The Morris — opened as the Palace, premiered the Rockne film, saved for a dollar

1922 – present · 211 North Michigan Street

The place: The theatre at Michigan and Colfax opened in 1922 as the Palace, an Orpheum-chain house built for a million dollars on a hundred-thousand-dollar lot to J. S. Aroner's designs, beside the Palais Royale ballroom of the same campaign — the pair's architecture is the Architecture history's. Its fame rests on documented nights. On 4 October 1940 the Palace hosted the world premiere of Knute Rockne: All American, and the theatre's own published history names the room that night: Ronald Reagan, who played George Gipp in the film, with Bob Hope, Rudy Vallee, Jane Wyman and Kate Smith in attendance — the film of South Bend's most famous man, opened in South Bend's grandest room, in the town where the story happened. The vaudeville and road-show billing the theatre's own history keeps is the era's roster: the Ziegfeld Follies with Fanny Brice, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Houdini, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Debbie Reynolds — the between-New-York-and-Chicago stop where Broadway's troupes played, on the theatre's own tally.

The rescue and the second premiere: In 1959 the theatre's own board voted demolition; Ella Morris bought the building, sold it to the city for one dollar, and it reopened as the Morris Civic Auditorium — the name it still carries. The room's second famous premiere closes the circle: on 5 October 1993, as the Notre Dame Report announced, the Morris hosted the South Bend premiere of Rudy as a benefit for the Center for the Homeless — the other Notre Dame football film, premiered in the same room fifty-three years after the first, under the name of the woman who saved it. The theatre stands on the National Register (1985), closed in May 1998 for a seventeen-million-dollar restoration, and reopened on 3 March 2000 as the Morris Performing Arts Center, 2,564 seats, the home of the South Bend Symphony and of Broadway in South Bend, "consistently" rating, as Pollstar's figures are reported in its centennial coverage, in the Top 100 for ticket sales in its seating class.

Cross-reference: Architecture (arch-palace) owns the Palace and the Palais Royale as buildings; the screen history of the two films is this section's own screen entry below. This entry carries the theatre's billing record and its two premieres.

Sources

1. Morris Performing Arts Center — the theatre's published history (morris100.org): the 1922 Palace opening on the Orpheum chain; the world premiere of Knute Rockne: All American, 4 October 1940, with Reagan, Hope, Vallee, Wyman and Smith attending; the vaudeville billing list; Ella Morris's purchase and one-dollar sale to the city; the National Register listing of 1985; the 1998–2000 restoration at $17 million and the reopening of 3 March 2000; 2,564 seats.
2. Notre Dame Report, University of Notre Dame Archives, October 1993 — the Rudy premiere of 5 October 1993 at the Morris Civic Auditorium, a benefit for the Center for the Homeless.
3. South Bend Tribune, centennial coverage, 2022 — the Pollstar Top 100 standing in its seating-capacity class.
4. The Architecture history in this record (Architecture, arch-palace) — the Palace and Palais Royale buildings whole.