One of the pioneers in the motion picture industry, Marcus Loew (1870-1927) fashioned one of the nation's largest theater chains and then went on to found the young industry's premier studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

The American motion picture industry was created by an intriguing group of East European Jewish immigrants and children of immigrants--Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, Jesse Lasky, and the Warner brothers. Marcus Loew, born on Manhattan's East Side in 1870, was one of these. His father was a waiter and there were four other children, so at the age of six Marcus left school to work as a newspaper boy.

Other jobs followed, mostly in sales, and for a while young Marcus worked as a furrier. But he always had an ambition to own property, to become a landlord, while at the same time he was fascinated by the theater. In 1904, at...