Who Founded AMC Entertainment?

AMC began as a family business in the American Midwest. In 1920 Edward Dubinsky and his brothers Maurice and Barney, who had been travelling the Midwest performing melodramas and tent shows with the actress Jeanne Eagels, bought the Regent Theatre on 12th Street in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. They traded as Dubinsky Bros. and built the circuit to about 40 theatres in Missouri and Kansas by 1932, a regional chain operating outside the studio owned theatre systems of the era. Edward changed the family name to Durwood; the company traded as Durwood-Dubinsky Bros. from 1939 and as Durwood Theatres from 1947. Edward died in 1960 and his son Stanley Durwood inherited about ten theatres. In 1963 Stanley opened a two auditorium theatre in Kansas City where both screens shared one box office, one concession stand and one staff, generally considered the first modern multiplex, because a single site could then carry several titles without duplicating overhead. He renamed the company American Multi-Cinema in 1968 and expanded the format nationally, and in May 1995 AMC opened the Grand 24 in Dallas, the first megaplex in the United States. Edward's single Kansas City theatre is the origin of what is now the largest movie exhibition company in the world. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Maurice Dubinsky was the oldest of the Dubinsky brothers and a partner in the 1920 purchase of the Regent Theatre on 12th Street in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, the single venue from which AMC grew. Before that the brothers travelled the Midwest presenting melodramas and tent shows, at one point with the actress Jeanne Eagels, and that touring business supplied both the capital and the audience knowledge behind the move into permanent exhibition. Maurice died in 1929, before the Depression and before the company reached the roughly 40 theatres in Missouri and Kansas that it operated by 1932, so his part in the story is the founding one rather than the expansion. Some records render his name as Morris; AMC's own corporate history and contemporary accounts use Maurice. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).

Barney Dubinsky was a partner with his brothers Maurice and Edward in the 1920 purchase of the Regent Theatre in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, the start of the circuit that became AMC. The brothers had been travelling the Midwest performing melodramas and tent shows before they settled into permanent exhibition, and the chain they built reached about 40 theatres in Missouri and Kansas by 1932, mostly small houses in towns the larger studio owned chains did not serve. Barney left the business in 1936 after being injured in a car accident, seven years after Maurice had died, leaving Edward to run the circuit alone until his own death in 1960. The family kept control until 2004, when Apollo Management and J.P. Morgan Partners took the company private, which makes the partnership the three brothers formed in 1920 the foundation of more than eight decades of family ownership. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).