The theater producers: the circuits

1910–1977 · the rooms' lives are in the Theaters chapter

The impresarios were companies: The legitimate stage's producers in this city were not local men but the circuits that built the rooms and routed the bills, and they are carried here at the size the Theaters record gives them — the bills, the houses, and their ends standing whole in that chapter. The Orpheum Circuit opened its South Bend Orpheum on 14 November 1910 with five acts of vaudeville and opened the Palace on 2 November 1922 as its second South Bend room, built to a palace's scale as the business changed — the circuit's standard bill, routed week to week through its chain, with Broadway troupes stopping between New York and Chicago. Balaban & Katz, the Chicago circuit whose name was synonymous with the deluxe picture palace, built the Granada and opened it on 16 February 1927. By 1941 downtown's screens had consolidated into the studio system: Paramount operated both the State and the Granada through its John Balaban subsidiary, and it was Plitt Theatres that closed the State as a movie house on 3 November 1977. One modern local credit stands apart from the circuits and is printed at its size: Raffaella, the full-length ballet commissioned by the Stroik family in memory of the Saint Louis Ballet dancer Raffaella Stroik, a South Bend native, was given its world premiere at the Morris Performing Arts Center on 29 and 30 June 2024, with the dancer's father, Duncan Stroik, as its executive producer — a South Bend production, made by a family, in the city's own room.

Sources:

1. The Theaters chapter of this record — the Orpheum Circuit's opening of the Orpheum (14 November 1910) and the Palace as an Orpheum-circuit house (2 November 1922); Balaban & Katz's Granada (16 February 1927); Paramount's operation of the State and the Granada through its John Balaban subsidiary by 1941; Plitt Theatres' closing of the State, 3 November 1977.
2. BroadwayWorld, 3 April 2024 — Raffaella, world premiere at the Morris Performing Arts Center, 29–30 June 2024; commissioned by the Stroik family; "Executive Producer Duncan Stroik, the late dancer's father."