Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

“had not been taken over by the Cossacks of the WPA,” and introduced the scene and the characters.33 In the film, Houseman (Cary Elwes) does not appear here and the two introductions are reduced to a few sentences by the character playing Welles (Angus Macfadyen), who acknowledges the unusual circumstances of the performance, refers to the “sinister force at work” in the play that “frightens people in Washington,” and then ironically introduces “the monster behind The Cradle Will Rock: Mr. Marc Blitzstein.”34

Perhaps because what happened next was as dramatic as any fictional portrayal could be, the next part of the film follows life quite closely. This is how Houseman described these moments in his memoir, Run-Through:

The Cradle Will Rock started cold, without an overture. A short vamp that sounded harsh and tinny on Jean Rosenthal’s rented, untuned upright, and Marc’s voice, clipped, precise and high-pitched: “A Street corner—Steeltown, U.S.A.” Then, the Moll’s opening lyrics: [first three lines]. It was a few seconds before we realized that to Marc’s strained tenor another voice—a faint, wavering soprano—had been added. It was not clear at first where it came from, as the two voices continued together for a few lines—[next three lines of lyrics]. Then, hearing the words taken out of his mouth, Marc paused, and at that moment the spotlight moved off the stage, past the proscenium arch into the house, and came to rest on the lower left box where a thin girl in a green dress with dyed red hair was standing, glassy-eyed, stiff with fear, only half audible at first in the huge theatre but gathering strength with every note.35

Houseman continues, relating that at the conclusion of the Moll’s song and Blitzstein’s introductory “Enter Gent,” “a young man with a long nose rose from a seat somewhere in the front section of the orchestra and addressed the girl in green in the stage box.”36 The producer does not identify the man as John Adair. This may be because the man cast as the Gent was actually George Fairchild; Adair played the role of the Druggist, a character who does not appear in the film. In the film, Blitzstein introduces the Gent with the direction, “Enter a well-dressed gentleman,” and after a shot of Adair leavingthe theater, adds “on the make.” When there is no response, he then interjects, “Enter me.” Adair’s film departure follows an invented but nonetheless heated disagreement between Olive and Adair over whether she should challenge the actors’ union which, acting on federal instructions, forbade the actors to participate onstage in this production. When the Olive of the film sang her song, she was indeed once again on the street where we saw her in the opening scene, although now she is on the street in a performance as well as in real life. Adair’s departure from the theater confirmed his threat that if she defied the union she would have to sleep somewhere else.

His dramatic exit stands as shorthand for what happened with the other characters that evening. According to Blitzstein biographer Eric A. Gordon, the real Adair, described by cast member Will Geer as a “rather reactionary young man,” did not show up at all that night. Reverend Salvation, who was not, as in the film, played by the African-American actor Canada Lee, also did not sing.37 Houseman recalled that “Blitzstein played half a dozen roles [Gordon says eight roles] that night, to cover for those who ‘had not wished to take their lives, or rather, their living wage, into their hands.’ Other replacements were made spontaneously, on the spot.”38

The film treats a multitude of weighty political topics, including the conflict between unionism and management and communism and fascism. But the main issue is the complex relationships between art, artists, politics, and political theater. Although the political vantage point of the film leans leftward, it does make some effort to present other approaches to these issues. Just as Cradle continues to generate strong critical reactions pro and con, the film inspired a similarly wide span of responses ranging from positive reviews in the New York Times, New Yorker, and National Review to a spirited, unequivocally hostile attack by Terry Teachout in Commentary, a periodical with strong anti-communist roots.39 At the conclusion of his indictment of Robbins and Blitzstein, Teachout goes as far as to forge a link between this pair of creators and the evils of Stalinism:

Evidently, in Robbins’s moral calculus, prostituting one’s art in the name of the foremost mass murderer of modern times does not in the least derogate from one’s idealism and courage, any more than utter ignorance of the crosscurrents of cultural politics in the 30’s disqualifies one from making a relentlessly preachy movie about that decade’s complex history.40

Although the music of Cradle serves as a backdrop rather than the main event, surprisingly few songs from the musical go entirely unheard in Robbins’s film. And during the long credits, the soundtrack returns once again to “Nickel under the Foot,” sung by Polly Jean Harvey and Bob Ellis, followed by a charming rendition of “Croon-Spoon,” unheard in the film, sung by Eddie Vedder (the lead singer of the Pacific Northwest band Pearl Jam) and Susan Sarandon (who in the film played Mussolini’s former mistress Margherita Sarfatti). At the end of the credits the last sound we hear is the bitter refrain of “Art for Art’s Sake.” It is not necessary to agree with Blitzstein or Robbins to be fascinated by their portrayals of an American world roiled by the economic and political crises of the 1930s, so similar in some ways to our own time.

Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus

Lady in the Dark (1944)

Unfortunately, neither the film version of Lady in the Dark (Paramount 1944) nor that of One Touch of Venus (Universal 1948) did much to maintain the short-lived legacy of these two major contemporary Broadway successes. While both films preserved the basic plot structure, the scores in each case were severely truncated.

To compensate for