The Cradle Will Rock. Tim Robbins,
Reviewed by Peter D. Hall
Published on H-State (January, 2000)
If you haven't had the opportunity to see the in night court, waiting to be bailed out. The action new Tim Robbins movie, The Cradle Will of the show centers around Foreman showing the Rock, it is well worth the efort. It is an im‐ ways in which the respectables had prostituted portant and troubling flm about the uses and themselves to the Misters is the basic theme of the misuses of history.
The flm is not a cin‐ piece ("they won't buy our milk white bodies, so ematic version of Marc Blitzstein's wonderful we kind of sell out in some other way [...] to Mr. 1937 labor musical. Rather, it is a sort of Ragtime- Mister").
All in all, the original show was (and esque historical pastiche/docudrama about the still is) a wonderful kind of Left political cartoon, production of Cradle, the politics of with Blitzstein's wonderful music and witty lyrics. the Federal Theater Project, and the politicization
The show was supposed to be produced by of culture in late '30s NYC.
Blitzstein's Orson Welles's Mercury Theater, which at that Cradle is the story of a union organiz‐ time was working under the patronage of the Fed‐ ing drive in Steeltown, an industrial city con‐ eral Theater Project. Welles and his producer, trolled by the bloated plutocrat, Mr. Mister (who John Houseman, both appear in the flm.
For "owns steel and everything else too"). The Mister those who don't know the story, the Federal The‐ family's infuence extends through organized reli‐ ater Project, a division of the WPA, came under gion (it's the major supporter of the preaching of fre from the political right (the Hearst papers, the Reverand Salvation), the arts (Dauber the Artist Dies/House Un-American Activities Committee, and Yascha the Violinist are proteges of Mrs. Mis‐ &c.) for its experimental and frequently leftward‐ ter), medicine (Dr. Specialist is employed by Mr ly-tilted productions. The crackdown--in the form Mister's steelworks), the university (President of massive budget cuts--came on the eve of Prexy, at Mr. Mister's prompting is pushing mili‐ Cradle's opening (which also coincid‐ tary training for undergrads), and the press (Edi‐ ed with the peak of the CIO's organizing eforts tor Daily fnds that Mr. Mister is "the owner of against "Little Steel"). Needless to say, it was a po‐ your famous paper since this morning"). Those litical hot potato, particularly because, unlike oth‐ whom he can buy of, he brutalizes.
Opposed er WPA eforts, it was going to be produced on to Mr. Mister and his Liberty Committee is Larry Broadway and would, in consequence, have high Foreman, union organizer. (Mr Mister had orga‐ visibility.
On the eve of its opening, the the‐ nized the abovementioned respectables to oppose ater was padlocked--ostensibly because of agency the union. A particularly dumb cop accidently ar‐ cutbacks. Welles went ahead with the opening rests them, thinking that the are radicals). Fore‐ anyway--in another theater, with Blitzstein play‐ man and the Liberty Committee fnd themselves ing piano on a bare stage. (All the props, costumes H-Net Reviews and scores that they had originally planned to use avoid thinking about the reality of the Communist were locked up). The show became an overnight penetration of unions, universities, and the arts classic--both a theatrical and political coup.
during this period)--not to mention the murder of Cradle--the movie--tells this story, millions by Stalin.
My inclination is to peg with a number of sideplots added in, notably the Robbins as essentially apolitical and to see his story of Nelson Rockefeller and the commission‐ playing with history as a peculiarly decadent kind ing (and subsequent destruction) of the Diego of post-modern referential exercise. He does play Rivera mural at Rockefeller Center. Though really the resonances efectively--but to what end? Is he extraneous CRADLE story, it is cleverly woven telling us that politics are futile? That all artists, into the movie--and the actors playing Rivera and regardless of their professed ideals, are prosti‐ Rockefeller are wonderful. (It's also great to see tutes--if not to Mr. Mister than to Comrade Mister? the recreation of Rivera's mural, the original of
Ultimately, I wonder what people who don't which Rockefeller had destroyed with jackham‐ know the historical particularities and who don't mers!).
Much as I enjoyed the spectacle--and know anything about the original show are likely the too few and too short snatches of Blitzstein's to make of the movie.
As a pink diaper baby, I songs--, I found Robbins's political perspective grew up in the household in which Blitzstein's elusive. The movie ends in a peculiar way, moving lyrics were household anthemns, where the from the fnale of the triumphant against-all-odds Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Spanish Civil War were production of the show to a nightime view of historical touchstones as familiar as the American Times Square in the 1990s (this is shot as if one Revolution and the Civil War. EB White's famous were walking out of the 1930s theater into the New Yorker poem on the destruction 1990s Great White Way, with its huge billboards of the Rivera mural (which ends with Nelson and theater marquees all aglow).
Is this mere Rockefeller saying: "well, after all, it's *my* wall./ cleverness? Is Robbins trying to tell us some‐ We'll see if it is, said Rivera") was as familiar as thing--good or bad--about government support for the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Richard the arts? What are we supposed to make of what Jensens' forward about growing economic in‐ we know of the subsequent careers of characters equality reminds us that the issues that concerned like Blitzstein (best known today for his transla‐ the American left (and, for that matter, American tion of the Brecht/Weil Threepenny Opera and for his sad end, rendered in Tennessee dressed. But Robbins's movie, like today's NY‐ Williams's play, Suddenly Last Summer), Welles, and Houseman (you'll know him as brought up in the era of Republican Revolution the autocratic law professor in Paper and market subservience--may be incapable of Chase, if not from his many other notable grasping the dilemmas of inequality and the pos‐ achievements on stage and screen), Rivera, Rocke‐ sibilities of achieving a just society. feller. Then, of course, there are the more dis‐ turbing resonances involving the American left of the 30s and the extent to which, in its naivite, it al‐ lowed itself to be used by Stalin. The flm makes much of the fascist infuence on the American right (Hearst is shown as being on Mussolini's payroll and assorted capitalists and shown selling strategic materials to Germany and Italy). But I can't imagine that audiences in our time could 2 H-Net Reviews If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://www.h-net.org/~state Citation: Peter D. Hall. Review of The Cradle Will Rock. H-State, H-Net Reviews. January, 2000. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15101 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3