With the Central Park as a template, Balaban & Katz built more than 50 theaters in the Chicago area. In 1968, Benny Goodman, the famed “King of Swing,” recalled making his first paid ...

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Uptown Theatre opened in 1925 as a movie and Vaudeville house for the Balaban & Katz movie chain. The massive venue at 4816 N. Broadway was designed by brothers Cornelius and ...

The historic Oriental Theatre opened in 1926, on the site of the ill-fated Iroquois Theatre, as a Balaban and Katz Loop movie palace ... fossils are right outside Chicago. But there are no ...

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It was replaced by a wooden hotel called The European, which was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire. A commercial building was built on the site. Eventually, Balaban and Katz Theatre Corporation ...

An uncle, Sam Katz, ran MGM. Balaban graduated from the ... The two ran a chain of movie theaters in the Midwest. His flagship in Chicago, the Esquire, was modeled after Radio City Music Hall ...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Chicago Theatre is ... The theater first opened as a dazzling movie palace that was part of the Balaban & Katz theater empire. Silent films were shown along with full ...

Balaban & Katz became the biggest theatre-chain in the Midwest with more ... Now 48, reserved, deliberate, hardworking, he lives on Chicago’s North Shore, is active in Jewish affairs, takes ...

His uncles owned the Balaban And Katz Theater group in Chicago, which ran both the massive Chicago and Uptown Theaters as movie palaces, and one of them, Barney Balaban, was the president of ...