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4 unusual facts about Moodabe family


Moodabe family

The owner of the chain, 20th Century Fox sold out in the 1980s to the Chase Corporation and then the chain came into the ownership of Hoyts which continued to employ the brothers in senior management positions.

When Thomas O'Brien and his beloved Civic Theatre went bankrupt in 1932, the Moodabe brothers took over O'Brien's other Auckland theatres, including the Princess (later the Plaza), the Rialto in Newmarket, and the Tivoli in Karangahape Road.

The three sons used to visit their father's office in the Civic Theatre, Queen Street as they grew up, all were "promised a desk in the corner of that room and their father's supervision".

JP's wife, Dorothy, died in May 1967, and on 29 November that year, at St Patrick's Cathedral, he wed Leila Dunstan Macknight (née Maher); neither marriage produced children.



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