NEW YORK — J. Michael Cline, a co-founder of Fandango, an online ticketing company that changed how Americans went to the movies, died this week after falling from the twentieth floor of a Manhattan hotel, according to police.

NYCPD Found Cline

New York City police officers, who responded to a 911 call at the Kimberly Hotel on Tuesday, “found an unconscious and unresponsive male with injuries indicative of a fall from an elevated position,” a spokesperson for the police said in a statement. The medical examiner’s office ruled the death a suicide.

Cline, who was 64, co-founded Fandango in 2000 and left the company in 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile. The company — familiar to many from its splashy logo, an orange “F” in the shape of a ticket stub — was later acquired by Comcast and is currently owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros.

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For years, the company dominated movie ticket sales, handling ticketing for several major theater chains and making money by charging a processing fee for online ticket sales and by selling advertising on its site.

At the time of its launch, Cline offered a pithy explanation for the company’s name: “A Fandango is fast and fun,” he told Variety. “Fandango is the perfect match to a service designed to make going to the movies easier and more enjoyable than ever before.”

Art Levitt, the co-founder and former chief operating officer and president of Fandango, remembered Cline as brilliant, creative and loyal, sticking it out even in “tough” times. He said his former business partner was also “a bit of an adventurer.” With Fandango, Levitt said, “he saw an opportunity in the market” and asked Levitt to manage it.

In addition to Fandango, Cline ran venture capital and tech firms. His private-equity firm Accretive, which had invested in Fandango, was embroiled in a controversy in the 2000s related to the company’s creation of a debt-collection business while it had acquired a stake in the nation’s largest consumer-debt-arbitration body, the National Arbitration Forum.

Cline Was Executive Chair of Juxtapose

At the time of his death, he was executive chair of Juxtapose, which helped launch a number of tech businesses in areas ranging from health care and wellness to property management.

James Michael Cline, born to Rose Marie and James G. Cline, was raised in New York. He graduated from Cornell University and received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University.

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His career as an entrepreneur began in the early 1980s, when as a young man he imported hand warmers from Japan. “Business failed,” he wrote on his LinkedIn profile of the company, “Penguin Warmers.” He added: “I had no idea what I was doing. Seriously.”

Cline was by any measure a successful businessperson, acquiring multimillion-dollar homes in wealthy enclaves including Palm Beach, Florida;x Greenwich, Connecticut; and the Hamptons. He was also a philanthropist and recently served as chair of the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. He was particularly interested in big cats and jaguar preservation, Levitt said.

Cline is survived by his wife, Pamela (Berman) Cline, and their six children.

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If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Annie Correal
c.2024 The New York Times Company