MALCO MOVIE FAMILY UNREELS CENTURY OF CINEMA CELEBRATION.
Malco unreels celebration of 100 years of movies that officially kicks off in 2015
When were the movies born? Unlike the razor-sharp digital cinematography that is the current standard for cinemas, the date is imprecise, hazy, out of focus.
The first motion picture cameras were patented in 1887 and 1888. Within a few years, “moving pictures” of horses, trains, dancers and other sights were being exhibited for a curious and sometimes scandalized paying public. The Thomas Edison company’s 1896 “The Kiss,” which offered 47 seconds of staged smooching, was reviewed as if it were something sinful. Wrote one critic of the title spectacle: “Magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over, it is absolutely disgusting.”
The exhibition spaces for these early films were vaudeville theaters, makeshift spaces
rented by traveling projectionists and storefronts. One such storefront theater was opened by Morris A. Lightman in Sheffield, Alabama, in February, 1915. The movies may not have a precise anniversary, but Malco Theatres Inc. — the Memphis-based entity that formed its name from the initials of its founder and the abbreviation for “company” — traces its birthday to that year.
In other words, Malco, in one form or another, has been exhibiting movies for as long as movies have been taken seriously, as art as well as entertainment. After all, 1915 marks not just the privately held company’s birthday but another “birth,” the debut of D.W. Griffith milestone “The Birth of a Nation,” arguably the first movie blockbuster but hardly the last: “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1” opens Thursday on more than 90 of the Malco’s circuit’s 349 screens.
Still owned and operated by the extended Lightman family after four generations, Malco this weekend began throwing itself a birthday party — a “Century of Cinema” celebration — that will last close to 14 months. The halls of Malco’s 33 locations in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky and Louisiana have been decked with holiday decorations displaying the new Malco 100th anniversary logo, and promotional spots for the anniversary will begin appearing onscreen, before the movies. The celebration was launched this weekend to take advantage of the holiday movie season, which begins in earnest with “Mockingjay,” likely to top “Guardians of the Galaxy” as the year’s highest-grossing film.
As part of its birthday “party,” Malco is offering two types of centennial souvenirs at its box offices, to benefit a pair of Memphis institutions. The first of these is the Memphis Heritage Foundation’s 2015 calendar, which showcases vintage photographs of Malco movie marquees, theater lobbies and other images from decades past. Malco sponsored the calendars, and bought a large number of them to give away to all those who purchase Malco gift cards during the holiday season. (The calendars also can be purchased separately at memphisheritage.org.)
Second, Malco this weekend renewed its annual holiday fundraising commitment to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. For the past 15 years, Malco has sold holiday bows, made from pieces of old film, to benefit the hospital.
The bows were retired after last year’s campaign (the first in which more than 100,000 of the items were sold), to be replaced this year by “Malco Memory Magnets,” small picture frames decorated with the Malco logo and drawings of dancing food, taken from the classic “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” cartoon. The magnets cost $1 each.
Malco — which also operates four “family entertainment” bowling alleys and arcades in Louisiana, with another coming next year to Oxford, Mississippi — set up shop in Memphis in 1929 and eventually emerged as the region’s preeminent cinema circuit, with control of the Mid-South market. The “territorial respect” the company earned discouraged incursions by such larger competitors as Georgia-based Carmike Cinemas, which operates 2,623 screens in 37 states, and Knoxville- based Regal Entertainment, which owns more than 7,300 screens in 44 states — a nice percentage of the 39,662 movie screens operating in the U. S., as counted by the National Association of Theatre Owners, a trade organization for the movie exhibition industry.
The challenges to the business never seem to stop. “Our earlier generation featured television, because it did decimate small theaters, as ‘ The Last Picture Show’ illustrated very well,” said Malco executive vice president Jimmy Tashie, brother-in-law of Malco chief executive officer Steve Lightman. “Then somebody said ‘Let’s use television to promote the movies,’ and some of our biggest stars and movies have come out of television,” including Clint Eastwood, Eddie Murphy, the “Star Trek” franchise, and more.
“We’ve dodged so many potentially damaging hurdles,” said Steve Lightman, 71, grandson of the company’s founder. “Radio was a big deal, then television, then Blockbuster, cable TV, the Internet. … Blockbuster is gone, and we’re still here.”
Some other Malco principals include executive vice president Bobby Levy, also an in-law, and Jimmy’s son David Tashie, senior vice president for operations and construction. The company employs about 1,500 people at any given time, said Karen Scott, Malco director of marketing. “I hear everybody talking about job creation, job creation,” said Tashie, 66. “We create about 50 jobs per theater. We have decades of employing young kids in their first jobs, and they’re loyal, they come back from college and work during the summer. We’ve had some of them get married in a Malco theater.”
Maintaining a movie house requires a lot of overhead, literally. The theaters may have thousands of seats, and must be kept heated and air- conditioned even during the hours they sit empty. Technological and structural shifts create major expenses, as when theaters began converting to stadium seating in the mid-1990s and when literal film projection became replaced by digital technology in recent years. The initial cost of digital conversion was about $75,000 to $100,000 per screen, which is why many independent theaters and especially drive-ins without Malco’s deep pockets have gone out of business.
More important than such structural and promotional innovations, Malco was one of the first Memphis companies to encourage integration. In 1962, company heads M.A. Lightman Jr. and Richard “Dick” Lightman began quietly phasing out the “colored” sections of theaters by seating black patrons among white customers, beginning with a single couple at downtown’s grand Malco theater (now restored to its original identity as the Orpheum, a performing arts venue).
Tashie said a popular theater such as the 2,300-seat Paradiso at 584 S. Mendenhall in East Memphis may attract more than 600,000 customers a year, but once proud venues in areas of decreased fortune — such as the Wolfchase Galleria Mall multiplex — basically continue to operate because of pre-existing lease agreements. Much of Malco’s recent expansion has been in Mississippi, with new multiplexes in Southaven, Olive Branch and Oxford.
Although sales of popcorn, soft drinks and other concessions may account for as much as 40 percent of a movie theater’s profits, the Malco partners insist they are movie fans, above all, who enjoy the excitement of the “show business” aspect of their business. “We’re lucky to to be able to make money off the geniuses of Hollywood,” Lightman said. “We’re lucky to be in a business that lets us bring in a new creation every week of the year.”
Said Tashie: “We’re selling intangibles, not tangibles. You don’t walk out with a product, you walk out with a memory.”