Boxoffice-July.1997

EXHIBITION PIONEER PASSES AWAY
James Edwards Sr. dies at age 90
Edwards Sr., founder and chairman
James
of the nation's 13th-largest theatre chain,
passed away at his Newport Beach, Calif,
home on April 26, 1997, at the age of 90.
Emblematic of the dynamic personality that
characterized his career, he was launching a
boat into thechannel water behind his Newport
Island home when he was felled by a heart attack.
It all began in 1930. With America in the
Depression, Edwards reopened a bankrupt
moviehouse, the Monterey in Monterey Park, a
town in which he resided near Los Angeles. "I
paid 20 percent of the gross for the lease, which
was pretty stiff," he recalled to BOXOFFICE for
our Edwards 65th anniversary story (Nov. 1995
issue). Always an innovator, Edwards set an
audience conduct code ("We had a choice to
make; keep the kids, or make the theatre a place
that families would enjoy") and built a cry room
for mothers and infants.
The circuit grew; by yearend
1 996, Edwards Theatres
Circuit—now based
in Newport Beach—had
527 screens at 90 sites,
with a year-end 1998
forecast for 750 screens.
"Maybe it was just plain
stubbornness" is how Edwards
explained his suc-
"When [my wife]
cess.
Bernice and I didn't even
have money to buy food,
we kept hanging on. We
both felt the movies were
just the greatest source of
entertainment."
Born November 23,
1 906, in downtown L.A.'s
'T'^-t.
Boyle Heights section, Edwards was raised in
the San Gabriel Valley, attended Alhambra
High and was running his first theatre at age
23. His family was always a key component in
the Edwards equation. Today, four generations
of Edwards are involved in the business. Bernice,
his wife of 64 years, was his partner at
home and at work, and his children now head
the company. Son James Edwards III is president
and chief operating officer; daughter Joan
Edwards Randolph is senior executive vice
president and chief financial officer; another
daughter, Carole Ann Ruoff, is assistant treasurer;
grandson Don Barton is vice president
and general sales manager; and great-grandson
Brian Barton checks theatre operations.
"This is a family business," says Marcella
Sheldon, James Edwards Sr.'s secretary almost
from day one. (Sheldon joined the company in
1 932; she describes that time this way: "I was
the only employee he had." The company now
has 2,400 staffers.) "He has established a
strong foundation that will live on."
Edwards created his chain based on a philosophy
of making people happy and having
fun doing it. "He stood at the door and greeted
people when they came in, and he asked them
on the way out how they'd liked the picture,"
Sheldon says. But he was also a sawy businessman.
In a move predating the modern multiplex
era, Edwards put two screens into a single theatre
in Alhambra in 1939. "He had a little storeroom
there," Sheldon recalls, and after its
transformation the Alhambra became a "Dual