{"id":300,"date":"2009-08-18T11:43:17","date_gmt":"2009-08-18T11:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/?p=300"},"modified":"2020-03-28T05:18:08","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T05:18:08","slug":"the-rise-an-fall-of-mann-theatres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/2009\/08\/18\/the-rise-an-fall-of-mann-theatres\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise An Fall of Mann Theatres"},"content":{"rendered":"

These days, the Mann Theatres chain\u00a0exists as a mismanaged handful of leases,\u00a0in search of new operators<\/a>. Yet, in the not so distant past, Mann was a major player in the exhibition industry;\u00a0for a time,\u00a0the nation’s largest independent chain.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Mann’s story begins with the chain’s namesake, Ted Mann. Born on April 15, 1916, Mann first became interested in cinema while working as a theatre\u00a0usher, during his teen years. Parlaying his early interest in to a career, Mann leased a theatre in St. Paul Minnesota, for $100 a month, learning the ins and outs of the business through a period of “hands on” trial and error. After earning enough money to purchase the theatre he was leasing, Mann expanded his cinema interests in to a twenty-eight venue, Minnesota based,\u00a0chain, by the time he was forty. After moving to California in the late 60’s, Mann sold his\u00a0Minnesota theatres to the General Cinema Corporation in 1970 and\u00a0pursued a side career in film production.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In 1973, Mann returned to the film exhibition business, purchasing\u00a0the struggling National General Theatre\u00a0chain <\/a>(the descendant\u00a0company of Fox, Fox West Coast, and National Theatres)\u00a0\u00a0for $67.5 million; re branding the collection of 240 aging cinemas, Mann Theatres.The upstart Mann Theatres quickly gained notoriety (perhaps infamy) for “modernizing” many of National General’s classic cinemas and renaming the iconic “Grauman’s” Chinese, “Mann’s” Chinese. While controversial, from a historical perspective, these early efforts proved to be keen business moves, as the chain’s holdings began to fall in line with\u00a0a modern\u00a0business model; turning a formerly\u00a0dying chain in to a viable competitor,\u00a0within a few years.<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By the 1980’s, Mann’s remodeling and restructuring\u00a0work transitioned in to the creation of a multiplex oriented chain. Casting off\u00a0older, under performing, sites, the company began an aggressive expansion of\u00a0new builds;\u00a0growing from\u00a0276 screens in 1973, to 450, by the close of the decade. As with most multiplex chains of the time,\u00a0Mann’s initial\u00a0generation of new theatres were a far cry from the grand palaces the company had inherited; typically modest four to six screen cinemas which were designed with more of a focus on low cost efficiency than opulence.\u00a0However, Mann’s redirection ultimately\u00a0built the chain in to the nation’s third most profitable exhibitor.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Flush with success, Mann\u00a0garnered the attention of the Gulf & Western Corporation, to which Ted Mann sold controlling interest in 1986. Mann remained chairman of the company until 1991, overseeing an expansion of higher quality theatres, which reached 510 screens by the time of his departure. In 1997, the chain,\u00a0changed hands once again, selling to Westar for $165 million. Unfortunately, the Westar sale also marked the beginning of Mann Theatres’ slide in to irrelevance, as the chain\u00a0wilted\u00a0during the megaplex era. Unable to keep pace with the era’s building craze, Mann\u00a0was forced to sell\u00a0or close it’s\u00a0ever dated sites, shrinking to 351 screens by the new millenium; parent company, Westar, mismanaging their investment to the point of filing for bankruptcy, in September of 2000. Ted Mann, long removed from the mess his former chain had become, passed away in 2001.<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
WF Cinema Holdings (a limited partnership between Warner Brothers and Paramount) purchased the remnants of Mann, out of bankruptcy, for $91 million, in 2000; the\u00a0partnership had previously owned the chain, as\u00a0Gulf & Western descendant, Cinamerica, and had been the selling party three years earlier. Despite this return to an ownership that had experienced great success with Mann Theatres, the chain never managed to regain it’s former glory. The one time “king of independents” continued to implode under mismanagement,\u00a0declining from 53 venues\u00a0to the handful of questionable leases that\u00a0are currently on the market.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, the Mann Theatres chain\u00a0exists as a mismanaged handful of leases,\u00a0in search of new operators. Yet, in the not so distant past, Mann was a major player in the exhibition industry;\u00a0for a time,\u00a0the nation’s largest independent chain. . Mann’s story begins with the chain’s namesake, Ted Mann. Born on April 15, 1916, Mann first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-industry","category-popular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinelog.org\/cinelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}