Oscar Deutsch founded which cinema chain?
Oscar Deutsch (12 August 1893 – 5 December 1941) was a British entrepreneur who was the founder of Odeon Cinemas, the largest cinema chain in the United Kingdom. He opened his first cinema in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire in 1928, with the chain's flagship cinema, the Odeon, Leicester Square in London, opening in 1937.
Deutsch was born in Balsall Heath, Birmingham, Warwickshire, the son of Leopold Deutsch, a successful Hungarian Jewish scrap metal merchant. After attending King Edward VI Five Ways Grammar School, he started work at his father's metal firm in Birmingham. In 1918, he married and went on to have three sons. In 1925, he rented cinemas in Wolverhampton and Coventry and started exhibiting subsequent runs of films.
By 1937 there were 250 Odeons, including the flagship cinema in Leicester Square, London, making Odeon one of the three major circuits in the UK. Odeon cinemas were considered more comfortable and respectable for middle-class filmgoers than those of the two other circuits, Associated British Cinemas (ABC) and Gaumont-British Cinemas. Odeons were known for their art deco architecture, first used on the Odeon, Kingstanding to a design by Cecil Clavering, working for Harry Weedon.
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