Maurice Dubinsky

Moshe Me'ir son of Benjamin Yehoshua

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AMC Theatres was founded in 1920 by the Dubinsky Brothers (Maurice, Edward, and Barney), who had been traveling the Midwest performing melodramas and tent shows with actress Jeanne Eagels. They purchased the Regent Theatre on 12th Street between Walnut and Grand in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.[11] Edward Dubinsky, after Morris's death in 1929, eventually changed his name to Durwood, and the company he formed was called Durwood Theatres.

Simon and Sarah Dubinsky immigrated from Russia to the United States in 1882. The following year son Morris was born in Rock Island, Ill., followed by four more sons and four daughters. A tantalizing but perhaps apocryphal story tells that at age 20 Morris won a theater company in a card game. Whatever the origin, in 1903 Morris, who began using the stage name Maurice, opened his first show as Wallack’s Theatre Company in the Tipton, Iowa, Opera House.

The Wallack Company’s first appearance in Nebraska came in 1904, when it presented “Two Orphans” in Hooper. Two years later, the company played in Bloomfield for three nights, at Beatrice’s Paddock Opera House for five nights and in Lincoln for 14 nights. The Lincoln venue would have been at either the Funke Opera House on the southwest corner of 12th and O streets or more probably the much larger and newer Oliver Theatre on the southwest corner of 13th and P streets. After 17 one-night stands across Nebraska, “Pickings From Puck” was presented at Omaha’s Krug Theatre.

When brother Ed joined with Morris in the circuit in the summer of 1903, the name became Dubinsky Brothers’ Wallack’s Theatre Company. Ed soon took on the lead parts in the productions and was later said to have been “the youngest theatre manager in the country.”

In 1909, the brothers bought their first tent. Tents meant there was no need to rent a hall, opera house or theater and the company could move north easily in the summer and south during the winter months. Also, without rent, they could sell tickets cheaper, and even small towns without theaters could be played with larger crowds as there was less competition.

With the tent shows, brother Barney joined the company in 1905-06, and they became known simply as the Dubinsky Brothers Stock Company. Irwin joined the traveling shows in 1916, which dispensed, as did all traveling shows, what today would be termed repertoire melodramas and light musicals. Although some publicity later claimed the stock company then had from 12 to 19 traveling shows working out of Kansas City, the actual number was probably closer to 10 or fewer.

By this point the entire production was truly a brothers' proposition, with everyone having multiple jobs, from management, promotion, financing logistics, especially performing and even playwriting. Ticket prices remained low, still starting for as little as a dime.

In 1920, Dubinsky Brothers played a five-night stand at the Nemaha County Fair in Auburn, which proved to be its last Nebraska tent show. An interview with Ed in the Kansas City Star claimed their tent shows “took business away from Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show but did not, as some other stories claimed, actually “kill it.”

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Duration Time 0:00 Loaded: 0%Progress: 0%0:00 Fullscreen 00:00 Mute Morris began looking outside the tent show concept and, in October of 1920, became a partner in the construction of an eight-floor, 175-room, $1.5 million (probably a fairly extensive exaggeration) hotel in Kansas City, only to lose his interest (perhaps in another card game) to Tom Pendergast of the city’s political machine family. The same year, the brothers purchased their first motion picture theater, the Kansas City Regent. A newspaper story about the Regent also noted the Dubinsky Brothers then employed 1,100 people, also probably an inflated figure.

As the 1920s played out, tent shows’ popularity began to wane, though one of their ads in Arkansas proclaimed “32 People 32…6 vaudeville acts 6…In the big tent theatre.” Gimmicks also were added as inducements, such as a diamond ring giveaway during the staging of “Which One Shall I Marry?” and the added offer of “$25 to the couple that will be married on the stage.” Soon vaudeville was reduced to being the intermission feature between the new entertainment wave -- the movies.

In 1930, the Dubinsky Brothers' last tent show was staged at Iola, Kan., having, through the years, played in 14 states: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

By 1932, their chain of movie theaters had grown to 40 in Missouri and Kansas.

In the 1970s, the Dubinskys bought the grand old Riviera Theatre in Omaha, which had fallen into hard times as the home of the Omaha Packers football team and an indoor miniature golf course. Lincoln’s Stuart Theatre likewise was obtained in 1971 and remodeled as a smaller motion-picture house with the stage bricked off, becoming a restaurant/bar. By 1989, the now Lincoln-based firm, headed by Irwin Dubinsky and his son Sarge had 127 active movie screens in the Midwest.

Morris Dubinsky, known as the “father of [the] stock show” and the inventor of the tent show, is now long gone and along with him the traveling entertainment circuits. Edward’s son Stan remained in the entertainment business and created what is now known as AMC Entertainment, the second largest movie chain in North America with more than 220 theaters. Most of the hundreds of actors and vaudeville acts have faded into obscurity, but some Dubinsky-introduced names remain familiar today: Ziegfeld Girl Jeanne Eagels, Irene Daniel, fan-dancer Sally Rand (who we are assured left her clothes on), Reginald Denny and Red Skelton.

http://journalstar.com/news/local/jim-mckee-vaudeville-the-name-dub...

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