Moodabe family

The Moodabe family is a long established Auckland family which has been associated with the development and operation of cinema in New Zealand since the 1920s.

Michael Joseph Moodabe (1895–1975) was born in Sydney, Australia, on 24 June 1895, and, after the family shifted to Auckland, his brother Joseph Patrick Moodabe (1899–1985), was born in Auckland on 16 December 1899. The family ran a small grocery shop in Grey Street. Michael Moodabe (MJ) started as a peanut-seller and, later, a cleaner and caretaker at the King George theatre on Queen St, Auckland. He got his first big opportunity when he was offered a partnership in 1924 in the Hippodrome Picture Company, with the title of manager and a salary of £6 10s. per week. In late 1920s, Michael Moodabe began to expand the company, assisted by his brother Joseph (known as JP), and in August 1928 Hippodrome Pictures became Amalgamated Theatres.

When Thomas O'Brien who owned and operated the Civic Theatre went bankrupt in 1932, the Moodabe brothers took over O'Brien's other Auckland theatres, including the Princess (later the Plaza), the Rialto in Newmarket, and the Tivoli in Karangahape Road. These cinemas, and later the National Picture Theatre (formerly the King George) made Amalgamated a major player in Auckland. Amalgamated obtained a 50-year lease on the Civic theater in 1945 when they managed to outbid Warner Brothers Pictures and Robert Kerridge.

Late in 1936, to guarantee film supply, MJ persuaded the American giant Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation to buy a half interest in Amalgamated. By 1938 the company's circuit had grown to 65 cinemas, and attendances that year were said to be five million – equivalent to three visits by every New Zealander. When television came to New Zealand in 1960, the Moodabes arranged for Fox to buy the remaining half share; the latter agreed on condition that the Moodabe family remained in management control.

MJ was a born showman. Short and heavily built, he possessed an open, effusive personality. He was rarely seen without a large cigar ('Here, have a good cigar' was his popular greeting to smokers and non-smokers alike), and he was described as 'New Zealand's Sam Goldwyn', after the Hollywood producer known for his colourful turn of phrase. A shrewd businessman and gifted publicist, he often deliberately created queues outside his cinema to stimulate public interest in a film. On one occasion he spread a load of sand outside a theatre to publicise a western; unfortunately, when it rained cinema-goers trudged much of it inside. From 1941 to 1947 he served as an Auckland City Councillor under Mayor John Allum, and in 1952 he was made an OBE.

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