Nathan H. Gordon

Nathan Harry Gordon (1872 - 1938) was an American motion picture executive.

Gordon was born in Vilna, Russian Empire (currently Vilnius, Lithuania), March 15, 1872, the son of a medical practitioner. He attended a college at Vilna, taking the rabbinical course, and came to the United States in 1890. After working for a time in a harness shop at Meriden, Connecticut, he went West and with headquarters at Denver, Colorado, established a photograph enlarging business, traveling from town to town by wagon and enlarging pictures as he went. Later he operated a picture slot-machine place at Helena, Montana, and a drug store at Seattle, Washington.

In 1902 he returned to Denver where he became part owner of a penny arcade, showing slot-machine pictures. In the following year he returned to New England and with his brother Israel Gordon opened a slot-machine picture business at Worcester, Mass., placing machines in stores, penny arcades and elsewhere. Later he established penny arcades in several neighboring cities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In 1906 he opened at Worcester a “nickelodeon,” the first motion picture theatre in that city. Its success prompted him to extend the scope of his operations gradually until he became the largest operator of motion picture and vaudeville theatres in New England. He also built, with his three brothers, the Gordon Olympia theatre at Rochester, N.Y. In 1912 he organized and became president of Olympia Theatres, Inc., which eventually operated thirty-eight motion picture theatres in New England. He was also the managing director of each theatre in the chain. Secondarily, Gordon and Louis Mayer formed the Gordon-Mayer Theatrical Company, which booked talent for his theatres and distributed Metro's pictures. Meanwhile, as one of the largest exhibitors of motion pictures, Gordon became interested in the stabilization of conditions in the industry and in 1917 was largely instrumental in organizing the First National Exhibitors Circuit, Inc., of which he was elected a vice-president and director. This corporation, which was succeeded in 1919 by Associated First National Pictures, Inc., and in 1924 by First National Pictures, Inc., was formed originally to function as an agency to lease and distribute motion pictures for exhibition by its members. More specifically, by late 1921, over 4,000 franchise holders were participating in a consolidated enterprise with an estimated value of $50 million for "the elimination of wasteful expense and for the betterment of the quality of photoplays and methods of exchanging and distributing films." This limitation on its field of action, however, did not long continue, the corporation early developing into a product of motion pictures on a large scale, with an extensive plant at Burbank, Calif., and with some of the most popular film stars of that period, including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, on its list of actors. As recalled by his son, William J. J. Gordon:

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