Modern Movie Palace: How the Multiplex Came to Be
“Multi-theatre construction is the latest thing.” – Mel Lebewitz, Northwest Cinema Corporation, 1972
“Build them and they will come.” – Jeff Forman, Buena Vista Pictures, 1996
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In 1970, a film magazine pointedly asked readers, “Whatever happened to the singles?” The question wasn’t about dollar bills or dating games. It was about the old type of movie theater, as opposed to the new, or at least a type of theater that seemed new, and that was gaining ground, acres and acres of ground, across the United States.
A “trend towards multiples” had “explode[d] into the seventies.” More than one screen inside the same theater. And of course the trend became the norm.
What does this mean? It means options; it means choice. The ability to choose what we want to see. Because at a given point, “going to the movies” transformed into going to a particular movie, the exact one we wanted to see.
The date this change occurred is difficult, even impossible to pin down, because it was different for different people. To an extent, preference for particular movies had always been the case. But a major evolution was certainly underway in the 1960s; it grew in the seventies and dominated the eighties. (“I want my MTV,” the Dire Straits demanded.)
To be sure, in the beginning, multiplexes weren’t “multiplexes.” That term originally meant something else, something to do with radio. In 1950, the press talked about a “new firm,” the Multiplex Development Corporation. One of their radio engineers declared, “Multiplex makes possible for the first time three-dimensional sound broadcasting from a single station.”
Three years later, Billboard told readers, “The Federal Communications Commission will act soon on ‘multiplex broadcasting,’ a revolutionary development of frequency modulation permitting FM stations to broadcast multiple programs simultaneously.” The term later became descriptive of some home stereos.
The first time that the word “multiplex” was used in relation to movie theaters likely happened in 1959. Promoter Clyde Vandeberg envisioned a “giant multiplex theater in Mission Bay to make the Fiesta del Pacifico world famous.” His idea for San Diego was fascinating, but different than what the later multiplex became. Vandeberg hoped to create a “complex of facilities for entertainment, sport competition, and industrial display forming a giant ‘theater.’”
When it came to multi-screen theaters as we know them, terms like “multi-cinema” and “multiples” were often used in the movie theater business in the 1960s. By 1970, the more than one person in the film industry used the term “multiplex” as we do today.
For example, that very year, Eugene Picker, President of the National Association of Theater Owners, propitiously declared that “all movie exhibition would have to be geared to the multiplex idea in the 1980s,” given the “strong present-day trend.” Newspaper journalists then had to define what he meant, explaining, “In a multiplex theater, several films are shown in different parts of the same building.”
Everyone liked the word, or at least nobody baulked about in print. Perhaps the only question in the 1970s was whether to spell it with a hyphen, as in “multi-plex.”
But the meaning was clear, if only because of common use of the word “duplex,” a concept that had been understood by exhibitors since the early years of the movie theater, with “plex” meaning having more than one part or unit.
Two screens, not one. Double your pleasure, double your fun. These were “twin” theaters, well ahead of the multiplex and Doublemint gum.
In 1977, the Theatre Historical Society told Variety, “The earliest ‘Twin’ theatre of which we have a record is the Catherine theatre in Detroit, located at 1540 Chene Street. It opened in 1913, was designed by architect C. Howard Crane, and was enlarged into a twin auditorium duplex theatre by architect George D. Hurlburt in 1916.”
The Society added that there could have been earlier twins of which they were unaware. Their suspicion was apt.
In 1912, Motography declared, “Cleveland has the first double-screen picture theater. The Oxford, recently opened at the corner of Ontario and Champlain streets, is actually two theaters in one. There are two picture curtains, two picture machines, and two shows are run continuously. A person may go in the theater, and for a single admission, see two shows.” To create the duel auditoria, manager F. A. Noble simply divided the seating in half with a fireproof curtain. And let’s do remember his name, as Noble likely invented the twin.
Then, in 1915, the Grand Boulevard Theater Company in Detroit ran advertisements asking for citizens to invest in what would become the first purpose-built twin screen theater. Located at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Grand Boulevard, it opened with the name “Duplex Theater.” The theater management claimed, “the idea is a revelation and that every city of importance will soon have its ‘duplex’ theater.”
Alternating shorts and a feature, “The Duplex advantages consist[ed of] enabling patrons at all times to see the start of a feature picture regardless of the time they enter, and in eliminating interruptions caused by passers in or out while feature pictures are being shown.”
Other exhibitors reinvented the same wheel. In 1919, a New York theater manager announced his plans: “I am now contemplating doing this next adventure stunt in my next house. It is this — a Duplex Theater — I have had it running through my mind for several years — since one night when playing to capacity and a crowd standing out in a cold rain. They got my sympathy.”
But in the days of old Hollywood, the duplex theater found its biggest audience outdoors, rain or shine. In 1949, The Twin Drive-in opened in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In 1949, the Normandy Drive-In — a “twin ozoner” — opened in Jacksonville, Florida, thought to be the “second of its kind in the nation.” One screen had room for 900 cars, the other 800. Billboard explained that “Early box-office reports will determine whether the theater will present two pictures nightly, one on each side of the twin screen, or present the same picture on both screens.”
Some drive-ins began with single screens before multiplying. Think about Odessa, Texas, 1952: the Cactus Drive-in became the Twin Cactus-Drive-in. Their “twin screen affair” meant that cars could drive to one of two spots to watch movies on an 18-acre tract.
Other drive-ins opted for more elaborate possibilities. In St. Louis in 1954, the South Drive-In featured two screens with room for 500 cars watching each, as well as an on-site indoor theater with 700 seats, 350 pointing in each direction. Hardtop or convertible, your choice.
Not everyone was thrilled, though. In 1953, exhibitor Charles Weisenburg told Boxoffice that he would not build another twin drive-in, because the costs outweighed the advantages. He warned others, “A twin takes twice as much equipment; twice as much land; twice as much fencing; twice as many boxoffices (if the crowd is handled correctly), and in fact, twice as much of nearly every item you can think of.”
Weisenburg’s advice was not heeded. As for 1964, Boxoffice reported “added interest in dual-auditorium theaters and in combination indoor-outdoor theaters, with 23 each listed, and in twin screen drive-ins with six listed.” Even if not ubiquitous, this type of theater wasn’t uncommon.
Double-screen drive-in construction continued into the late sixties and seventies. In 1968, for example, the Shrewsbury Drive-In of Massachusetts became, thanks to an added screen, the Route 9 Twin Drive-In.
It isn’t difficult to see why other exhibitors began to think about more, much more. In 1971, Charles A. Shadid received zoning permission to build a six-screen drive-in in Oklahoma City, the “largest drive-in … in existence.” And, as late as 1975, the city council of Torrance, California considered plans for a massive six-screen drive-in to be built on 24-acres.
Their eyes were bigger than their pocketbooks, but maybe that was no bad thing. The drive-in was on the decline in the late sixties and seventies, with more and more audiences turning to new indoor theaters at shopping centers and malls, where you could buy clothes at one venue and buy dreams at another.
In 1964, Boxoffice reported, “A twin-theater showplace, seating 2,360 persons and served by a double-deck parking facility will be constructed in the Evergreen Shopping Center” in Chicago. Parking would hold 1,700 cars. The “spacious lobby” would serve popcorn to all, butter on request. Mike and Ike greeted everyone upon arrival.
Some of these exhibitors wrongly thought they had come up with something new. In 1967, for example, businessmen in Port Arthur, Texas announced a “new design in motion picture construction by [the] Park Place Plaza Theatre,” the “new” part being a “dual-auditorium complex.”
It wasn’t just an old idea, but an idea that others were embracing wholeheartedly. In 1968, Gulf States Theaters announced a marked trend towards “twins” for their future locations. Some would be multi-screens under a single roof; others were separate buildings located side-by-side at the same property.
And why stop with twins if you can pop out triplets or even septuplets? The more the merrier, so they say. (Dig Dug, or Dig Dugger?)
Reflecting on theater construction for 1972, Boxoffice reported “For the year there were 240 twin theaters, 42 triplexes and 42 quads, one five-plex, five sixplexes, and 1 seven-auditorium theater.”
In 1973, the Independent Film Journal announced, “Multiples Dominate Theatre Scene.” As of 1976, the word was, “Multiplexes continue to proliferate around the country.”
A construction contractor proudly said in 1973 that his building in North Little Rock, Arkansas, would be the “first new theater to be built in the city incorporating the twin cinema design.” Yes, build it and they will come.
In 1979, the historic New Yorker closed its doors, only to reopen months later as a twin theater, the remodel costing $250,000. Build onto it, and they will come.
And once you start construction, why stop? Old Lady Winchester taught us that lesson over a century ago. And customers are still going to her Mystery House in San Jose.
Think about Jack Loeks, one of the really reel heroes of our story. He opened the Studio 28 in Michigan in December 1965 as a single-screen theater. In 1967, he turned it into a two-screen theater. In 1976, he added four more screens. In May 1988, eight more screens were added, to make the Studio 28 the largest multiplex in America at that time. It featured 20 auditoria.
I’m not great at math, so let’s do this the simple way, one advance at a time.
The duplex theater led to the triplex. After Cinema One and Two became the first twin theater in Connecticut Valley in 1964, the owners launched Cinema Three in 1966. They had birthed the first “triple-theatre” complex in New England. The following year, the Westgate Theater of Macon, Georgia went from a single screen to a “three cinema complex.” No need for a double, just go straight to the trifecta.
“Expand-A-Theatre is a growing trend,” Boxoffice explained in 1973, when reporting on the Americana Theatre triplex in Southfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. As of 1974, the Cargill Cinema of Longview, Texas reopened as a “triplex.”
Other triplexes weren’t expansions, but new from the ground up. In 1971, Jerry Lewis Cinemas opened a triplex at the Parklane Shopping Center in Wichita, Kansas.
In 1974, Carrols Development Corporation opened “triple-theatre complexes in major shopping centers” in Fayetteville, New York and Pensacola, Florida. Keep ’em coming.
And why not? Why stop eating popcorn when the box isn’t even half empty?
In 1970, the Southgate Shopping Center in Sacramento announced plans for a “Quadplex” theater. Then, in 1973, there was a quadplex at the Briarwood Shopping Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That same year, a twin theater in Corpus Christi, Texas went “quad.” The same happened to the Ridge Twin Cinema in 1975, its reopening marking the first quadplex in central Virginia.
Which brings us to the man who is definitely the most important name in this history, an overlooked figure in the history of cinema, a name we should all know and thank our lucky (film) stars for: Stanley Durwood.
Ahh yes, good ole Stan Durwood. He once told Variety that he had thought of openng a two-screen theater in the early fifties, when an Abbott and Costello film playing at his family’s Roxy Theater in Kansas City, Missouri did so poorly that they closed the balcony. His response. “If we could just run another so-so picture up in the balcony, we’d double our gross.
Durwood believed that the best way to attract movie audiences during the television era was to give ticket-buyers choices like they had with the TV dial. In 1963, Durwood opened the Parkway I and II at the Ward Parkway Shopping Center in Kansas City, which was designed for two screens. Then, in 1966, Durwood Theaters opened the world’s first four-plex, Kansas City’s Metro Plaza 1–4. Two years later, Durwood launched the world’s first six-plex, the Six West at Omaha’s Westroads Shopping Center.
In 1969, the Independent Film Journal wrote, “Leading off theatre construction news, Durwood Theatres’ subsidiary, American Multi-Cinema, Inc., has embarked on a $50 million expansion program involving the opening of 80 multi-theater complexes in the next two years.”
Yes, true believers, Durwood’s “subsidiary” American Multi-Cinema, Inc. is indeed the AMC we all know and love, acronymed and made famous globally. More than anyone else, Durwood had invented the multiplex.
And he was definitely using the term “multiplex” by 1970. “We are the showmen of today,” he proudly declared in 1971, as he was looking at expanding to markets in Texas and Florida. “We could be playing a Disney film on one end of the house with M*A*S*H on the other end. In the middle … we could be playing Patton and Ryan’s Daughter. With a selection like that, why should anyone have to run to the other end of the town?”
Why, indeed? “It was like punching a hole in the floor of your living room and oil coming out,” Durwood once said. “I figured I had about five years to run with the ball before the big guys would overtake me.”
No one could ever overtake Durwood. He was too wise, too clever, for that. That said, his ideas were easily emulated, which happened, over and over again.
That takes us, alas, back to math. In 1971, construction expanded the Showcase Cinemas I-II-III in West Springfield, Massachusetts into the first five-theater complex in New England. Moyer Theaters began construction on a five-screen complex in Eugene, Oregon in 1974, which meant a “twin drive-in and a three-theater hardtop complex.” Then, in 1976, the United Artists Theater Circuit opened the Cine Cinco at a shopping mall in San Antonio.
Quintet to sextet. In 1969, the Century South Six opened in San Antonio, followed by the city’s Northwest Six in 1976. Two years later, TM Theatres opened a “new six-screen theatre” at the El Con Shopping Center in Tucson.
Bigger was better, certainly in Texas, which was outpacing many other states in multiplex construction in the late seventies. Durwood responsible for some of them, as well as the “multiplex boom” happening in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
In 1980, Mel Glatz, whose company specialized in the architectural and engineering aspects of theaters, declared that multiple screens were the present and the future. “In a large metropolitan area, a twin is obsolete,” he explained. “They just don’t draw. If you put a fourplex against a twin, the twin will die every time. If you put a ‘four’ against a ‘six,’ you’ll get the same thing.”
More addition, no subtraction. Up the ante, even if you aren’t in Vegas. In 1979, for example, an eight-screen movie theater opened in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
“New Multi Champion,” the Independent Film Journal wrote in December 1971, announcing “AMC Ups Sextet to Ten-In-One.” Here was a “first,” located at the Military Shopping Mall in Norfolk, Virginia. Four added screens in a 12,000 square foot space. Years later, in 1987, the Luxury “ten-plex” theater in Portland, Oregon won two design awards for its architecture.
Though terms like “12-plex” and “14-plex” and “mega-plex” were occasionally used, the growth in screen numbers finally made “multiplex” ubiquitous in the 1990s. Durwood’s vision had changed everything.
Not everyone was happy, though. Some raised concerns about R-rated movies being played under the same roof as unrestricted fare. Might Junior drift from one screen to another, and without adult supervision? (Magic Eight Ball says “Yes.”)
And as early as 1975, Columbia Pictures warned multiplex theaters of punitive action if they moved a film from a larger to smaller screen inside the same building without obtaining consent. This was a “get-tough stance.” A bit of rage over the new rage.
But the overall stance was positive, with multiplexes credited with building and rebuilding audience numbers, fending off competition from TV and home video.
After all, the multiplex — especially those built in the nineties and thereafter — were not just new, but beautiful. Okay, you got me, yes, for sure, not all were beautiful. Some were gaudy, with silly-colored carpet and a plethora of loud arcade games situated near the Jujubes. And yes, some chains reused the same architecture in city after city. A multiplex in Norman, Oklahoma seemed to my eyes identical to a multiplex in Joplin, Missouri, or near enough to make me lose track of which state — or state of mind — I’m in.
But hey, these were big, new places full of fun. “The customer must be made to feel special when attending a multiplex,” Larry Gleason of Paramount Pictures said in 1992
Here we must go back, as always, to the genius of Stan Durwood.
“Our goal,” Durwood said in 1997, “is to say to the consumer, ‘We love ya. We really appreciate your business. We want to make your stay pleasant and fun.”
Durwood, you see, not only invented the multiplex, but also the built-in cupholder. Another round of applause, please.
And of course the multiplex of the 1990s was undefeated. It was inevitable, inescapable, ineluctable.
As Film Journal reported in 1992, “The decade of the ’90s will see the multiplex cinema strengthen its position as the single most innovative concept in the last 25 years in the world of exhibition. It has caused a rebirth and resurgence of cinema-going throughout the world. Starting in the U.S. in the late ’60s, this phenomenon has in the last five years spread throughout the world, from Europe to Australia.”
Mutiplexes multiplied in more than one way. In 1995, Durwood opened the world’s largest multiplex in Dallas. 80,000 square feet, and 24 screens. He aptly named it the Grand 24.
And as always, other theater chains tried to emulate Durwood’s success. But he usually stayed ahead of the competition. In 1996, AMC opened a 30-screen theater in Ontario, at that time the largest in the world.
Two years later, one film trade reported, “The movie business is booming. Exhibitors are building multiplexes faster than the equipment industry can build equipment for them.”
Durwood knew geography, and it certainly didn’t scare him. “We’re taking it global,” he said in the nineties, have already opened a 10-screen theater in Milton Keynes, England in 1985.
From France and Germany to Japan and India, the multiplex not only populated the globe, but also increased the reach of Hollywood films.
“Multiplexes are the winning formula,” one insider said of Italian theaters in 1998. “Thai multiplexes mushroom,” Variety enthused the following year.
In 1998, the President of the Netherlands Cinematographic Federation addressed the issue, explaining, “There is no doubt cinemagoers like multiplexes and prefer them. But it’s difficult to calculate the effect of new multiplexes on admissions. Multiplexes seem to be one of the reasons for increased attendance in certain territories, but it is only one reason.”
Maybe, but it was a big, big reason. Size matters, remember?
A Warner Bros. corporate brochure of 1998 declared, “In every country where the Multiplex has been introduced, ticket sales have increased consistently year on year, invariably bucking economic trends. … As we look to the future, all the evidence suggests that attendance will continue to flourish as more people throughout the world discover the Multiplex experience and choose the visit the movies more often each year.” And so they have.
With all of the changes in our world, including the advent of the internet and streaming services, the multiplex remains the dominant type of theater.
Is that a problem? Certainly we could argue yes. After all, does the multiplex really offer us choice, or merely the illusion of choice? Rarely do multiplexes owned by major chains present reissues, revivals, let alone documentary films, art-house flicks, and international cinema. Instead, the question is whether we want Coke or Diet Coke or Coke Zero or Vanilla Coke or Cherry Coke or even — hold on to the hat that you don’t wear — Coke with Orange Vanilla.
And the multiplex offers us the dazzling array of limited choice in the form of smaller screens with lesser seating than the movie theaters of yore, so much so that big movies require more than one screen at some of these mega-plexes full of — by historic standards — tiny theaters. Bigger is smaller, one could argue.
But to be sure, we can also sincerely preach the virtues of the multiplex. Durwood’s vision coincided neatly with the rise and proliferation of the Hollywood blockbuster and with it much improved sound, and, later, digital projection and 3-D.
As the Los Angeles Times once wrote, “in Hollywood circles, [Durwood] is praised for almost single-handedly rescuing the theater business from obsolescence.”
Multiplexes have allowed us to enjoy dramatic technological improvements to the cinema. And even if most or all of the films are Hollywood, well, if you can’t beat them, join them. So many screens translates into “all you can eat” eye candy.
As for F. A. Noble, Jack Loeks, and Stanley Durwood (the dearest friend I never met), I can only say, “Thank you,” and, “I’ll meet you at the movie theater, exact screen number to be determined.”
