John "Jack" Loeks (family name formerly Loekis) (1918 – February 22, 2004)[1] was an American movie theater pioneer, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
During the mid and late 1980s, Loeks maintained a vacation home on Mackinac Island, Michigan.
The island had no dedicated movie theater and traveling to the mainland for shows wasn't convenient for the island's residents, so Loeks partnered with a local hotel (named the Mackinac Hotel at the time) whose approximately 500 seat auditorium, complete with balcony, was used for weekly summer screenings.
Loeks would ship the movies from one of his Grand Rapids, Michigan area theaters to the island each week by small aircraft, and the weekly movies were a favorite event among the island's summer residents and visiting tourists.
Before each movie, Loeks would walk down the aisle to the front of the auditorium to introduce the week's picture and talk about the next week's show, always to thunderous applause and raucous cheers from appreciative island movie fans.