The Cradle Will Rock is a 1937 play in music by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Houseman. Set in Steeltown, U.S.A., the Brechtian allegory of corruption and corporate greed includes a panoply of social figures. It follows the efforts of Larry Foreman to unionize the town's workers and combat the powerful industrialist Mr. Mister, who controls the town's factory, press, church, and social organization. The piece is almost entirely sung-through, giving it many operatic qualities, although Blitzstein included popular song styles of the time.
The WPA temporarily shut down the project a few days before it was to open on Broadway. To avoid government and union restrictions, the show was performed on June 16, 1937, with Blitzstein playing piano onstage and the cast members singing their parts from the audience.
The original cast consisted of John Adair, Guido Alexander, Marc Blitzstein, Peggy Coudray, Howard da Silva, George Fairchild, Robert Farnsworth, Edward Fuller, Will Geer, Maynard Holmes, Frank Marvel, Charles Niemeyer, Le Roi Operti, Jules Schmidt, George Smithfield, Olive Stanton, and Bert Weston.
The Cradle Will Rock was reprised January–April 1938 as part of the first season of the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory company founded by Welles and Houseman. An abridged version of the production was recorded and released in 1938, the first original cast recording ever made.
History
The Cradle Will Rock had its genesis in composer Marc Blitzstein's Sketch No. 1, a short work that garnered positive comment in the Daily Worker after it was performed at The New School in February 1936. "It had to do with a Moll, a Gent, a Dick; the plot concerned a little proposition and a little chicanery", Blitzstein later recalled. Bertolt Brecht had heard the sketch at Blitzstein's apartment in late 1935, and suggested that he expand its theme from literal to figurative prostitution. Blitzstein remembered him as saying, "There is prostitution for gain in so many walks of life: the artist, the preacher, the doctor, the lawyer, the newspaper editor. Why don't you put them against this scene of literal selling." Blitzstein took up the idea and ultimately dedicated The Cradle Will Rock to Brecht.
With revisions, the streetwalker scene in Sketch No. 1 became the first of the ten scenes in Blitzstein's opera The Cradle Will Rock, while its song, "Nickel Under the Foot", moved to scene seven. Blitzstein borrowed from a number of his other earlier works as well, which blunts the common notion that Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler were undue influences. Blitzstein objected to the terms operetta and musical comedy, and deliberately called the work an opera—a form in which drama and music have "a continuous and serious mutual relation".
"I wrote both the words and the music of The Cradle Will Rock at white heat during five weeks in 1936," Blitzstein said, "as a kind of rebound from my wife's death in May." The drafted short score was completed September 2, 1936. Blitzstein signed with the William Morris Agency and began auditioning The Cradle Will Rock in one-man shows in the homes of New York producers including Herman Shumlin, Harold Clurman for the Group Theatre, Charles Friedman for the Theatre Union, and Martin Gabel.
In the fall of 1936, Blitzstein attended a performance of the Federal Theatre Project 891 farce Horse Eats Hat and went backstage to meet the show's writer-director, 21-year-old Orson Welles. He found a chance to play his opera for Welles, who was won over by Blitzstein's enthusiasm and endearing faith in his unproduced musical. A deep friendship began between them.
Welles thought about directing The Cradle Will Rock for the Theatre Guild, which was a long shot; and he was set to direct it for the Actors Repertory Company, which optioned the work but later had to withdraw from the agreement for lack of finances. Rivalries and resentments were always in play between Welles and John Houseman, producer of Federal Theatre Project 891, as Houseman frankly expressed in his memoirs: I remember listening jealously, with an ill-concealed sense of rejection, to Orson's enthusiastic comments about the piece (which I had not heard) and to his ideas for casting and staging it, which he elaborated for my annoyance. ... In the midst of our doldrums and as part of the complicated game of one-upmanship that Orson and I were constantly playing together, I suggested one night in his dressing room that if I were ever invited to hear Marc's work, I might conceivably find it suitable for production at the Maxine Elliott for Project 891. Welles arranged for Blitzstein to play his opera through for him, and Houseman was convinced that it should be presented by the Federal Theatre Project.
That view was supported at the highest level. Hallie Flanagan, national director of the Federal Theatre Project, was invited to a dinner party March 1, 1937, at the apartment Houseman shared with composer Virgil Thomson. Blitzstein auditioned his opera for Flanagan—this time supported by the strident voice of Howard da Silva, an actor Welles knew from his radio work who had also led the Federal Theatre Project in his native Cleveland.
"Marc Blitzstein sat down at the piano and played, sang, and acted," Flanagan recalled, "with the hard hypnotic drive which came to be familiar to audiences, his new opera":
It took no wizardry to see that this was not a play set to music, nor music illustrated by actors, but music + play equaling something new and better than either. This was in its percussive as well as its verbal beat Steeltown, U.S.A.: street corner, mission, lawn of Mr. Mister, drugstore, hotel lobby, faculty room, night court: America, 1937.
Blitzstein wrote his sister: "Hallie F. is nuts about the work—but just as terrified of it."
The Federal Theatre Project's greenlighting of The Cradle Will Rock coincided with one of the most violent strikes of the 1930s. In March 1937, U.S. Steel signed a historic collective bargaining agreement with the steelworkers union. Even though the Supreme Court had affirmed the constitutionality of the Wagner Act in April, smaller steel manufacturers refused to sign a similar agreement with workers, setting off a five-month strike that reached a crescendo with the 1937 Memorial Day massacre at the Republic Steel Corporation in Chicago.
Flanagan's attention was absorbed by "the thunder and lightning surrounding the project itself. For the order to cut was rumored again. The Act of Congress under which we were set up was to expire on June 30." Conservative elements in Congress already thought little of the Federal Theatre Project, and a government-sponsored pro-union Broadway show would exacerbate those resentments.
Synopsis
The story is set in Steeltown, U.S.A., on the evening of a union drive.
Moll, a young prostitute, is arrested when she refuses a proposition from a corrupt policeman. She is soon joined at night court by members of the Liberty Committee, an anti-union group mistakenly charged with pro-union activities. While the committee members call out to be freed by their patron, industrialist Mr. Mister, a derelict named Harry Druggist befriends Moll and explains that he lost his business because of Mr. Mister.
Harry relates how Mr. Mister came to dominate Steeltown: Years earlier, during World War I, Mr. Mister's wife pays the town priest, Reverend Salvation, to preach sermons supporting her husband's interests. Editor Daily, the head of the local newspaper, begins running articles attacking the steelworkers union and its leader, Larry Foreman, while also hiring the inept Junior Mister as a foreign correspondent. Gus Polack, a newly elected member of the union, is murdered in a car bombing that also kills his wife and unborn child, as well as Harry's son Stevie. Harry is pressured to keep quiet. He subsequently loses his business permit and falls into alcoholic despair.
Eventually, all of Steeltown's prominent citizens join the Liberty Committee, including Salvation, Daily, the painter Dauber, and the violinist Yasha. With their support, Mr. Mister's rule over the town seems unshakeable.
Later that night, Larry is arrested and beaten for distributing leaflets. He urges the others to join him and rise against Mr. Mister, saying that, in time, "the cradle will rock".
A flashback shows Mr. Mister persuading President Prexy of Steeltown University to threaten students with expulsion if they do not join the army. Dr. Specialist, the chairman of the Liberty Committee, is told to cover up the death of a steelworker by writing it off as a drunken accident. He does so even when the worker's sister, Ella Hammer, confronts him with the truth.
Later that evening, Mr. Mister arrives and bails out the committee members. He offers to pay off Foreman, but he refuses. As the committee jeers him, Foreman defiantly declares that Mr. Mister's power over Steeltown will soon come to an end. The curtain falls.
Musical numbers The Cradle Will Rock is presented in ten scenes. In the original Federal Theatre Project production, it was performed without an intermission. At the June 16 performance at the Venice Theatre, a 15-minute intermission was an impromptu addition following scene six, to spare Marc Blitzstein from exhaustion.
No musical numbers were listed in the program. Six songs were printed in the libretto published by Random House; those and others were titled and copyrighted by Blitzstein as individual works in 1938.
Scene Title + Performer References 1: Streetcorner "I'm Checkin' Home Now"Moll (mezzo) 2: Nightcourt 3: Mission "Mission Scene"Mrs. Mister (mezzo), Reverend Salvation (baritone) 4: Lawn of Mr. Mister's Home "Croon Spoon"Junior Mister (tenor), Sister Mister (mezzo)"The Freedom of the Press"Editor Daily (tenor), Mr. Mister (baritone)"Honolulu"Editor Daily, Junior Mister, Mr. Mister, Sister Mister 5: Drugstore "Drugstore Scene"Harry Druggist (baritone), Steve"Gus and Sadie Love Song"Gus Polock (baritone), Sadie Polock (soprano) 6: Hotellobby "The Rich"Yasha (baritone), Dauber (baritone)"Ask Us Again"Yasha, Dauber, Mrs. Mister"Art for Art's Sake"Yasha, Dauber 7: Nightcourt "Nickel Under the Foot"Moll"Leaflets"Larry Foreman (baritone)"The Cradle Will Rock"Larry Foreman 8: Facultyroom 9: Dr. Specialist's Office "Doctor and Ella"Ella Hammer (alto), Doctor Specialist"Joe Worker"Ella Hammer 10: Nightcourt "Finale"Ensemble
Original production
Federal Theatre Project
Rehearsals for The Cradle Will Rock began March 8, 1937. The 32-member orchestra, conducted by music director Lehman Engel, started rehearsals in mid-April. Members of the large company would have two months or more of rehearsal time and employment as the show was prepared—a luxury that the Federal Theatre Project, as a New Deal work-relief program, was designed to afford. Everyone, including Blitzstein, was paid $23.86 a week.
Having arranged for Howard da Silva to play labor organizer Larry Foreman, Welles cast Will Geer as capitalist boss Mr. Mister. For the role of Moll, the young woman who prostitutes herself to avoid starving, he found Olive Stanton, an actress who had appeared in the Federal Theatre Project production Class of '29 (1936). She was a daughter of Sanford E. Stanton, a political reporter and columnist for the New York Journal-American.
An ingenue in early Universal Pictures films, Peggy Coudray (Mrs. Mister) had earned praise for her comedy skills in soubrette roles in stage musicals and operettas. She had performed with Edward Arnold in vaudeville and led her own stock companies. The comic actor Hiram Sherman (Junior Mister) was a childhood friend of Welles and a veteran of his farce Horse Eats Hat. Other cast were selected for the clarity and strength of their voices, supplemented by an interracial chorus of 44 singers.