The Christian Schmidt Brewing Company was an American brewing company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1860, it was the largest brewing company in the history of Philadelphia, producing nearly 4,000,000 barrels of beer a year in the late 1970s. When it closed in 1987, it marked the first time in over 300 years that there was no brewery operating in Philadelphia.
By 1982, Schmidt’s was only brewing at 66% of its capacity. Given the low profit margins for its popular-priced beers, Schmidt’s set its sights on the premium and super-premium sectors. In April 1982, Schmidt’s launched a premium priced beer, Christian Schmidt Golden Classic. Extensive consumer research was performed in order to develop the taste of Golden Classic and an expensive advertising campaign was launched to support it. Although sales were initially 150,000 barrels a year, they dwindled to around 20,000 barrels within a few years. Another new brand, Christian Schmidt’s Select, was intended to compete with super-premiums and imports, but it was not successful either.
In 1987, Schmidt’s largest creditor, Crown Cork & Seal Co., called in loans totaling about $24 million, which forced Pflaumer to sell the company. Pflaumer received a three-day furlough from prison to return to Philadelphia to negotiate the sale of the brewery. In early April 1987, the G. Heileman Brewing Company of La Crosse, Wisconsin, reached an agreement to purchase Schmidt’s brands. The terms of the sale required Heileman to pay royalties over an eight-year period on the Schmidt’ brands that it produced, subject to an advance royalty payment of $23.5 million made in 1987. Pflaumer apparently wanted to sell the brewery plant as well, but Heileman declined, and the brewery closed.
After Heileman bought Schmidt’s brands, Schmidt’s was produced at Heileman’s brewery in Baltimore. Heileman also owned the brands of the unrelated Jacob Schmidt Brewing Company of Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1992, Heileman began using identical packaging for the “Schmidt’s” beer it marketed in the Philadelphia area and the “Schmidt” beer it sold in Minnesota, although it said that different recipes continued to be used for each region. After 1992, the beer was sometimes marketed as “Schmidt’s”, while at other times it was called “Schmidt”, and labels could incorporate elements derived from both the Philadelphia and Minnesota beers. Heileman’s brands were acquired by Stroh Brewing Co. in 1996. In 1999, Stroh’s closed and its Schmidt’s-related brands were sold to Pabst. As of 2019, a “Schmidt” beer was produced by Pabst, but its packaging was derived entirely from the Minnesota beer. Some other old Schmidt’s of Philadelphia brands are still owned by Pabst. The trademarks of some other Schmidt’s brands have been sold, while still others were allowed to lapse and have now been acquired by other brewers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Schmidt_Brewing_Company
Nathan Lane (born Joseph Lane; February 3, 1956) is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. He has received various accolades including three Tony Awards, seven Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as being “the greatest stage entertainer of the decade”.
Lane made his professional theatre debut in 1978 in an off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. During that time he also briefly appeared as one half of the comedy team of Stack and Lane, until he was cast in the 1982 Broadway revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter directed by and starring George C. Scott. That led to an extensive career onstage, where he had a long friendship and fruitful collaboration with the playwright Terrence McNally which started in 1989 with the Manhattan Theater Club production of The Lisbon Traviata.
A six-time Tony Award nominee, he has won three times, for Best Actor in a Musical for Pseudolus in Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1996) and Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ The Producers (2001), and Best Featured Actor in a Play for Roy Cohn in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (2018). His other Tony-nominated roles were in Guys and Dolls (1992), The Nance (2013), and The Front Page (2016). Among his 25 Broadway credits are The Man Who Came To Dinner (2000), The Odd Couple (2005), Butley (2006), Waiting for Godot (2009), The Addams Family (2010), It’s Only a Play (2014), Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus (2019), and Pictures from Home (2023).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Lane
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