The Cradle Will Rock
Blitzstein

Set in fictional Steeltown, USA in the 1930s, Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock depicts a group of professionals dubbed the “Liberty Committee” working to thwart steelworkers’ union activity. The Liberty Committee mistakenly gets arrested at a union protest, and in jail, an incarcerated pharmacist explains to a prostitute how each member of the committee is connected to the local steel tycoon, Mr. Mister. When Mr. Mister finally arrives at the jail to bail the committee out, he comes face to face with Larry Foreman, the union organizer. He tries to convince Larry to join the Liberty Committee, but Larry refuses and doubles down on his commitment to rock the so-called “cradle of liberty” and bring justice to workers. Here’s Howard da Silva, who originated the role of Larry Foreman, discussing the show and its message with James Macandrew on CBS’s Camera Three.

The Cradle Will Rock can certainly be called a forerunner of the American musical theatre. Its form (“a play in music”) combines short dialogue scenes with musical numbers that draw from popular styles such as children’s tunes and jazz. The performance styles vary too, from the broad, presentational strokes of vaudeville to scenes more akin to American Realism. Here’s how the cast of Classic Stage Company’s 2019 off-Broadway revival describes the music of The Cradle Will Rock.

Blitzstein, along with director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman, first attempted to stage the opera through the Federal Theatre Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal aimed at providing work and relief for unemployed theatre artists during the Great Depression. Everyone involved in the production, no matter their role, earned $28 per week. Ironically, the FTP shuttered the production just days before its opening night due to the opera’s anti-capitalist slant. With military intervention, the U.S. government closed the Maxine Elliott’s Theatre’s box office and barred access to the production’s costumes and sets.

Welles was able to acquire another venue: the Venice Theatre, a Broadway house some 20 blocks north of the theater. In another ironic twist, Actors’ Equity forbade the performers from taking the stage at any other theater. As for the musicians, their union ruled that only a “concert version” with musicians on stage would pass muster. Welles’ solution was to put Blitzstein on stage to play the accompaniment on a piano and have the actors perform from the house – not on the stage.

On the day of the premiere, the company announced the venue change to the crowd gathered around the theater. The audience, traveling by foot, gathered more curious passersby, and all together they more than filled the house (doubling or, by some accounts, tripling in number). Blitzstein played the intro and began to sing, but soon heard the singers from the house. Most of the singers had purchased a ticket and joined the audience. Blitzstein recalls playing about 8 parts himself that night, saying, “Some of the actors had not wished to take their lives – or rather, their living wage – into their hands.” Lit by a single spotlight, the singers, Blitzstein, and an accordion player from the original orchestra performed the entire opera.

The opera was an instant smash. The crowd’s standing ovation ran so long that the stagehands charged the company overtime. It played for 10 days to packed houses at the Venice Theater before returning to its original venue, Maxine Elliott’s Theatre. The Federal Theatre Project fired Welles and Houseman for insubordination, which led them to establish their own company, Mercury Theatre. The opera was not produced with its full orchestrations until ten years later by Leonard Bernstein and the City Symphony. This revival then transferred to Broadway.

Finding a producer for the premiere was difficult due to its subject matter. Blitzstein said, “It was considered hot stuff politically since it dealt with the rising struggle for unionism in America, specifically in the steel industry, at a time when the combine known as ‘Little Steel’ was all over the newspapers with its union problems.” Though America’s largest steel producer U.S. Steel signed a union agreement in March 1937, its smaller competitors, known together as Little Steel, held out on a similar deal that would guarantee an 8-hour work day, 40-hour work week, $5 minimum wage per day, health and safety standards, and other rights. The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) authorized a strike, and 67,000 workers walked off the job. Demonstrations became commonplace at mills in Illinois and Ohio, sometimes turning violent at the hands of police and the National Guard. In Chicago, ten protesters were killed by police at a Republic Steel plant in what became known as the “Memorial Day Massacre.” 

According to Bloomberg Law, American unions carried out 314 strikes in 2022, an increase of 91% from 2021. Starbucks, which saw over 200 locations unionize in the span of 8 months between 2021 and 2022, faced the most strikes at 107. The other two-thirds of strikes were spread across a variety of industries, such as education, manufacturing, and health care. 2023 started with a major healthcare strike as over 7,000 New York City nurses fought for more staffing and better pay; more recently, screenwriters and film actors both ended months-long strikes regarding streaming residuals and the use of artificial intelligence.

Beyond the recent rise in union activity, Americans have grown more aware – if not more suspicious – of undue corporate influence in areas of public life. Consider, for example, the concerns over Jeff Bezos’s purchase of The Washington Post; or pending antitrust litigation against RealPage, a property management software company that allegedly encouraged collusion among landlords to artificially inflate rent prices across the country. Blitzstein’s opera clearly illustrates the ramifications of said corporate influence, with nearly each scene dedicated to a different aspect of daily life, including religion, education, and, yes, even the arts.

“Marc Blitzstein Discusses The Cradle Will Rock” Spoken Arts album 717, 1956; included on Opera Saratoga’s recording (2017)

• Written in 5 weeks 1936

• Opening June 1937 “provided one of the most curious and, I am informed, spectacular evenings in the history of American theatre”

• Orson Welles 21 y.o. when Blitzstein first played it for him – loved it, wanted to do the staging

• Many producers dropped it because “it was considered hot stuff politically since it dealt with the rising struggle for unionism in America, specifically in the steel industry, at a time when the combine known as Little Steel was all over the newspapers with its union problems.”

• Federal Theatre Project

  • Maxine Elliott Theatre

  • Welles, Houseman produced

  • All involved earned $28 a week, government subsidized

  • Unlimited time to prepare production

  • “Rehearsals moved toward a state of perfection rarely attained in our present-day theatre.” (when is present-day?)

  • Unionism and prostitution

    • Literal (Moll) and “the sellout of one’s profession, one’s talents, one’s dignity and integrity, at the hands of big business or the powers that be”

  • Final dress rehearsal was only full performance as written

    • Elites attended

  • DC didn’t send telegram allowing premiere to go on

    • Military appeared, told box office to turn away patrons, put costumes and sets out of reach

• Welles moved premiere to Venice Theater (New Century) 58th St and 7th Ave

  • Actors’ Equity lied and said actors could not perform elsewhere without risking losing membership

    • Buy a ticket, perform from the audience

  • Local musicians union said moving orchestra to another theater pit would put it in competition with Broadway musicals, had to increase number of musicians

    • BUT call it a “concert,” put musicians on stage, ok

    • Welles/Houseman said they could only afford one musician – Blitzstein on the piano

    • Borrowed upright piano from a landlady downtown

  • Welles sent 2 actors to sing outside to keep audience busy while they tried to find a venue 

  • Taxis carrying creative team and reporters, audience traveled on foot

  • Audience doubled from <1000

  • Pulled front off piano – needed more sound in big house; spotlight for it

  • Full house, side-aisles lined with reporters and cameramen

  • Produced John Houseman, directed by Welles, lit by Abe Fader, conducted by Lehman Engle (smuggled score out of original theater)

  • Blitzstein didn’t know where actors were in the audience – if they were even there

  • Audience: “As the play progressed, they turned, as at a tennis match, from one actor to another, while Fader caught as many performers as he could with his spotlight, and musical conversations took place across the house.”

  • “The cast had studied the work so thoroughly, they could’ve done it in their sleep, and this was much simpler.”

  • “I did about 8 parts myself that night. Some of the actors had not wished to take their lives – or rather, their living wage – into their hands.”

  • Accordion player from orchestra joined in from house

  • “Wonderful accidents of geography” – Mrs. Mister handing imaginary donation from balcony front box to Reverend downstairs mid-aisle

  • “The play itself held up astonishingly under this brutal and unpredictable man-handling.”

  • Poet Archibald MacLeish made a speech afterwards

    • “A new day had dawned in the theater. The stagnant and supine audience had been killed forever.” (said backstage)

    • “We had witnessed an historical event.”

• Theatre managers rushed and begged to put on Broadway in exact form

• Houseman and Welles put it on at Mercury, rave reviews

• ~25 productions US and England

• 1947 Bernstein and City Symphony

  • “Actors seated visibly in rows all through performance”

  • With orchestra, conducted by Bernstein, playing original orchestrations

  • Transferred to Broadway 2nd time, 2 successive producers

Houseman’s take on the same events (https://youtu.be/_LDb0fn4Uek)

• Venice Theater $100 rental (1st night?)

• About 21 city blocks from Maxine Elliott to Venice Theater

• “Bring a friend” – audience more than tripled

• Stagehands charged overtime because applause was so long

• Played for 10 days to packed houses, returned to Maxine Elliott

• Houseman and Welles fired for insubordination

  • Founded Mercury Theatre