Another Chicago-based entertainment company has been purchased by a larger New York competitor in yet another repeat of Chicago traditions. Jam Theatricals has been purchased by the Nederlander Organization of New York, the company that operates Broadway in Chicago. As is usual in Chicago, no one will rue its passing because no one was aware it was even here.
Jam Theatricals started in Chicago in the late 1990’s as a spin-off from Jam Productions, an existent company which was not a party to the Nederlander sale. Jam Productions is the company with the noble aspiration of trying to save the Uptown Theater. While Jam Productions continued in the music concert promotion business, Jam Theatricals evolved into a traditional stage theater producer and promoter. They followed a path once pioneered by another Chicago entertainment mogul, Jules Stein, in the big band era. Stein aspired to book bands in Chicago but another company had all the Loop music venues locked-up. So Stein built his own circuit of music venues in small towns across the Midwest. As he became larger he began to buyout smaller competitors to built market share. By the end of the twentieth century he had built the largest entertainment conglomerate in America.
The founders of Jam Theatricals formed a network of theaters across the heartland such as Rockford, Illinois, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Odessa, Texas, eventually operating in twenty-six cities. Repeating another Chicago tradition, they seemed to do better elsewhere than in Chicago. They leased the Chicago Theater, the landmark palace of the Balaban and Katz empire built in the 1920’s. In fact, they were the first local managers of a major Loop venue since Balaban and Katz had merged into the Paramount conglomerate. but they couldn’t make it profitable. Eventually, the Chicago Theater was sold to the Madison Square Garden Company which as its name bespeaks is another huge New York entertainment producer and promoter.
While Jam Theatricals struggled to operate a theater in Chicago, they were far more successful at mining Chicago for product to present in New York. They revived several of David Mamet’s earlier plays for Broadway, they moved one of the Goodman Theater’s plays to Broadway and they had a major hit with August, Osage County from the Steppenwolf Theater. Jam Theatricals grew into a major player in New York, not to the same magnitude as the Shubert Organization, the Nederlander Organization or the Disney Company; nevertheless, with theaters in twenty-six cities for touring shows and
sixty production credits for Broadway shows, Chicago-based Jam Theatricals was a major player. And in keeping with another self-destructive Chicago tradition, Jam Theatricals, a Chicago-based company, seemed to be doing more to grow New York’s commercial theater industry than Chicago’s, while New York-based Nederlander actually did more to grow Chicago’s theater community, little as it might be, than Chicago-based Jam Theatricals.
So what now! The merger announcement wasn’t very revealing about future plans or programs. The founders of Jam Theatricals remain with the company based here in Chicago. Since Jam Theatricals only abetted Chicago’s commercial theater industry in a marginal sense, it was more a loss of prestige than commerce. They owned the oldest theater in America, the National in Washington, D.C., but they had no capital investment in Chicago. This has been another tradition of Chicago entertainment production companies to make capital investments in other cities but not in their hometown.
More interesting, perhaps, is what will eventually happen to the Nederlander Organization as they incorporate the subscription operations and theaters of Jam Theatricals into their booking operations. They are becoming a near national monopoly and there is an irony to that. Seven decades ago, the Shubert Organization’s booking office was a national monopoly that the Truman Administration believed had engaged in anti-competitive behavior. The Shuberts fought the resulting anti-trust suit all the way to the Supreme Court and suffered a major defeat. The booking office was closed leaving Broadway producers without a means to tour their shows. It was the Nederlanders who led a movement to create a new booking operation and now, seven decades later, the Nederlanders look now very similar to the Shuberts then.
To learn more about Chicago’s theater industry history, read Chicago’s Theater Industry
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