theater (a special attraction of his Edisonia Hall in the Ellicott Square Building), one of the first permanent, purpose-built movie theaters in the world. It opened Monday, October 19, 1896 (according to local papers), in Buffalo, New York.^[2] It operated nearly two years, the longest run for any such theater at that time: comparable early theaters were temporary and lasted only days or weeks. Mark was the first American to have a distribution arrangement with Pathé Frères to import Pathé films to the United States. Indeed, nearly the entire Vitascope Theatre program of October 19, 1896, consisted of Lumiere films.^[1]

Expansion

Again with his brother, Mitchel founded the Automatic Vaudeville Company in 1904 in New York City. Among their partners were Adolph Zukor (co-founder with Jesse Lasky of Paramount Pictures) and Marcus Loew (founder of Loew's Theatres). It was based in form on Edisonia Hall and the Vitascope Theatre in Buffalo. The Mark brothers eventually built and operated dozens of theaters in the United States.

• In 1907, Mark was credited with installing the first church organ to be used for the movies, at Cleveland's Alhambra Theatre.^[3]
• In 1914, Mark Brothers opened the Strand Theatre at 47th Street and Broadway in Times Square, New York City. Costing one million dollars, this theater may have been first real movie palace, specifically built only to show motion pictures. It was designed by Thomas W. Lamb and served as a model for many film theaters that soon followed it. The New York Times favorably reviewed the opening of this theater, helping to establish its importance. To manage the theater, Mark personally hired Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel, who went on to become the best known motion picture showman in New York City.

The Mark Brothers owned and operated more than a dozen theaters in the United States and Canada called "Mark-Strand" or "Mark Strand".^[4] By 1917, Mark's importance in motion picture exhibition was such that when Cecil B. DeMille complained in his autobiography that exhibitors were protesting the high price of Hollywood movie rentals, he cited Mitchel Mark along with Thomas Lincoln Tally as the worst offenders.^[5]

• On December 31, 1917, Mark received a determination from the New York State Supreme Court that he had the sole right to use the name "The Strand" for a movie theater.^[6]

Personal life

Mark was married to Estelle B. Mark with whom he had two daughters. The first married Max Spiegel and lived in New York City and the second was named Winifred Mark and lived in Buffalo. Mark was prominent in Jewish charitable and religious circles in Buffalo and was a member of Temple Beth Zion.^[1] Mark died of an infection at his family's home at 527 Richmond Avenue at the corner of Breckenridge in Buffalo in 1918. His body was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo.^[1] At the time of Mark's death, his brother, Moe Mark, was living in Lynn, Massachusetts and his sister, who was married to William A. Rosentahl, lived in Buffalo.^[1]

Although his name is often spelled "Mitchell", the name on his mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery is spelled "Mitchel H. Mark".^[7]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mitchel H. Mark.

• Mark Brothers Biographical Timeline with Annotations
• Buffalo Architecture and History website (publisher: Chuck LaChiusa):

Mitchel and Moe Mark and Early Movie History in Buffalo.

Summer, Edward; Sandhu, Ranjit. Mitchel and Moe Mark and Edisonia Hall in Buffalo.