Evan’s Reviews > The Federal Theatre, 1935-1939: Plays, Relief, and Politics > Status Update

Wow, my hero Anthony Mann directed for them before he left for Hollywood; any good tidbits, lemme know!

So far it's mainly the bureaucracy and logistics of trying to create the theater network, how to hire overseers and actors and pay them through the WPA organs in a sensible way, and the philosophy behind creating a new type of socially relevant theater. It's all interesting stuff to me but not scintillating in a show-bizzy way quite yet. I'm OK with this as this is kind of what I wanted to read, how this thing got going and how it collapsed.

I assume you saw Tim Robbins' tribute, CRADLE WILL ROCK. And to your note, yes, a very different time. And of course all the Trumpkins of the 1930's roundly despised Roosevelt as a class traitor.

Yeah I did see that film a good while back. I know the 30s fashies aren't a big part of the narrative yet but I know they will be. They're always a boil on the ass of society.

Thanks, Evan: i too love CRADLE WILL ROCK. The danger of censorship does not come only from the fashos. The HUAC, Rockefellers, blue noses, and blue noses of all sorts always want to prune or cancel free speech.

Julio wrote: " The danger of censorship does not come only from the fashos. The HUAC, Rockefellers, blue noses, and blue noses of all sorts always want to prune or cance..."

I throw them all into the same putrid stew. The rivulet that flows from standard conservatism always flows into the river of Nazism eventually.