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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 city at all. What the record holds instead is more particular. Two Fort Wayne men built producing careers of the first rank away from home — one of them, Kevin Wall, produced the largest music events ever staged, and the other, Jim Leonard, created three network television series out of a playwright's beginnings here. Behind them stand the actor-producers — performers born in Fort Wayne who added a producer's credit to an acting career, in the writer's room and on the independent circuit — and, in music, the flow runs the other way: Fort Wayne's one world-class studio, Sweetwater, imports its producers, and a Nashville generation now works behind boards on the northeast side of the city. The hometown shops that make commercials and industrial films, and the public-television producers who make the city's own documentaries, close the record. It is a short roster. It is also, name for name, a true one.
Sources:
- "List of people from Fort Wayne, Indiana" (Wikipedia) — Kevin Wall carried in the city's own roster as "Emmy Award-winning producer, environmentalist, founder of Live Earth"; the same list carries the actors cross-referenced below.
- The entries that follow — each name rests on the credit records, trade coverage, and biographies cited with it.