Malco Theatres, Inc. is a family owned and operated movie theater chain that has been in business for over one hundred years.

the son of Hungarian immigrant Joseph Lightman, left his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, and went to Colbert County, Alabama, to work on the Wilson Dam project as an engineer.

Lightman decided it was time to try something new one day while in Northwest Alabama, when he came upon a long line of people waiting to get into a local theatre.

Lightman traveled to Atlanta where he had made a contact in the theatre business and sought to learn the art of movie exhibition.

partnered with his father, a stone construction contractor, to build the Hillsboro Theater in Nashville, Tennessee.

Three months later, Tony Sudekum, founder of Crescent Amusement Co., opened a competing theater at the opposite end of the same block.

The theater was used as a live production venue, including as a temporary home for The Grand Ole Opry, for many years until being converted back into a cinema and renamed the Belcourt Theatre in 1966 by a new group of owners.

[2] The former Hillsboro Theater is still standing today and is operated by a non-profit organization as an independent art house.

Not long after the formation of Arkansas Amusement Enterprises, McWilliams and Clark left the partnership and bought the five El Dorado locations from the company.

This is also the year that the company took advantage of the rise of "talking pictures" by installing Vitaphone and Movietone equipment to add sound for the first time in their theatres.

Malco Theatres began acquiring cinemas not only in Arkansas but also in West Tennessee, Louisiana, Northern Mississippi, Western Kentucky, and Southeastern Missouri.

This opulent movie palace at 89 Beale Street also became the base of operations for Malco Theatres until 1976.

An under-the-marquee driveway for patrons to use in bad weather is provided, with a circular roadway cutting through the sidewalk under the marquee and back to the street.

The theater officially opened on September 29, 1911, as a performing arts venue charging $10 US per person for admission.

[5] The East entrance had two doorways - one for whites and one for colored persons; however, both used the same stairwells to the balconies, and had shared facilities within the building.

Pruniski and McCord retained the group of theatres in North Little Rock removing them from the Malco chain.

In the segregated South, movie theatres would only permit black patrons in the balcony, providing them with a separate entrance to the building.

In 1962, Richard Lightman met with Vasco Smith of the Memphis Bi-Racial Committee and set up a staggered process over a three-week span where the first week they sold tickets to the "whites only" orchestra level at The Malco (the present day Orpheum) to one African-American couple.

Richard worked with the local media to keep any news of the integration to a minimum as to avoid any conflict with the outspoken pro-segregation leaders of the time.

On June 4, 1970, M. A. Lightman, Jr., announced Malco Theatres' plans for the first two four-screen cinemas for the company.

M. A. Lightman, Jr. had this to say concerning these two locations: With this setup, we can bring back films that a neighborhood house couldn't because of the overhead and small return.

The opening slate of films was A Bridge Too Far, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, The Other Side of Midnight, and Final Chapter - Walking Tall.

Malco Theatres, Inc. confirmed to the Commercial Appeal, on July 24, 1986, the sale of the company's 38 locations to Commonwealth Amusements Corp. of Kansas City, Missouri, was scheduled to be completed by the end of that summer.

Commonwealth Amusements ended up selling all of their theatre assets, mostly to United Artists Theaters, by 1990.

-- Stephen P. Lightman July 3, 1987, the Winchester Court cinema opened three of its eight screens as the company's and the area's first multiplex.

Malco's first and only foray into the megaplex scene began with the Majestic theatre, which opened in 1997 with 11 screens and expanded to 20 in 1998.

Paradiso and Razorback were the first two IMAX sites for Malco, opening in December 2017; each location boosts a screen size of 65'-9" wide X 36'-2 high.

Grandview Cinema marked the 3rd location for Malco, opening in December 2019 with a screen size of 68-3" wide X 38'1" high.

In 2019, Malco debuted its own large-format screen experience with the MXT “Extreme” Theatre at the Powerhouse Cinema Grill in Downtown Memphis.