city, attracting fashionable audiences from New York and Philadelphia. Nixon's son Fredrick G Nixon Nirdlinger became a partner in the Nixon & Zimmerman theatrical firm. He managed the Park Theatre and People’s Theatre in Philadelphia. An Associated Press story distributed in December 1903 said "…Samuel F. Nixon Nirdlinger is today the richest and most powerful theatrical manager and promoter in America…. His son, Frederick G. Nixon Nirdlinger, is an assistant to his father, and has won (his own) fame in his profession…” Marcus Loew developed a growing chain of vaudeville theaters. They competed with the agency run by Fred G. Nixon-Nirdlinger, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that Loew and others had established a virtual monopoly of the vaudeville business. The "Philadelphia Vaudeville War" continued until an agreement was struck on 13 December 1913 by which Loew gave up his holdings in the Metropolitan Opera House and Chestnut Street Opera House, and in exchange gained a stake in a new company being formed by Benjamin Franklin Keith. Samuel F. Nixon, Fred Nixon-Nirdlinger, J. Fred Zimmerman and Edward Franklin Albee were parties to the agreement. Samuel F. Nixon died on 13 November 1918 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fred G. Nixon-Nirdlinger was living in an apartment on the French Riviera in 1931 when he was shot and killed by his wife, Charlotte. Their infant children were present in the apartment. The sensational story of the murder and subsequent trial, in which Charlotte was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, made headlines for months. References Citations Sources External links 1848 births 1918 deaths American theatre managers and producers People from Fort Wayne, Indiana American people of German-Jewish descent 19th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Pennsylvania