The claim that fails: Hoosiers was not filmed here

1986 — and every year since

A borrowed classic: No false claim in Fort Wayne's film record is hardier than the one that gives the city a piece of Hoosiers (1986), Indiana's beloved basketball picture. It appears even in professional publicity: when a production came to Fort Wayne in 2012, its release announced that "Fort Wayne, Indiana has been home to a few feature films, including Hoosiers and The Company of Men." The second half of the sentence is true. The first is not. Hoosiers was photographed in central Indiana — its Hickory is built from Knightstown, where the Hoosier Gym survives as a shrine, and from New Richmond, Lebanon, and Indianapolis, where the championship was played at Hinkle Fieldhouse. No Fort Wayne location appears anywhere in its production record, and no Fort Wayne crew, gym, or street carried any part of it. The confusion is understandable — an Indiana film, claimed by Indiana towns the way relics are claimed — but the record gives Fort Wayne no share of it, and this chapter returns it to the towns that earned it. The state's other famous shoots sit likewise in other counties — A League of Their Own and Hard Rain in the Evansville and Huntingburg country, Public Enemies at Crown Point — and belong to those places' own pages.

Sources:

1. Production release for The 4th Story, PRLog, 26 August 2012 — the claim as printed, naming Hoosiers among films Fort Wayne "has been home to."
2. The documented production record of Hoosiers — Knightstown (the Hoosier Gym), New Richmond, Lebanon, and Indianapolis (Hinkle Fieldhouse); no Fort Wayne location in any account of the shoot.