THE CRADLE WILL ROCK - The True Story
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- John Houseman tells the true story of opening night of Marc Blitzstein's 1937 labor musical The Cradle Will Rock, the only musical ever shut down by the government for subversive content. This video clip was an introduction to the PBS broadcast of the 1985 revival of the show, with Patti LuPone.
The story is well known, but it's great hearing Houseman tell it.
Thanks for this, great film for us today.
this is incredible!
Great story
The irony that all the actors had to defy the orders of their own union... to perform a pro-union play.
The orders came from Artists Equity. Were they a union? The fact is that some union musicians and actors obediently sat it out. I don't see any irony in this. It's sad that the unions have lost their teeth since Nixon bent over to environmental regulations and so much dirty industry has moved to Taiwan Korea Japan and China. Today the narrative from some corners makes Nixon out to have been pro labor and pro-environment. There's irony if you're digging for it.
@@yogione yes actors equity is a union. It was established in 1914 and rose to prominence in 1919.
Actually Jocko, it was their government whose orders they defied. The show was too anti-capitalist.
WHO disliked this, and WHY? Please,.. video quality? wtf
The WPA were responsible for providing a living to large numbers of artists, actors, writers, etc. No one show that could be turned into a weapon for the Republicans to shut it down was worth mounting with those results. Houseman's narrative is entirely self-serving. When he made it he was famous as a spokesman for Smith Barney claiming they and their investor clients made their money the old fashioned way "they earned it." Orson Welles was a right-wing cynic who made fun of anyone who did anything like he made his fame on in the 1930s. Marc Blitzstein was a total jerk who, when his fellow Communists were in a panic when they found Stalin had made a pact with Hitler, didn't break with the Stalinists, he anxiously phoned NYC to find out what stand he was supposed to take. The whole thing is show-biz BS. If Blitzstein had tried to do something like that under his beloved Stalin he would have been tortured and summarily executed as so many better artists were in his would-be workers paradise.