Business: Balaban to Paramount

After months of sober head-scratching, the directors of Paramount Pictures last week decided on a successor to President John Otterson, who got his walking papers at the last stockholders meeting (TIME, June 29). Their choice was Barney Bala ban, one of the new directors elected last month and co-founder of Chicago’s chain of Balaban & Katz theatres.

Eldest of the seven sons of a Russian immigrant who ran a grocery store on Chicago’s West Side, Barney Balaban got into cinema in the days of the nickelodeon. His only sister was the wife of Sam Katz. Balaban and Katz were the first theatre owners to cool their patrons in summer with mechanical refrigeration, an innovation presumably inspired by Barney Balaban’s early experience in the cold-storage business. They were the first to cut dull shots from newsreels, the first to go in for super-colossal theatres. Balaban & Katz became the biggest theatre-chain in the Midwest with more than 100 units and an annual box-office take of some $15,000,000.

In 1926 the chain was sold to Paramount for about $10,000,000 in stock, Barney Balaban becoming the biggest Paramount stockholder except old Adolph Zukor. Sam Katz went into Paramount and out again while Barney Balaban stayed on to run his chain as a Paramount subsidiary. Now 48, reserved, deliberate, hardworking, he lives on Chicago’s North Shore, is active in Jewish affairs, takes a great interest in the Chicago Riding Club and the Arlington (Ill.) race track, both of which he helped found. Taking a sly poke at Wall Street’s various unsuccessful attempts to run a Hollywood enterprise, Barney Balaban declared last week: “It is a source of confidence to find the board of directors giving due recognition to the necessity of having experienced men in the industry and in important positions in the management.”