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A producer's credit is the least visible line on a film or a broadcast, and this section is a roster of the Fort Wayne names that hold one. It gathers the city's producers across three industries: the public-television producers who built careers at the local broadcast layer; the hometown film producers, carried in brief here and in full with their pictures in the Film section; and the two national careers the record can document end to end. Ethan Sandler, born in Fort Wayne on 3 December 1972 and raised in the city before Northwestern, climbed the writer-producer's ladder after starting in front of the camera. Jenna Fischer's producer credit on The Office belongs to the same pattern: Fort Wayne natives doing the unglamorous work that gets other people's performances made. The section keeps each claim to what credits and profiles actually show.
The producers: five screen names, one studio, and no mogul
1952 — the present
The roster, honestly drawn: Fort Wayne has never sent Hollywood a studio boss. No Fort Wayne name sits atop a major studio, no feature-film factory has ever run here, and the classic Hollywood era produced no producer from this…
Kevin Wall: Live 8, Live Earth, and the first internet Emmy
Born Fort Wayne, March 1952 — producer of the largest music events ever staged
The Embassy's kid: Kevin Wall was born in Fort Wayne in March 1952 — most published biographies give the day as the 15th; an Indiana Music Makers profile gives the 5th, and the difference stands in the record unresolved. He grew…
Jim Leonard: from The Diviners to three network series
Born Fort Wayne — playwright, then creator and executive producer
The playwright who learned to produce: Jim Leonard — Jim Leonard Jr. in his theatre credits — was born in Fort Wayne: the credit databases give the city as his birthplace and the Indianapolis press calls him a Fort Wayne native…
Ethan Sandler: the writer-producer's ladder
Born 3 December 1972, Fort Wayne — My Boys, Whitney, New Girl, Man with a Plan
In front of the camera first: Ethan Sandler was born in Fort Wayne on 3 December 1972 and raised in the city before Northwestern University, where he met his future wife, the actress Kathryn Hahn. He is known first as an actor …
Jenna Fischer: a producer's credit on The Office
Born 7 March 1974, Fort Wayne — producer, the final season of The Office
An actor's producing chapter: Jenna Fischer was born in Fort Wayne, and her life and her acting career — Pam Beesly across all nine seasons of The Office — are carried in the People chapter of this record. The producing is a…
Jill Bennett: the web-series producer who brought her feature home
Born 14 August 1975, Fort Wayne — We Have to Stop Now, Second Shot, Under the Influencer
From Fort Wayne stages to the festival circuit: Jill Bennett was born in Fort Wayne on 14 August 1975 and grew up in the city — acting from the age of sixteen, winning a state speech title, and leaving for Bradley University on a…
Mark Hornsby: Sweetwater's senior producer
Nashville-trained — at Sweetwater Studios, Fort Wayne, since 2012
The imported craftsman: Fort Wayne's music producers were not born here; they were hired here, and Mark Hornsby is the senior of them. He started in Nashville, where an uncle — himself an award-winning engineer — gave him the…
Phil Naish: a Grammy-winning Nashville producer, imported
Sweetwater Studios' executive producer — the Steven Curtis Chapman records
Seven albums, three Grammys: Phil Naish was raised in Florida — a cellist in the South Florida Youth Symphony before a scholarship took him to Belmont College in Nashville — and built his career in Nashville's studios: first as a…
The Sweetwater session layer: a staff of producers
1979 — the present · the studio itself is carried in the Music History chapter
Producers on salary: Sweetwater Studios works the way the great session towns once did — producers, engineers, and a house band on staff — and the layer under Hornsby and Naish belongs in this record in brief. Chuck Surack, the…
The hometown film producers, in brief
1960 — the present · told in full in the Film chapter
Cross-references, one line each: The producers of Fort Wayne's own film record are carried with their films in the Film section of this history, and are named here only to complete the roster. Richard Galbreath, whose Galbreath…
The broadcast layer: public television's producers
1994 — the present · the commercial stations' newsrooms are in the Newspapers & Media chapter
The city's own documentaries: The producing that Fort Wayne watches at home is public television's. WFWA — PBS Fort Wayne — has made local documentary in the city for decades; the library catalog credits Claudia Johnson as…