It Can't Happen Here
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 11-12-2017 Precarious Democracy: "It Can't Happen Here" as the Federal Theatre's Site of Mass Resistance Macy Donyce Jones Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Theatre History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Jones, Macy Donyce, "Precarious Democracy: "It Can't Happen Here" as the Federal Theatre's Site of Mass Resistance" (2017). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 4165. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4165 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PRECARIOUS DEMOCRACY: IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE AS THE FEDERAL THEATRE’S SITE OF MASS RESISTANCE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The School of Theatre by Macy Donyce Jones B.A., Arkansas Tech University, 2003 M.A., Louisiana Tech University, 2005 December 2017 Acknowledgements There are so many people who have helped me make this dissertation a reality. Their contributions, both material and emotional, have been invaluable and too numerous to give a full account. I am forever grateful for the friendship, advice and support of the people who have helped me navigate this project. My cohort and fellow students - Brook Hanemann, Dr. Eric Mayer-Garcia, Evleen Nasir-Richard, Katie Morris, Camilla Morrison, Rachel Aker, and Dr. Neal Hebert. You talked me through blocks over coffee and cocktails. You let me ask questions so long I eventually found the answer. I always felt like we all were building something grand together. Thank you for letting me be a part of your research as much as you are all a part of mine. Dr. Brian Stipelman provided me much needed direction when researching New Dealers and their political philosophy. Dr. Shannon Walsh has been my outside-of-committee cheerleader and writing partner. I am thankful to the archivists at the National Archives, The Library of Congress, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the Federal Theater Archives at George Mason University. Their labor and careful maintenance of the ephemera of the Federal Theatre Project has made this project possible. I could not have visited those archives where it not for generous donations from the following people: Kris and Kara Isham, Anita Brehaut, Sean Wolfe, Billie Walker, Dr. Femi Euba, Katie Elder, Scott Randolph, Erin McWilliams, Brian and Hanneke Sites, Steven Allpsach, Michelle Hightower, Jessica and Kevin Chin, Amanda Bynum, Michael Guillot, Deb Moore, Kevin Richard, Alexander Adams, Rick Blackwood, Thomas Cooper, Denise Sery, and Duranee Dodson. Through your crowd-funding support, I was able to find my way to the physical archive. ii Dr. Ardith Morris was the first person to show me the path to becoming a scholar, and the first to tell me I could walk that path. Thank you for believing in me, nurturing me, and lending me your courage. My parents, John Helms, and Jan and Rick Carlton, have been a source of constant support and encouragement in my life. They gave me a passion for performance and history and encouraged me to fly without a net, even though I know they knit one together under me. I have been blessed beyond measure to have Dr. John Fletcher as my mentor. His kindness, his generosity, his belief in me has been constant even when I had none to spare for myself. He helped to find my voice and my map when I was voiceless and without direction. Finally, I am eternally grateful to my husband, Russell Jones. You are my partner in all ways. This document is as much yours as mine. Thank you for always listening, always comforting, always putting your faith in me. “I knew all the math in the ‘verse, but your love kept me in the air when I ought have fell down.” iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………...………………………………………………...………ii Abstract………………………………………...………...…………………………………...…...v Introduction…………………………...…………………………………………………………...1 Chapter One: Naming the Threat…………………......………………………………………….22 Chapter Two: Threat of Failure..…………...……………………………………………………47 Chapter Three: Concealing the Threat…………………...…..…………………….…………….67 Chapter Four: Staging the Threat…………………...………...…………………………………97 Conclusion………………...………...……………………………………………………….…122 Bibliography…...……...………...…………………………………………………………...…130 Vita…………...………...…………………………………………………………………….…140 iv Abstract The scholarly consensus of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) is that it was a massive undertaking set to employ theatre professionals during the Great Depression. That undertaking resulted in vibrant, relevant theatre that helped to build a theatre audience across the nation. Outside of the overview-style scholarship, specialized studies have delved into the FTP as a community-building enterprise, a site of racial/ethnic study, and an essential new play creator. My scholarship fills a hole that previous FTP scholarship has left open. The FTP was a political machine engaged in producing pro-American propaganda. That aspect of production has been largely left unexamined, as has the FTP’s realpolitik strategies in advancing their political messages. I want to highlight the propaganda and the demurring, specifically in reference to It Can’t Happen Here, bringing these elements to the front of the conversation to argue for the FTP’s position as a mass demonstration against political and economic instability. In this dissertation, I argue the FTP was more than a relief agency, more than an artistic producer: it was a frontline defense against precarity. The discourse of the FTP would benefit by using precarity as a lens to view its productions and its administration. The previous conversation about the FTP has influenced my investigation by giving me a consensus narrative to compare instances that don’t fit. Throughout this study, I bring the politics of the FTP front and center to uncover how the FTP intervened against precarity in 1930s America. v Introduction Of course, it is dangerous today to talk about social and economic forces: to do plays which advocate a better life for more people is, in certain quarters, considered subversive. Well, if that be treason, make the most of it. – Hallie Flanagan1 In a 1939 speech before the National Theatre Conference, given shortly after the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was shut down, Hallie Flanagan (former FTP National Director) gave an impassioned call about the need for public theatres in the United States, calling the period between the FTP what would come next a “forced intermission.”2 Struck down by what Flanagan termed “red-baiting” on the part of Congress, the FTP holds a position in the changing times of the 1930s as both a response to and victim of the precarity of the era. The time period was marked by mass unemployment, home and farm foreclosures, racial unrest, and labor conflicts. President Franklin Roosevelt met this instability with a host of federal spending initiatives meant to counter the crisis by providing relief, employment, and infrastructure. The FTP was one of those programs, and through it the first national theatre of the United States was born. Hallie Flanagan was sworn in as National Director in August 1935, and the FTP was ready to begin its mission. Flanagan set up her national offices in Washington, D.C. and started building the only national theatre the U.S. would ever see. In its four-year existence (1935-1939) the Federal Theatre Project employed 10,000 people annually. It produced 12,000 performances, 850 of which were considered "major works”; 309 of those works were new plays. In total, the 1 Hallie Flanagan, “Theatre Intermission” National Theatre Conference Speech, November 25, 1939, box 24, Hallie Flanagan Papers, *T-Mss 1964-002, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 2 Flanagan, “Theatre Intermission.” 1 FTP reached an audience of over 25 million people in 40 states. The final cost to the federal government was $42 million. Rather than creating one theatre which would symbolically represent the entire county, Flanagan envisioned the FTP as a federation of theatres.3 Flanagan imagined the FTP working similarly to government itself; policies and procedures would be devised at the national office, and their execution would be handled by the states.4 The FTP productions spanned from classical works (Orson Welles’ Faustus in 1937), to circuses (acting legend Burt Lancaster got his start in the Circus Unit), to children’s theatre (Revolt of the Beavers in 1937), to social justice plays (One Third of the Nation in 1938). Ultimately, it would be the social justice plays, pro-union musicals, and racially integrated theatre companies which attracted critics who feared the influence of socialism in this government-run agency. As a result, the newly formed House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating the FTP in 1938. Archived testimonies reveal that under the direction of Congressman Martin Dies (D-TX) the committee accused the FTP of lewdness, waste, and using theatre to disseminate Communist propaganda.5 HUAC cut all FTP funding on June 30, 1939. The formation of the FTP was a reaction to the economic precarity of the 1930s, and within its structure it produced work which responded to that insecurity both in operations and content. In this dissertation, I focus on one of the FTP’s most significant responses to economic instability: the mass staging of It Can’t Happen Here (1936). The play was an adaptation of the popular novel by Sinclair Lewis about the fascist takeover of the U.S.