Garth Drabinsky
| Garth Drabinsky | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Garth Howard Drabinsky October 27, 1949 Toronto, Ontario |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Film and theatrical producer and entrepreneur |
Garth Howard Drabinsky, LL.B. is a Canadian film and theatrical producer and entrepreneur. In 2009, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for fraud and forgery. The sentence was reduced from 7 to 5 years in prison, on appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear a subsequent appeal.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Drabinsky graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1973, and was called to the bar in Ontario in 1975. Entering into the entertainment business in 1978 as an independent commercial film producer (through Tiberius Entertainment Limited, formed with Joel Michaels) and film distributor (through Pan-Canadian Film Distributors Inc., formed with Nat Taylor), he was credited as the producer for:
In April 1979, he and Nat Taylor co-founded Cineplex Theatres, which created a chain of multiplex theatres for the Canadian market. By May 1984, it had acquired the Canadian Odeon Theatre chain, thus becoming Cineplex Odeon and a major player in the industry. It expanded further through the acquisition of several US theatre chains, but he left the company in December 1989.
He leveraged his ownership of the Pantages Theatre in Toronto to form the publicly traded theatre production company, Live Entertainment Corporation of Canada, Inc., also known as Livent. The company expanded, building or refurbishing several theatres, including the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, and entered into management deals with others in Toronto, Vancouver, and New York. It became noted for its productions (which earned a total of 19 Tony Awards out of a total of 61 nominations) of:
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