Existing comment:
The Cradle Will Rock team
Howard Da Silva, 1909 - 1986
Bert Weston, active 1930s
Olive Stanton, active 1930s
Marc Blitzstein, 2 Mar 1905 - 22 Jan 1964
Blanche Collins, 1910 - 1968
In 1937, composer Marc Blitzstein made national headlines with his musical "The Cradle Will Rock." The strongly pro-union play was directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Houseman for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project. Just as it was to open, word of the play's ideological slant reached Washington. Congressional conservatives threatened the WPA's funding. The Federal Theatre Project cancelled the play, and Actors' Equity told Welles that none of the actors could appear on stage in the production. So Welles and Houseman moved the play to a different site, and had the actors perform from the audience, with Blitzstein narrating at the piano. Columnist Walter Winchell called the play a great "diversion" and New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson praised it as "the best thing militant labor has put into the theatre uyet."
Al Hirschfeld, 1938 |