Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane

by McGilligan, Patrick

  Orson had to learn the music himself before gradually taking over the blocking and performances. “He never tired of going over the smallest details a hundred times in order to have it precisely as he wished it,” remembered Lehman Engel, the arranger and conductor for The Second Hurricane and now The Cradle Will Rock. “He would start at ten in the morning and not leave the theatre. He might dismiss his cast at four the next morning, but when we would return at noon, we would find Orson sleeping in a theatre seat.”

  For weeks, Welles and Houseman refused to commit to a firm schedule for The Cradle Will Rock. Rehearsals were ongoing, and Faustus was still drawing overflow crowds. But in the second week of May the partners announced their timetable: on May 22, Faustus would shut down for several weeks while Cradle moved into the Maxine Elliott Theatre, giving the cast and crew a brief window to rehearse with the extravagant sets, elaborate lighting, and full orchestra. The pro-labor musical would open “in about four weeks, play consecutively for a week or two, and then be joined by Dr. Faustus in repertory,” according to the New York Times.26

  The production was still rife with challenges—everyone involved was adjusting to Orson’s huge sliding scenery and a full orchestra—but as it settled into the theater, Cradle slowly began to shape up.

  Orson’s unproduced screenplay for a film about the staging of The Cradle Will Rock should not be confused with Cradle Will Rock, a 1999 film dramatizing the same events, based on a later script by writer-director Tim Robbins. The Robbins film re-creates the era from a fondly left-wing point of view, juxtaposing the desperation and suffering of the poor with the smugness of the wealthy in their mansions. The film imagines the involvement of certain famous people of the era, including the painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the wealthy young Nelson Rockefeller, and the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. There is also a key role for the character of Hallie Flanagan, played by Cherry Jones, but the film dwells far more on political camps inside the New York theater world than on Orson Welles, portrayed rather flippantly by Angus Macfayden as a creative berserker.

  Welles’s own unproduced script offered a more generous portrait of his younger self as a man whose faults might be pardonable given the circumstances. “To those who may find the character of Orson Welles a rather outrageous improvement on the original,” Welles wrote for his own intended voice-over, “the director of this film would like to make it clear that this is no accident.”

  Welles began his script with a narration that frames the story in the context of the Great Depression and the Works Project Administration: “There exists a real treasury of PHOTOGRAPHS recording the desolation, anguish and the curious beauty of Americans standing up straight in the midst of that long storm we remember as the years of our Great Depression,” Welles wrote. “The MAIN TITLES . . . and the visual background of most of the OPENING NARRATION will feature a significant selection of these photos.” After that, however, Washington politics would be a mere backdrop to his more tightly framed story, referenced only in the character orson’s gibe about the “little gang of Neanderthals” in Congress who were trying to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt’s public assistance initiatives.

  In truth, politics occupied center stage in that spring of 1937. Two years earlier, the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, had guaranteed the right of private sector workers to organize. By the time The Cradle Will Rock took over the Maxine Elliott, the right to unionize was still deeply embattled across the United States, however.

  Sit-down strikes at assembly and supply plants swept the automobile industry in the winter and spring of 1937, frequently devolving into picket-line standoffs between striking workers and scabs. Clashes between unionists and police often led to riots, arrests, and injuries. A similar wave of job actions struck the steel industry. The decade-long effort to organize miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, reached a peak of intimidation and terrorism.

  Some major companies surrendered to organized labor and signed union contracts, but others refused. In late May, the Ford Motor Company’s guards beat the United Auto Workers’ organizers (including leader Walter Reuther) on a pedestrian overpass at the River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. After smaller companies like Republic Steel refused to follow the lead of U.S. Steel and sign a pact with the union, the “Little Steel” strike on Memorial Day ended in violence, as Chicago police shot and killed ten unarmed sympathizers and injured many others.

  Adding fuel to the labor movement was the emergence of the Committee for Industrial Organization, or CIO (later renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations), a breakaway faction of the more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL). Aligned with the New Deal, the CIO led militant strikes and engaged in guerrilla warfare in a campaign to assume leadership of the movement. The specter of American communism was everywhere; conservative businessmen and politicians routinely referred to the CIO as “a hotbed of communism.” Congressional enemies of the New Deal routinely leveled the same charge at the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the umbrella agency under which the Federal Theatre Project was chartered.

  Among those clashing over union tactics and goals were the members of Actors Equity. The union was nominally affiliated with the AFL, but many of the actors in the Federal Theatre Project were resolute left-wing activists who sought a CIO takeover of Equity.

  By the spring of 1937, the WPA had been weakened by sustained assaults on its existence from Republican and southern Democratic congressmen. The agency’s budget was a hostage in the annual confrontation between the WPA’s architect Harry Hopkins, who was FDR’s close adviser, and the congressional opposition. One public misstep—such as a federally sponsored militant play waving a pro-union flag—could sound the death knell.

  On May 27, three weeks before the first scheduled public previews of The Cradle Will Rock, WPA employees in New York joined a citywide work stoppage protesting the impending relief cuts. The CIO-style sit-down tactics quickly spread to theaters across the country; audiences would join hands with Federal Theatre Project actors after the curtain fell on a show. Internally, the Project was divided about how to respond to the actions that incensed opposition legislators.

  Acutely aware of the charged atmosphere—and sensitive about the fact that she’d been forced to cancel earlier politically controversial plays—Federal Theatre Project head Hallie Flanagan asked Lawrence Morris from the WPA’s Washington headquarters to make an assessment of Project 891’s forthcoming proudly left-wing musical. After viewing an early June run-through, Morris reported back: Cradle might inflame the WPA’s foes, but the production was “magnificent.”

  All of this came to a head when Flanagan received a blunt directive from Washington on Friday, June 11. Finally yielding to congressional pressure, the WPA announced a prospective 25 percent cut across the board for all arts projects, including all federally funded visual artists, writers, musicians, performers, and stage personnel. At least 1,700 Federal Theatre Project workers would have to be dropped from New York’s payrolls by July 15, Flanagan announced to the press. “Amateurs Will Be First to Go,” read a subhead in the New York Times. New York artists responded by announcing a flurry of sit-ins and work stoppages; and theater folk were among the most infuriated and determined protesters. Under orders from Washington, Flanagan directed New York arts project officials to halt the opening of any new plays, musical events, or art gallery shows before July 1, the first day of the next fiscal cycle.

  The first public preview of The Cradle Will Rock had been scheduled for Wednesday, June 16. Welles and Houseman pushed ahead with an invitation-only dress rehearsal two nights before. The turnout included show business royalty such as Arthur Hopkins, the dean of New York producers (who was courting Orson about staging a Broadway production of King Lear); and George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the hit playwriting team—along with left-wing luminaries such as V. J. Jerome, the cultural commissar of the Communist Party U.S.A.

  While the invitation-only
preview of Cradle was a bit of a bumpy ride, the crowd of theater enthusiasts and political sympathizers loved the show’s militant message and its rousing spirit. Because of what happened next, this first preview audience and a second crowd who watched a smoother performance the following night were the only people “that ever saw and heard Marc’s work performed as he wrote it,” as Houseman wrote later.

  Welles later claimed that until June 15, the day of the second preview, he had not been apprised of the specifics of Flanagan’s prohibition of new openings (“although he had certainly heard rumors,” historian Barry B. Witham surmised). Orson and Houseman requested an exemption for one production only, to permit Cradle to keep its official opening date. Flanagan was on their side, but it was not her decision, and she could not persuade WPA higher-ups to grant the exemption. Flanagan offered to travel with Welles and Houseman to Washington to plead the case for Cradle, to Harry Hopkins himself if necessary.

  On the morning of June 16, just a few hours before their first scheduled preview for the general public, Welles and Houseman arrived at the Maxine Elliott to find a dozen uniformed federal guards standing in front of padlocked doors. All the costumes, scenery, and other equipment had been confiscated as U.S. government property. A sign was hung on the box-office: “No Show Tonight.” Cradle had been closed before it could open.

  Suddenly, the Project 891 partners found themselves in a maelstrom not of their own making. That evening’s performance had been sold out in advance to boosters of the progressive Downtown Music School, where Marc Blitzstein taught classes. For weeks ahead, the other dates had been sold out to left-wing groups that were using Cradle as a fund-raiser. Yet the partners were legally prevented from raising the curtain.

  A small group of key Project 891 players, including Welles, Houseman, Blitzstein, conductor Lehman Engel, and lighting designer Abe Feder, were allowed to enter the Maxine Elliott building, and they congregated glumly in the basement’s pink powder room to weigh their options. Most of them stayed all day, downing coffee and sandwiches supplied by the resourceful Augusta Weissberger.

  All of them, including Houseman, looked to Orson for leadership. “Orson had been inclined to obey” the WPA order not to open Cradle on June 16, according to Barbara Leaming, until “the sealing off of the theater changed his mind.” Now he was furious, and he forged a common resolve with his colleagues in the theater basement. “If they hadn’t padlocked the theater, I would never have taken that strong a position,” Welles told Leaming. “The padlock was an insult. That’s what unified everybody.”

  Anxious to keep the show in production, the partners called attorney Arnold Weissberger for advice. He told them they had one option: find a theater that wasn’t under a federally funded lease. With that, Orson’s mind was made up. They would find a theater, he declared, and, “We will have our premiere tonight!” That amazing confidence, that “irrepressible energy and lightning drive,” as Blitzstein put it, galvanized the group, keeping their hopes alive throughout the long day.

  They telephoned all the influential people they knew, in both New York and Washington, pleading for support. They spoke to critics and newsmen, insisting that the show would go on. They smuggled in a theater broker with a list of prospective venues and started reaching out to other theaters. The Empire? No, it was in mothballs. The Guild? The floor was torn up for repainting. The National? Too expensive. The theater would have to be large enough to accommodate all the advance ticket holders. They considered nightclubs, ballrooms, living rooms. The hours dragged by; hopes dwindled, frustrations mounted.

  Finding a theater wasn’t the only hurdle. The orchestra musicians were all members of the AFL-affiliated musicians’ union, and the AFL informed Lehman Engel, the conductor of the show, that it would prohibit the musicians from playing in a non-WPA theater unless they received full Broadway salaries. Likewise, Actors Equity, also affiliated with the AFL, told the partners that its union members would not be allowed to take the stage in a different theater, because the U.S. government had the same right to postpone an opening as any legitimate producer. Fewer than half the cast members belonged to Equity, but those who did were “the important ones,” Houseman wrote.

  The amateur cast members—and most of the large cast and chorus were amateurs—depended the most on their WPA paychecks. If these amateurs took the stage in any theater besides the Maxine Elliott, their WPA paychecks were endangered.

  This was one of Orson’s finest hours. Inspired by the crisis, he sacrificed himself first. Forget the extravagant sets and costumes, Orson told his team—forget all those velour portals and sliding glass-bottomed fluorescent platforms he’d fought so hard to build for the show. Forget the union actors and musicians, for that matter: If the union prevented them from performing, Blitzstein could play the piano and perform a one-man version of Cradle from a bare stage, Orson declared. But they still didn’t have a stage, or even a piano. Houseman sent Jean Rosenthal, who had joined Project 891 after working as technical director on Leslie Howard’s Hamlet, to rent a cheap piano for the day, then load it onto a truck and keep it circling in midtown until they’d secured a theater. An unsung heroine of the day, Rosenthal made it happen, at a cost of $10 for the piano, $5 for the truck.

  Around six o’clock, Archibald MacLeish joined the powder room cabal. He had tried to reach Harry Hopkins at the White House, but Hopkins would not rescue them. Blitzstein was at the end of his rope. “Marc’s despair at this point was ghastly to behold,” reported Houseman. “The final, fatal blows had been dealt him by those very unions in whose defense the piece had been written,” which were refusing to allow the musicians and actors to perform.

  The School of Music, which held the biggest block of tickets for the night’s preview, phoned to ask if the show really would go on. “Yes!” boomed Orson, rallying everyone’s spirits. “Where?” the caller demanded to know. “Place to be determined later!” Houseman cried.

  A crowd of reporters, cast members, and onlookers milled outside, waiting for news. Rumors had spread that a showdown was brewing at the Maxine Elliott, and left-wing activists turned up to glare at the guards and pass out leaflets. At around 7 P.M., without any solution in sight, Welles and Houseman burst through the stage door and headed out front to reassure people.

  “Somewhere! Somehow!”

  Orson introduced Howard Da Silva, Will Geer, and Chubby Sherman, who teased the outside crowd with highlights from the show—Sherman belting out “I Wanna Go Ter Honolulu,” Da Silva and Geer trading tirades about the war between labor and capital.

  Returning to the powder room, Welles and Houseman were confronted by the excited theater broker, who had found just what they were looking for: the Venice Theatre, twenty-one blocks north on Fifty-Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue. Bigger than the Maxine Elliott, with upwards of 1,700 seats, the Venice had housed major Broadway musicals in its prime, but nowadays it was vacant except on Sundays, when it was used by an Italian drama club. They could have it for $100.

  Acting with “ingenuity, speed and daring,” Jean Rosenthal recalled, Orson summoned the performers, crew, and musicians to a quick powwow backstage, telling everyone that he and the other key production personnel were on their way to the Venice. The curtain would rise at 9 P.M. “You may not appear onstage,” he reminded the WPA actors, “but there is nothing to prevent you from buying your way into whatever theatre we find, and then why not get up from your seats, as first-class American citizens, and speak your piece when your cue comes?”

  Minutes later, the partners emerged from the stage door to speak to the waiting throng, now larger than the Maxine Elliott could have held. Houseman nervously deferred to Orson, who extemporized with fluency and aplomb—his words so beautifully attuned to the moment that they might have come from a polished screenplay.

  Forty years later, Welles wrote down an approximation of just what he might have said:

  ORSON

  Thanks for your patience. And now we’re going to ask y
ou to participate in something that I don’t think has happened in two thousand and more years since people have been going to the theater.

  (Low murmur of interest.)

  What we propose (with your consent) is to move an entire play with its audience on its opening night from this theater to another theatre—twenty blocks away.

  (Surprised and bewildered reaction.)

  If you’re prepared to make that journey—let’s call it a pilgrimage—you’re going to the Venice Theatre between 58th and 59th on Seventh Avenue. But those who think this whole business is as silly as it sounds can have their money cheerfully refunded at the box-office. The rest can help to make a little history.

  The backstage principals all jumped into waiting cars and taxis to head uptown. (Later accounts disagree as to who rode in what vehicle: in his unproduced screenplay, Orson said he rode in a cab with Abe Feder, Lehman Engel, and stage manager Teddy Thomas; Houseman, ever the aristocrat, claimed that he, Welles, and MacLeish were chauffeured there in a white Nash.) The sidewalk crowd streamed north on foot—if not actually marching as though in a parade, as happens with pardonable dramatic license in Tim Robbins’s film.

  The hour or so it took for the audience to reach the Venice gave Jean Rosenthal enough time to get the imperfectly tuned upright unloaded from the circling truck and installed at center stage. Feder had time to fiddle with the single spotlight he would deploy for the one-man show. Lehman Engel had time to consult with the dazed Marc Blitzstein. Orson took the composer aside, whispering to him, coaxing a laugh out of Blitzstein between bouts of shouting and pointing and frenetic last-minute decision making.

  In Welles’s unproduced script, Chubby Sherman draws Orson aside to ask, “Suppose it doesn’t work? Suppose it’s a mess?”