I was watching the almost unknown but amazing and beautiful Tim Robbins film,
Cradle Will Rock and I realized that it is a story a lot of Americans don't know. I would highly recommend the film to everyone, but I will also tell the story in my own words because it is a story I find both sad and inspiring and Mr. Robbins' film, while wonderful, is not the complete tale.
We have to begin in an America very different from the one we were in now, but not so different from one where we may be headed.
1937 was a terrible year for America. The Great Depression was at its heights and millions were out of work. Still, there was a bright spot. Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal projects, people were starting to find work again and families were getting back on their feet.
These programs, however, took money away from corporations by turning huge engineering projects such as the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority water projects into federal projects rather than the private enterprises such project usually were (with heavy government bonuses for completion).
The corporate oligarchs on the right, the same men who plotted to stage a coup and install Smedley Butler as president- he stopped them, hero that he was- were desperate to bring Roosevelt and his New Deal down in any way possible. Although Roosevelt and the New Deal survived, they, and America, were never the same afterwards.
One of the things Roosevelt's people realized was that entertainment, especially theatre, was vital to keep Americans going through those dark times. But with so many people out of work and bankrupt, theatre wasn't getting the box office they used to. Not very many people could afford to go. In the interests of the nation, and to aid the millions of out of work actors, crew, writers, directors and producers, the Federal Theatre Project was born.
The Federal Theatre Project and, in fact, the entire Federal One project designed to help out-of-work artists, could have been one of the greatest triumphs of our nation's history. In the few short years that it existed, it broke new ground by giving minorities their first chance at expressing themselves through drama and at the same time addressing important social and political issues in ways that theatre had not dared in America since before the Civil War. It launched the careers of people like Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, John Houseman, and, ironically enough (as we shall see later), Elia Kazan.
The right already had a lot of ammunition against the Federal Theatre Project when they attacked:
It was one of the most expensive projects of the New Deal, taking almost 30% of the budget of the Federal One projects which itself was taking a large percentage of the New Deal's total budget.
It was headed by a woman, something almost unheard of in the 1937s (at the insistance, I am betting, of Eleanor Roosevelt). Hallie Flanagan, professor of Theatre at Vassar, was given the task of creating a national theatre. Hallie was possibly a poor choice. Although a brilliant, strong woman, she had done her thesis in the Soviet Union and had written passionately about the Russian Theatre. In a time when anti-communist sentiments were growing in America, that was bad enough. Ms. Flanagan further fanned the flames when she announced that the Federal Theatre Project would be, in her words, "free, adult, and uncensored."
She had given them all the ammunition they needed and the government immediately stepped in and began censoring FTP projects. Ethiopia, a play about Halie Selassie's struggles against Mussolini, was censored with a new mandate that foreign heads of state could not be depicted on the Federal Theatre stage as it could cause an 'international diplomatic incident.' Other federal theatre projects dealing with such controvertial subjects as racial inequality and even the Tuskeegee syphillis tests made the FTP the favorite target of the right and it started becoming a huge weight around Roosevelt's neck.
It all came to a head in 1937 with a musical called The Cradle Will Rock. It was a very unusual musical written by a very unusual man, Marc Blitzstein. Although openly homosexual, Blitzstein was also happily married and there was some question as to whether or not he was schizophrenic. Blitzstein had been a member of the Communist Party but was kicked out for being openly gay. Although not a party member, he remained faithful to Marxist ideals and his work reflects that.
The musical itself is a little over-the-top. A blatantly left-wing allegory taking place in 'Steeltown, U.S.A.' with heroes with names like Larry Foreman and villains with names like Mr. Mister, Blitzstein didn't exactly believe in subtlety. He dedicated the musical to Berthold Brecht and it is indeed very Brechtian, although not nearly as witty.
Despite its flaws, it gained the interest of two young theatre emprisarios- the director Orson Welles and his producer friend John Houseman. Welles and Houseman loved stirring people up. Welles himself had directed an all-black production of MacBeth with the exception of Welles himself who would occasionally replace an actor in blackface. Welles, as I'm sure you know, was a great fan of shocking people as he showed a few years later with his War of the Worlds hoax. With Houseman and Welles agreeing to do the play for the FTP, it was bound to attract attention and attract attention it did.
In both New York and Washington, the corporatists and the right were going apoplectic. A federally-funded play which advocated strikes and unionizing? It was just too much for these ultra-capitalists to take and they took two steps. The first, and I will get back to it later, was to create a new committee in the House of Representatives which you may have heard of- the House Unamerican Activities Committee.
The second thing they did was order the Federal Theatre to shut down the play which they agreed. The official reason given was that the show had gone too far overbudget. Welles had indeed been extravigant- he had designed an all-glass set and was using a full orchestra- but he also was making up the budget shortfalls with his own and Houseman's own money. So, the play was shut down. The problem was, the order to do so came the night before the show opened.
As the crowd of the New York's theatre elite gathered in front of the Maxine Elliott Theatre on Broadway south of 41st Street in Manhattan they were greeted by the sight of barricaded doors protected by armed guards. For the first time in the history of America, the government was forcing people at gunpoint away from seeing a play they considered too subversive to be performed.
Heroically, some of the cast and crew took matters into their own hands. Working through the night, Houseman found an empty theatre, the Venice, which could be rented for $100. But there was a new problem. The oligarchs had gotten to the unions. Suddenly, the Musicians' Union demanded that if the show was no longer a federal project, the orchestra had to be paid at commercial rates. Actors' Equity, the theatrical actors' union, forbade its actors from performing at all.
Undeterred, Welles and Houseman decided to go on with the show. With a rented piano in a truck, Houseman and Welles led the crowd up Broadway to the Venice Theatre where they were told they would be seeing a one-man performance of the play with Blitzstein on the piano doing all the parts. What they didn't know is that Welles had gathered his cast and said the following to them- "you may not appear on stage, but there is nothing to prevent you from buying your way into whatever theater we find, and then why not get up from your seats, as first-class American citizens, and speak your piece when your cue comes?"
As the audience took their seats in the Venice, Houseman and Welles both gave speeches, explaining the situation in full and letting the audience know what they would be missing. After that, they introduced Blitzstein at his piano. As the first notes played, the actors began to rise from their seats as one after the other became brave enough to take a stand and sing their parts from where they stood and until the show came to the end, the audience was awed by what must have been one of the greatest moments in the history of American theatre.
The event was lauded in the papers and resulted in Welles forming the Mercury Theatre Company as a result, the company which eventually would do both the War of the Worlds radio broadcast and later Citizen Kane. Blitzen and Flanagan were not so lucky.
In 1938, Flanagan was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the FTP was shut down. Flanagan returned to Vassar and a few years later accepted a position at Smith College and remained there until her retirement, ending in near total obscurity.
Blitzstein spent the rest of his life desperate for work from an industry usually too scared to employ him. In 1951, he was also sent to appear before HUAC. Although he admitted to being a Communist, he refused to name names and was blacklisted. He was killed in 1964 in Martinique after being robbed and beaten by Portugese Sailors after a sexual encounter.
The musical itself is rarely performed, but there was one notable revival. In 1939, a young Leonard Bernstein, a close friend and possible lover of Blitzstein's, recreated the night in the Venica at Harvard to rave reviews. When Tim Robbins made his film tribute, it was barely noticed.
All of this happened in America before and it could easily happen again. Once again we are headed into an era of economic collapse and once again, the corporate oligarchs are attempting to seize control and shut down our media, our art, our writing. The Cradle Will Rock was a phenomenal musical only because it was censored. It should have been performed in a short run and forgotten but instead it has become a symbol of the oppressed artist struggling to make himself heard under the totalitarian thumb of a right-wing regime.
We cannot let there be another moment like the night The Cradle Will Rock was performed. We must not let them do this to America again.