Cradle Will Research Articles

“Journey Up Seventh Avenue to Infamy: The Cradle Will Rock”

One historically consequential event of the Federal Theatre Project was the headline-grabbing opening night of Mark Blitzstein’s labor opera The Cradle Will Rock. The deeply satirical work examined greed and corruption, and the Works Progress Administration canceled it for fear it was too politically radical. Director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman felt the stakes were too high to not push back against this censorship and performed it elsewhere that night.

Bulworth (1998) and Cradle Will Rock (1999): Critiquing Capitalism in the Late 1990s

Bulworth (1998) and Cradle Will Rock (1999):Critiquing Capitalism in the Late 1990s Martin Halpern The 2008 economic crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in 2011 produced wide-ranging discussions about the failings of the existing capitalist order and the need to imagine alternatives to it. Since the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a national figure, the term "socialist" has been a focal point of discussion. Some of the debate involves little more than redbaiting. Indeed, the combination of climate change, the coronavirus, and the presidency of Donald Trump brought a continuous stream of worrisome news that has left little room for optimistic reflections. Searing film portraits of our anxious times such as Sorry to Bother You seek to awaken viewers to the depths of malevolence through which we are living. Rather than examine the dystopian visions in recent films, I will look back at two films from the late 1990s that explore socialist and communist ideas. Indeed, artistic critiques of capitalism and imagining of alternatives to it have been features of cultural life even in quiescent and conformist periods such as the 1990s. Despite the disarray in progressive circles resulting from Clintonite centrism in the 1990s, two major film stars, thanks to their ability to leverage financing for major film projects, gave movie audiences an opportunity to critique a social system that was seemingly stable. Set, respectively, in the 1990s and in the 1930s, Warren Beatty's 1998 film Bulworth and Tim Robbins's 1999 film Cradle Will Rock grappled with the dilemma of how one can both survive within an unjust social order and perhaps even transcend it. Each film focuses on the preservation of individual dignity and either explicitly or implicitly contributes to the strengthening of collective struggle against late capitalism. As well-financed feature films appealing to a mass audience Bulworth and Cradle Will Rock provide critiques of elite capitalists and the capitalist system and offer sustenance and support for the idea that "another world is possible."1 Tim Robbins's 1999 film Cradle Will Rock provides a window on the New Deal. At the center of the film is the 1937 effort to stage Marc Blitzstein's pro-labor opera The Cradle Will Rock while the film's rapidly shifting scenes provide insightful glimpses on the mural movement of Diego Rivera, the struggles of steel workers and the unemployed, women's leadership roles, new opportunities for African Americans, and the roles of anti-communist, pro-fascist, and big-business opponents of the New Deal. The film's central focus is on whether impulses for solidarity and human caring, by artist or worker, may overcome the power of money.2 The danger that capitalists are able to use money to corrupt agents of change is evident in both the play within the movie and in the movie's story. In Blitzstein's play, we see that Mr. Mister, the dominant figure in Steeltown and a symbol of capitalist power, has successfully corrupted the clergy and the media. He also attempts without success to buy off Larry Foreman, the union leader. In the movie story, Blitzstein highlights to Orson Welles, who is about to direct his play, the vulnerability of the artist to the blandishments of capital. Welles is the host of a [End Page 37] successful national radio show and Blitzstein asks him, "How long can you whore your talents before you're used up unwanted?" Acknowledging that everyone needs money, Blitzstein probes, "The question is what will you do for the money? Where do you draw the line?" Robbins's film opens with the words "a (mostly) true story," a reference to the fact that most of the film's characters are historical personalities and to the film's culmination with the depiction of a historic event, the runaway opening night performance of The Cradle Will Rock on June 16, 1937. The film's shifting focus on other historical events that happened earlier and later–the painting and destruction of Diego Rivera's mural at Rockefeller Center in 1933 and 1934, the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on the Federal Theatre Project in 1939...

The Second New Deal and the Fourth Courtroom Wall: Law, Labor, and Liberty in The Cradle Will Rock

This essay explores Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 labor opera, The Cradle Will Rock, as an assault on legal legitimacy. Since its famous first production — a pared-down performance in which actors delivered their parts from the house, improvised when the WPA canceled the scheduled opening of the controversial project — critics have emphasized Cradle’s indebtedness to the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, to whom Blitzstein dedicated the work. Consistent with Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt, Blitzstein distances the audience from Cradle’s characters, substituting rational understanding for unreflective empathy. Like Brecht, he employs this theatrical device to expose the cultural and economic underpinnings of familiar social practices, including capitalism. Imported to the US context, the Brechtian reimagining of theatrical conventions resonated with a corresponding attack on formal legal justice. At the height of the New Deal’s crisis of legal legitimacy, Cradle depicts a judicial system baldly beholden to wealth and property. The anti-union steel magnate at the show’s center bribes and manipulates journalists, professionals, and public officials to promote his concept of “liberty,” namely, freedom from organized labor. By amplifying the effects of economic interests on legal outcomes while undermining empathy with the characters who facilitate and legitimate repression, Cradle invites the audience to consider its own complicity in law’s injustice.

Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World by Howard Pollack (review)

Reviewed by: Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World by Howard Pollack Stuart J. Hecht Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World. By Howard Pollack . New York : Oxford University Press , 2012 . Cloth $39.95 , eBook $29.99 . 618 pages. When American composer Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) suddenly died, the victim of gay bashing, the national shock was such as to merit a memorial concert in Lincoln Center with commemoratives coming from the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Lillian Hellman, Aaron Copland, and many more. With Bernstein at the piano, a bevy of stars recreated scenes from The Cradle Will Rock, including Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Barbara Harris, and original cast members Will Geer and Howard Da Silva. Jose Ferrer, Anita Ellis and Luigi Alva sang arias from Blitzstein’s operas. It was an evening of warm tributes. Yet today Blitzstein is largely forgotten. Author Howard Pollack, known for his ambitious biographies of George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland, here tackles the daunting task of resurrecting Blitzstein’s complex life and reputation in a densely detailed authoritative biography. Blitzstein is mostly known for two works: the Brecht-inspired, Federal Theatre-damning opera, The Cradle Will Rock, for which he wrote book, lyrics, and score; and his highly successful adaptation of the Brecht/Weill musical, The Threepenny Opera (1954), whose unexpected long run is sometimes credited for initiating the Off-Broadway theatre movement. Born to an affluent Jewish family in Philadelphia, Blitzstein was quickly recognized as a musical prodigy, studying with the likes of Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He became a concert pianist and an erudite champion of avant-garde Modernist music. Throughout his life Blitzstein extolled the virtues (or failings) of many up-and-coming composers. A life-long Marxist, Blitzstein came to believe that good music could come from anywhere and anyone, not only highbrow aesthetes. He helped promote folk music—banjo songs, spirituals, labor songs—as much as he did the work of Copland, Stravinsky, or Prokofiev. Though gay, Blitzstein married Eva Goldbeck, herself an accomplished cultural critic. Eva’s premature death (at age 34) devastated Marc; it was she who had urged him to write The Cradle Will Rock, completed shortly thereafter. Complete success for his music eluded Blitzstein. Pollack recounts multiple instances of Blitzstein compositions winning critical acclaim, but never quite achieving renown, or of Blitzstein’s famously gifted mentee, Leonard Bernstein, so inspired by Blitzstein’s work that Blitzstein’s phrases take flight through Bernstein’s songs (including in West Side Story). Blitzstein found greater success writing music for theatre and film. Following The Cradle Will Rock, Blitzstein wrote rarely for purely musical venues. He scored theatrical productions for Orson Welles, John Houseman, and Lillian Hellman. He composed music for New Deal films and, drafted into the Army for World War II, composed for director William Wilder’s war documentaries. After the war Jerome Robbins enlisted Blitzstein [End Page 89] to write music for The Guests, marking Robbins’s choreographic debut with the New York City Ballet. Blitzstein also turned increasingly to Broadway. In 1949 he transformed Hellman’s The Little Foxes into the musical Regina, which enjoyed a modest run. Blitzstein followed this with Reuben Reuben and then, more notably, with Juno (1959), his musical version of O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock. At the time of his death Blitzstein was working on a musical about Sacco and Venzetti, for which he intended to write the music, lyrics and book. Pollack’s book brings to life this complex man and his work and does so with extraordinary detail and expertise. Pollack has made himself conversant in a broad range of settings and knowledge, equipping him to describe and assess the late composer’s times in their own context. He utilizes a lengthy list of sources, including Blitzstein’s letters, to achieve a close account of Blitzstein’s life accompanied by his views on seemingly everything: friends, lovers, the nature of music and theatre, politics, his travels, progressions of key events, and so forth. This proves critical for a biography of a man so loving and yet also so opinionated. Pollack’s careful research also uncovers gems from other prominent artists. For example, one from...

Celebrating the Nation: Kurt Weill, Paul Green, and the Federal Theatre Project (1937)

AbstractIn summer 1937, the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) commissioned from playwright Paul Green and composer Kurt Weill a work to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Green had provided the text for Weill's first American musical play, Johnny Johnson (1936), which the FTP took up with some enthusiasm, and he had scored some success with his outdoor historical drama The Lost Colony (1937). He was also interested in music on the stage following his encounters with Russian director Alexei Granowski in Berlin in 1928–29. Weill, in turn, was involved in various spectacle-driven projects in 1937, not least with fellow émigré Max Reinhardt. Green's first scenario for the new drama focused on the constitutional implications of recent labor disputes in the U.S. South. However, the controversy of summer 1937 surrounding the overt agit-prop of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock—sponsored but then dropped by the FTP—put an end to such political aspirations. Green rewrote his outline in favor of a more conventional treatment of the American Revolutionary War, to be called The Common Glory. Although he produced a rough script, and Weill started composing the score, the project collapsed, in part because of their incompatible visions for the play and its music. Nevertheless, newly uncovered sources reveal them attempting to grapple with the potentials of nationalistic subject matter in the theater, and with the search for U.S. cultural identities in changing times.

Haunted by The Cradle Will RockHistory and Adaptation in Jason Sherman’s It’s All True

It’s All True(1999), Jason Sherman’s play about the 1937 premiere of Marc Blitzstein’s proletarian musical The Cradle Will Rock, brings together two central elements of Sherman’s work: historically-based political theatre and adaptation. In choosing to dramatize the events leading up to the opening night of The Cradle Will Rock, Sherman stages an iconic episode in the history of American political theatre that resonates with current concerns about state funding for the arts and uses it to construct a debate about the social function of theatre today. It’s All Trueexemplifies the complex nature of adaptations: it is not only “haunted” by its numerous sources; it is also productive, giving new life to them through appropriation, most notably to The Cradle Will Rock itself. Although, due to copyright restrictions, It’s All Trueuses neither Blitzstein’s music nor his lyrics, The Cradle Will Rockis a ubiquitous presence in Sherman’s play, providing an alternative structure focusing on proletarian heroes rather than celebrities, including gender in its political analysis, and eschewing a linear narrative in favour of an exposé of the circumstances leading up to the celebrated opening night of Blitzstein’s legendary music drama.

Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre Warren Hoffman Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre. By John Bush Jones. Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2003; pp. xiii + 411. $29.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. As anyone who works in the field of musical theatre knows, the current scholarship on the topic is bleak, to say the least. Musical theatre is often treated like the wayward child of theatre studies, not worthy of real scholarship presumably due to its middlebrow song and dance components. The majority of works on the Broadway musical are typically historical in nature, tracing the genre's origins in opera or operetta up through the 1980s British invasion of the megamusical. John Bush Jones's new book attempts to alter this trajectory by focusing on the social elements underlying the creation of this American art form. Sadly, though, Jones's book falls into some of the same traps as its predecessors, giving us a work that, while providing a strong thematic overview of certain social themes in the American musical, [End Page 338] neither probes the depths or implications of these thematic motifs nor strongly deviates from the traditional "chronological" paradigm of writing musical theatre history. Jones's text is divided into ten chapters, each basically focusing on a different historical decade (e.g., 1920s, 1930s) or a thematic topic (e.g., Black and Jewish musicals, fragmented musicals [a.k.a. the concept musical]). Jones does a good job of contextualizing each work within the historical period in which it was created; while this is productive in explaining why certain shows and trends emerged when they did, the broad overview doesn't lend itself to examining the subtleties of such creations. If a show has Jewish themes or characters (Fiddler on the Roof, for example), Jones notes that it reflects a Jewish social milieu, but that is about the extent of his analysis. Though his themed groupings are helpful in getting an overall sense of certain trends within a particular period of time (e.g., war-themed shows during WWII, black musicals during the civil rights movement), Jones's narrative tends to be additive, giving examples of shows as opposed to thoroughly analyzing them. What is particularly egregious is Jones's lack of rigorous new or original scholarship into this topic. Instead, his work is unabashedly a rehash and condensation of Gerald Bordman's outstanding American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle (2nd ed., 1992). Bordman's massive tome continues to be a valuable reference source for scholars, providing a fairly comprehensive show-by-show history of the American musical. Though Jones often provides lengthier plot summaries than Bordman does, he supplies his readers with much of the same information such as opening date statistics, that one can find in Bordman. Similarly, when discussing black musicals, Jones cites with regularity from Allen Woll's wonderful Black Musical Theatre (1989), but doesn't bring much new to the table. Our Musicals only touches upon reviews and other primary archival materials surrounding the productions themselves that might shed light on the social context in which these shows were produced and received. This primary source material, particularly in the earlier chapters, takes a backseat to his recycling of other secondary sources. How did writers and critics at the time of these productions understand, if at all, the social significance of these works? Such a question is worth asking; failing to do so is a major shortcoming of the book. Jones's musical synopses, some of which are extremely detailed for the most obscure musicals, rarely analyze the plot elements that he sets up, as if telling the plot transparently reveals the social history of the piece. He also unfailingly gives the reader the number of performances that each show ran. The repeated nature of providing the exact same types of information for each show unfortunately makes for a tedious read. What is also notable about Jones's book are the shows he chooses to write about. Some of the most obscure shows are given copious amounts of space (Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock is allotted an unbelievable nine pages) while all...

Our Musicals, Ourselves—A Social History of the American Musical Theatre

Our Musicals, Ourselves-A Social History of American Musical Theatre John Bush Jones. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2003. There are several factual misstatements in John Bush Jones's Our Musicals, Ourselves-A Social History of American Musical Theatre. On page 159, Bush Jones alleges that Lindsay and Grouse were authors of Arsenic and Old Lace. Joseph Kesselring wrote Arsenic and Old Lace. On page 153, he declares that Jerome Robbins both directed and choreographed original Broadway production of The King and I. Robbins only did choreography for show. On page 162, Bush Jones states that 1950s television Studio One and Playhouse 90 put on productions of Broadway plays. Studio One and Playhouse 90 did original programming, with Playhouse 90's most celebrated production perhaps being The Plot to Kill Stalin, a play that so rankled government of Soviet Union that it kicked CBS correspondent out of Moscow. Such factual errors cast hardly a blemish on Bush Jones's exhaustively researched, richly detailed social history of American musical. Bush Jones begins at beginning, with an account of what happened to ill-fated, aptly titled show The Disappointment, first musical comedy written in America. He then jumps ahead to a discussion of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore., whose American productions influenced plotlines of American for decades afterward. Bush Jones writes about melodramatic of turn of century and of techno-pride of very early twentieth century, in which cars often figured prominently in plot. He writes about revues of Florenz Ziegfield, whose shows, while purposing glorification of the American girl, also revealed a concern for contemporary news items such as opening of Panama Canal. He writes about patriotic of multitalented George M. Cohan, of racist, anti-Asian gunboat musicals that were put on prior to World War I, and of development of black musical. He how of twenties glorified prosperity and consumer values of decade. Bush Jones informs us that Cinderella shows and leisure-time musicals of 1920s persisted into 1930s because these shows, while no longer mirroring what was going on in society, provided escapism for audiences eager to forget about Depression. He points out, however, that Depression also gave rise to satiric of 1930s, like Strike Up Band, Of Thee I Sing, and The Cradle Will Rock. He explains why World War II virtually destroyed topicality on Broadway. He discusses Rogers and Hammerstein of 1940s and 1950s, which launched a revolution in American musical by showing that integrated that dealt with social issues and promoted tolerance could be hits. Bush Jones talks about increasingly liberal attitudes present in American after war, devotes a full chapter to black and Jewish of 1960s, and describes issue-driven of 1960s and 1970s, which grew up in response to civil rights and anti-Vietnam War agitation of those two decades. Bush Jones goes on to draw a correlation between political scandals and economic hard times of 1970s, disenchantment many Americans experienced with government, and inward-looking, fragmented that came on scene in 1970s and persisted into 1980s and 1990s. He talks about nostalgic musicals, like Grease, that grew up in 1970s and have persisted to present day as an expression of longing for an earlier, supposedly more innocent time. He discusses techno-musicals of 1980s and 1990s that relied for their appeal on technical effects rather than on plot or character. Bush Jones concludes his book with a consideration of contemporary that have dealt with women's issues, homosexuality, and decadence and divisiveness of American society. …

Engaging Media Spectacle

Engaging Media Spectacle

When the Bough Breaks the Cradle Will Fall: Promoting the Health and Well Being of Infants and Toddlers in Juvenile Court

ABSTRACTApproximately one‐third of the children in the child welfare system are under the age of six. These children are almost invisible in our juvenile courts. It is now clear from the emerging science of early childhood development that during the first few years of life children develop the foundation and capabilities on which all subsequent development builds. Living in emotional and environmental impoverishment and deprivation provides a poor foundation for healthy development. These very young and vulnerable children are exhibiting disproportionate developmental and cognitive delays, medical problems, and emotional disorders. However, there is growing evidence that early planned interventions can help. The juvenile court must take a leadership role in focusing on the very young child and learning more about risk, prevention, and early intervention in order to facilitate the healing process.

<sc>Cradle Will Rock</sc>. Produced by Jon Kilik, Lydia Jean Pilcher, and Tim Robbins; written and directed by Tim Robbins. 1999; color; 134 minutes. Distributor: Buena Vista Pictures

<sc>Cradle Will Rock</sc>. Produced by Jon Kilik, Lydia Jean Pilcher, and Tim Robbins; written and directed by Tim Robbins. 1999; color; 134 minutes. Distributor: Buena Vista Pictures

Middlebrow: For and Against

Clement Greenberg's fulminations on the commercial 'ersatz culture' of the urban proletariat and petty bourgeoisie in Avant-Garde and Kitsch, that 'debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture', were directed not just against the official art of the totalitarian regimes and Hollywood films, but also against the arts of the American Popular Front as his passing reference to Steinbeck indicates. In this respect (as in others), Greenberg's essay rehearses wellestablished themes in Partisan Review of the late thirties, which had already criticized Marc Blitzstein's 'proletarian opera' The Cradle Will Rock and Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, and damned The Grapes of Wrath with the faintest of praise. Lionel Trilling, commenting on the 'literary nationalism' of the Popular Front in the same issue, observed that for the most part it was 'the calculated policy of a party line', and that it could not be 'anything but vulgar and, in the end, downright chauvinistic'. The novelist James Farrell had made the same equation between 'Popular Frontism', nationalism, and 'vulgarity' the issue before. A somewhat later contributor to Partisan Review, Irving Howe, would argue in the history of the American Communist Party he co-authored with Lewis Coser that it was 'precisely through its vulgarity' that the Popular Front managed to secure an influence 'on the stage, in Hollywood, and in radio . . . Like modern advertising, with which it had deep spiritual affinities, the Popular Front outlook aimed at indiscriminate saturation of the audience rather than intellectual quality'.' The interpretation of Popular Front culture developed by the Partisan Reviewers in the factional battles of the thirties left, effectively became the common sense of post-war cultural history. Howe and Coser's conclusions were even reaffirmed by New Left scholars such as Warren Susman, who attacked Popular Front Americanism for the harm it had done American socialism through its 'absurd vision of the American past', 'peculiar notion of American society in the present', and 'ludicrous attitude toward American culture in general'.2 It is only in recent years that left-wing literary scholars such as Barbara Foley, Paula Rabinowitz, and Alan Wald have begun to question this type of judgement through a more sustained and sympathetic analysis of the Proletarian Literature of the period. Now along comes Michael Denning, with a 556 page study which makes by far the most sweeping and ambitious attempt to re-evaluate the culture of the Red Decade to date.3 Like other scholars who have pursued this goal, Denning eschews the category of Stalinism, so central to the world view of Partisan Review. Indeed, in his account of thirties culture the Communist Party plays a fairly marginal role. This is because for him the Popular Front is only one phase of a process which he calls 'the labouring of American culture', and whose institutions and products he prefers to denominate 'the Cultural Front'. For Denning, this process is not to be understood as the effect of a sequence of political directives issuing ultimately from Moscow, but rather as the cultural expression of a much broader social and political movement intrinsically linked to the class consciousness of the new

Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock and Mass-Song Style of the 1930s

Journal Article Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock and Mass-Song Style of the 1930s Get access CAROL J. OJA CAROL J. OJA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Musical Quarterly, Volume 73, Issue 4, 1989, Pages 445–475, https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/73.4.445 Published: 01 April 1989

Brecht in Context: Comparative Approaches by John Willett, and: Beyond Brecht ed. by John Fuegi, Gisela Bahr, and John Willett (review)

Brecht in Context: Comparative Approaches by John Willett, and: Beyond Brecht ed. by John Fuegi, Gisela Bahr, and John Willett (review)

Performance in review

Churchill, Caryl. Fen. Directed by Les Waters. Performed by London's Joint Stock Theatre and produced by Joseph Papp at the Public Theatre, New York City, June, 1983. Blitzstein, Marc. The Cradle Will Rock. Directed by John Houseman. The Acting Company, Douglas Fairbanks Theatre, New York, July, 1983.

The Shoemaker's Holiday at the Mercury Theatre

Barely eighteen months before his production of The Shoemaker's Holiday, Orson Welles could not claim for himself a single credential in the professional theatre. Beginning with his very first production, the celebrated “Voodoo” Macbeth, in 1936, Welles quickly became the center of mounting popular and critical attention with Horse Eats Hat, Dr. Faustus and The Cradle Will Rock for the W.P.A. He followed these in the Winter of 1937–38 with the first two productions for his own, newlyformed Mercury Theatre: Julius Caesar and The Shoemaker's Holiday.