Skip to main content
By

The Cradle Will Rock  is mentioned in the opening chapter of  Bob Dylan in America.  In this chapter, Wilentz tries to capture the spirit of the Popular Front in America at the time, which many of the persons who were involved in the play were a part of, as noted in this book reference.  Marc Blitzstein originally conceived the play for the Federal Theater Project, but Hallie Flanagan pulled the plug when pressure mounted against the production.  Orson Welles and John Houseman stepped in with their own money and saved the play from obscurity.  In 1999, a movie was made that dramatized the events surrounding the play.

Comments

  1. NYT PerduOctober 7, 2010 at 6:21 AM

    Thanks so much for expanding into this subject, gintaras, but I dare not get started on the subject of Blitzstein, Houseman, Welles, Flanagan and the Federal Theater and collateral issues such as the appropriate role of gov't in funding the arts and how to get it without censorship when art criticizes gov't. itself, not to mention private patronage for the arts with its own issues as illustrated by the Diego Rivera vs. Rockefeller story Robbins tried to tell in "The Cradle Will Rock" movie, and as an aside within an aside, did I say how much I enjoyed and recommend Kingsolver's "The Lacuna"?

    Uh-oh, it seems a certain kind of free association posting is catching. I'll let up, but thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonOctober 7, 2010 at 9:11 AM

    I'll have to check out the movie, NYT. I find that era fascinating.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TripplerOctober 13, 2010 at 7:52 AM

    Sounds like a very interesting movie. I just watched a clip of it on youtube and will have to watch the rest of it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonNovember 6, 2010 at 3:01 PM

    I watched the movie last night and enjoyed it. The acting was a bit over the top at times, especially the depictions of Welles and Houseman, but I thought Tim Robbins did a great job of capturing a feeling for the era. Really liked Bill Murray's sad-faced ventriloquist. Summed up the end of Vaudeville perfectly.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsNovember 6, 2010 at 3:23 PM

    Glad you watched it, Gintaras. I re-watched it after the play was mentioned in the book and enjoyed it as much the second time as I did the first. Thought they did a nice job using the play as a backdrop to the story of the play. Entertaining polemic.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more