All language subtitles for The New Deal for Artists (Wieland Schulz-Keil, 1976)

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- I think one of the
horrors of our society,

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American society, maybe
it's true of others

but I know of this country,

is this break with the past,
a lack of continuity.

Young people know
nothing of the past.

For that matter, even people
who lived in the past have
forgotten it. .

and I think the New Deal,

The Arts Project, is
a good case in point.

It's as though it never existed!

Not even in history books, but
not in memories of people!

♪ (dramatic drum music)

- [Orson Welles] The 21st
of October, 1929. .

It was not just Variety

that gave the market
crash a bad notice.

Many had idolized
Herbert Hoover.

Only a year before
he had said:

"We in America today are
nearer to the final triumph

over poverty than ever before
in the history of any land. "

By 1931, 12 million
Americans were out of work

and farm prices hit bottom.

♪ (banjo music)

The Bonus Army:

thousands of angry World
War I veterans marched

on Washington, and many
spoke openly of revolution.

Federal troops under General
MacArthur attacked the veterans.

Still undaunted, Hoover
kept telling the country

that prosperity was
just around the corner.

- ♪ [singer] Which
side are you on,

♪ Which side are you on?

♪ Which side are you on, boys,

♪ Which side are you on?

♪ (banjo music)

♪ (upbeat music)

- [Orson Welles] In 1932, the
hero of the hour arrived:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The popular governor of
New York would be president

of the United States
for the next 13 years.

He brought new enthusiasm,

a New Deal.

- So first of all. .

let me assert my firm belief

that the only thing
we have to fear is. .

fear itself!

♪ (upbeat music)

- [Orson Welles] Roosevelt
didn't offer only rhetoric,

he offered realities.

The New Deal provided
jobs for close to 1/3

of the nation's labor force.

Public works like
highways, dams,

parks, and public housing. .

♪ (upbeat Swing music)

These projects also
had a larger purpose.

The New Deal promised
to restore meaning

to the lives of millions.

♪ (upbeat Swing music)

The WPA did not
just help workers,

it also puts unemployed
artists to work.

Jobs were created for
thousands of musicians,

painters, actors, dancers,
and photographers.

♪ (upbeat Swing music)

For $23. 86 a week,

the standard WPA compensation,

they gave the country an
unprecedented artistic
Renaissance.

- The New Deal had
this wonderful idea,

not just about theatre. It
extended to all professions;

that it was better to take
people off the relief rolls,

let's say, to give them
a small check each week

to keep them alive. .

rather than do that, it was
better to put them to work,

even though receiving
the same amount of money

and give them some self-respect

that they were earning
this money instead

of just receiving it as charity.

♪ (indistinct singing)

- [Orson Welles] In
the performing arts,

jobs were provided
for playwrights,

directors and actors, by the
Federal Theater Project.

♪ (indistinct singing)

The Federal Writers'
Project sent hundreds

of writers to talk to
people all over the country.

They found a vision
of a better world

in the lives of ordinary people.

- It gave the writer a
sense of his own country

and of his immediate
environment.

He had to explore that
environment in order

to produce the books

that the Writers'
Project was preparing.

- You went to the small
towns and called a meeting

in the city hall and asked
them what their history was.

No one had ever asked
them before, probably, ever.

"And what is your history?"

And they came in
hoards to tell us.

- [Orson Welles] Such experiences
were not only recorded

by writers, but also by some
of the country's leading
photographers.

They were hired by the Farm
Security Administration

to visually document
the devastating effects

of the depression
on rural America.

- There were some of us,
including President Roosevelt,

who realized that we were
passing through a time

which we hoped would never be
repeated in American history. .

and to have a record of
it seemed very important
at the time.

- There was a need to produce
a collection of photographs

that would show
the American people

the terrible
conditions under which

farm people lived:
the rural poverty,

the migrant labor conditions,

the environmental problems
such as the Dust Bowl,

and the great drought that
took place in those years,

and the general effects
of the Great Depression.

And there was a need to
explain these problems as well

as to justify the programs

that Roosevelt and
Tugwell had developed

to alleviate these situations.

- Before the '30s, the United
States was an unknown island

so far as art is concerned.
Certainly, we had the eight. .

We had a rather nice tradition
of early American art,

but it was not a world shaker,

and after the '30s, just
because every Tom, Dick,

and Harry was able to make
a good or a bad painting,

and so many people
got their training,

so many different points
of view were encouraged.

They didn't ask whether
you painted this way

or whether you painted
that way, they asked

whether you needed
help or wanted help.

- [Orson Welles] Murals, posters
and paintings by thousands

of New Deal artists were
mounted in public buildings,

and public places.

In the past,

artists had been
patronized by kings,

bishops, and
wealthy individuals.

In this country too,

the arts had to rely
on private benefactors.

Government sponsorship
of the arts

in the '30s was a unique
experiment in American history.

Of course, government
sponsorship has
its shortcomings.

Often the bureaucracy
may feel entitled

to its own ideas about art
and sometimes artists believed

that they should only convey
social and political messages.

In both cases, art can become
boring and propagandistic.

When government
sponsors the arts,

success or failure
largely depends

on the individual
administrators involved.

WPA appointments were good ones.

Most often than not,
administrators took
the artist's side

and thank God,

protected them from
government interference.

The Federal Theatre was led

by an energetic young
woman, Hallie Flanagan.

She'd been director of
the theatre workshop

at Vassar College and was
well known as the author

of a travel report
on her experience

with the avant-garde
theatres in Europe

and in the Soviet Union.

She was concerned with
new forms of theatre,

and with reaching audiences
who had never seen
live theatre before.

- It was the first
time, and in many ways,

the only time that I knew of. .

a federally sponsored theatre

that regarded theatre
as a communication,

and therefore a
social responsibility.

- We're having a book burning
on the green tomorrow night.

- A what?

- We're going to burn up all
this subversive literature.

A lot of smutty stuff that's
trumpin' public knowledge.

Have you got any objection?

- Well, you won't find
any subversive books here!

- Ohhh. .

Now, how about this fella?

Now this fella, Charles
Dickens. . wasn't he a communist?

- The line that I always quote

because I think it's the best
line that's ever been written

on the subject was from
Brecht's "Galileo" when he said,

"A man cannot un-see
what he's seen. "

And a lot of people with a very
strong morality of some sort

which was inculcated. . and
a part of the tradition. .

saw things in the late
'20s and the early '30s

that they could not un-see.

- [Orson Welles] One of
the things the Federal
Theatre people

could not un-see was the plight

of minorities in
American society.

For the first time
in American history,

the Federal Theatre offered
black actors real opportunities.

The first plays by and for
blacks were done in Harlem

at the new Lafayette
Theatre under the direction

of the actress, Rose McClendon,

and the young producer,
John Houseman.

- The question was what
kind of, just artistically,

what kind of shows
should you do?

Because there were those
who said we should go back

and do the old stock
company thing of using

black actors to play in
successful white plays.

I was against that and
the community generally

had turned now to being
against that sort of thing.

There were those who had great
ambitions for the theatre,

there were those who

felt the theatre should
concern itself entirely

with contemporary and
indigenous problems, and so on.

I did a lot of thinking and
talking to a lot of people,

and I finally came
to the decision

with. . this advice that I got,

that the only way to run it was

to cut the theatre
into two halves.

- [Orson Welles] One group was
formed to produce dramas

of contemporary black life.

It was led by Carlton Moss.

- Well, we opened that theatre,

the Federal Theatre,
the Lafayette section,

the Lafayette Theatre with
"Walk Together Children,"

which as I said,

was a play that did not
challenge the status quo.

It was based on the scripture,

"The Meek Shall
Inherit the Earth. "

That was its message
that eventually

the bad people can be
persuaded to be good people. .

if everybody follows
the scripture.

- Then, simultaneously
with this,

but it took longer to get going,

we decided that we would
treat the black actors simply

as an actor, and that we
would do great plays.

We would do classics,
we would do any kind
of play we wanted

and we would simply not
admit that there was any. .

question of color
one way or the other.

And obviously, the first
playwright with whom one

should try this experiment is
obviously William Shakespeare.

I had formed a great
friendship with Orson Wells,

who was then only 19 years old,

but I had this total conviction
that he was a genius.

I asked him to try his hand

at directing a Shakespearian
play with black actors,

and he was enormously
enthusiastic.

And immediately, the parallel
between Macbeth and Scotland

in the 13th Century, and the

history of Christophe in Haiti,

which was again, the rise
of a soldier who becomes
a dictator,

and finally ends
in a bloodbath. .

that seemed a very interesting
and close parallel.

♪ (dramatic adventurous music)

- Arm! Arm and out!

There is nor flying
hence nor tarrying here.

I a'gin to be aweary of the sun,

and wish th' estate o'
th' world were now undone.

Ring the alarm bell!

(bell rings)
♪ (trumpet blows)

Blow, wind! Onward!

At least we'll die with
harness on our back.

What's he that was
not born of woman?

Such a one am I
to fear, or none!

- Let me find him, fortune!

Tyrant, show thy face!

I cannot strike
at wretched kerns,

whose arms are hired
to bear their staves.

If thou be'st slain,
and with no stroke of mine,

my wife and children's
ghosts will haunt me still!

- What is thy name?

(gunshot)

(wind howls)

(Macbeth cackles)

- My name's Macbeth!

(gunshots)

(wind howls)

Lay on Macduff,

and damned be him that
first cries, "Hold enough!"

(shouting & commotion)

- Our position was that we
should get into that theatre

a cross section, or get the
largest possible audience,

and in order to do
that you had to go

to where most people were. .

and I remember in the
opening of "Macbeth,"

we went to the Elks,

which is a fraternal
organization,

and made an arrangement with
them to supply a band for us,

and then we went to the
city and we got a permit

and we had a parade.

♪ (jazz parade music)

I had a crew of about eight
people who plastered the town

with placards and
we used to write

on the sidewalk on the corner.

Then we visited every
church in the community,

so we got the
clergymen involved.

We began to get
sell-out audiences.

These were solid
black audiences.

Then you had, of course,

you had all of these people
coming from Downtown,

white people who would
have been attracted

by exotic quality.

- From his mother's
womb, untimely ripped!

(witches laugh)

- Accursed be that
tongue that tells me so!

(witches laugh & screech)

And be these juggling
fiends. . no more believed.

(cheering & commotion)

- Hail king!

♪ (dramatic music)

- [crowd] Hail king!

- [Macduff] Behold! Where stands
the usurper's cursed head.

The time is free!

All hail Malcolm!

- See. . !

the charmed. .

wound up!

- The most significant thing
about the Federal Theatre,

particularly the
Harlem section of it,

was that it gave for the
first time in the history

of the American theatre,

black technicians an
opportunity to get experience,

and it broke the

anti-black stronghold that
the stage hand union had.

♪ (soft guitar music)

- [Orson Welles] All the arts
suddenly became available

to a vast audience.

It was the beginning of
a truly popular culture.

♪ (soft guitar music)

Stage productions
toured the country,

actors played in high
schools, public libraries,

in tents and on truck platforms.

The WPA encouraged painters
to seek public places

for their work.

Artists used to brush,
canvas and easel,

received instruction in mural
painting techniques and soon,

large tableaus sprang
up in court buildings,

post offices and libraries.

One of the leading painters
on the Chicago Arts Project

was Aaron Bohrod.

- I guess my own
inclinations were to go

to ordinary subject
matter in an effort to. .

come up with an aesthetic
result on the basis

of everyday life. .

unglamorous life.

Went into every nook and
cranny of the city of Chicago

for the materials that I
was interested in getting,

and this is a South State
Street subject that I did

in the city of the storefronts

and of the characters
walking back and forth

in the atmosphere there.

The American artist was finally
looking at his own country

for his subject matter,

whereas formerly
it was the business

of the talented young American
painter going to Paris,

not only for his tutelage,

but for his subject matter,
so that he came back

and he painted some pretty
impressionist paintings modelled

after sturdier models.

But here the American
artist was looking

at ramshackled red barns,

at city streets which
were either tumbled down

or reasonably sturdy.

But in any case, at his own
country, his own city,

his own back yard.

♪ (soft guitar music)

- [Orson Welles] The post office
lobby became the main stage

for the rediscovery of
populist traditions.

♪ (soft banjo music)

Particularly in the
middle and Southwest,

this led to the creation
of a new realism.

It recorded the history
of regions whose spirit

had never before been
expressed artistically.

♪ (soft banjo music)

Gallup, New Mexico
was a small town

near the Navajo Reservation.

Before 1935, Gallup never
had paintings, and the Navajo,

not to mention Navajo painters,

had no way to make
their views known.

♪ (soft banjo music)

Now, Gallup's Library has
an impressive collection

of works by important
painters of the Southwest,

most of them native Americans.

- Now, I regard this as probably

the most exciting

painting of all, and this
is done by Harrison Begay.

This is the famous

Yébîchai.

They dance, the nine-day dance,
where women and men dance.

- [Orson Welles] Harrison Begay
is one of the most important
Navajo painters.

His career as a painter began
with the Federal Arts Project.

- My style of painting
changed very little.

I follow the old traditional
Indian painting mostly. .

although sometimes I do
other kind of paintings.

This is the painting I do.

It's an everyday
life of my people.

But most of the demands. .

by my people are these old,

traditional paintings
with designs,

different kinds of
legendary designs,

traditional symbolic designs.

That's what I do most of.

- [Orson Welles] In the '30s,

most of the Indian painters
created their finest work.

Unimpeded by financial pressures

and commercial considerations,
they could follow

their own dictates rather
than work for the trading post

and curio shops.

The leading Navajo muralist,

today an arts teacher
at an Indian school,

was Andrew Tsinnahjinnie.

- Well, we were in a group. .

Indian artists
were in groups,

and you will work
at a certain place,

like Oklahoma and Tulsa.

I was trained to. .

to do the mural job large-scale.

I had a helper, some
boys helped me to. .

put up some large
murals, scaffolding. .

and I painted some murals
in Phoenix, Arizona,

in an administration building.

♪ (soft guitar music)

- [Orson Welles] To give a
voice to the voiceless,

either by encouraging them
to speak for themselves

or by calling attention
to their plight,

this could be the motto
for all New Deal art.

The voiceless, the
deprived, included farmers,

especially in the Midwest.

They had fallen victim to
sand storms and droughts.

Many had lost their
property and their work.

Few across the country
could grasp

the catastrophe that
had occurred.

To understand and cope
with the situation,

Roosevelt and his
secretary for agriculture,

Henry Wallace, created
a special division

within the Department
of Agriculture,

The Resettlement Administration,

later called the Farm
Security Administration, FSA.

It was headed by
one of Roosevelt's
intellectual advisors,

the young Columbia university
economics professor,

Rexford Guy Tugwell.

- This was a peculiar time
when agriculture was changing.

(clears throat)

Not only was there
were a depression,

but the techniques of
agriculture were changing.

The cotton picker was
just coming into use,

and this meant that a great
many people in the South,

sharecroppers and others,
had their jobs taken away

from them, and there
began this terrible

movement to the cities.

- [Orson Welles] Tugwell
understood that the suffering

of the farmers had to be
publicized to the country,

and photographs seemed
to be the best medium.

During his days at Columbia,

he had published the first
economics textbook

to use photographs
as illustrations.

The pictures for this
book had been assembled

by his assistant, Roy Stryker.

Tugwell now hired him to head
the FSA photography section.

- So when I went to
Washington and took charge

of this work that we were doing

in the Department of Agriculture

and then the Resettlement
Administration,

it seemed quite natural
to me to send for Roy,

and tell him that he was
the kind of person we needed

to make a visual record
of what was being done.

And besides, to make
a historic record

of what the times were like,

because the times were very bad.

- [Orson Welles] There was
only one major record

of the catastrophe in
American agriculture.

It was accompanied by an
extraordinary collection

of photographs, something
unheard of at the time.

It was written by a young
economist from California,

Paul Schuster Taylor.

- Well, why did I
want a photographer?

I said because of the
conditions that I see

in the field are the
conditions that need to be

remedied. .

and the only way that
I can show the people

who make the decisions in the
cities what the conditions

and the needs are is by
showing them photographs

to supplement my analysis

- [Orson Welles] The young
photographer who traveled with

Taylor, and whom he later
married, was Dorothea Lange.

Her work revealed both
her political commitment

and her acute powers
of observation,

qualities Tugwell and
Stryker were looking for,

and Dorothea Lange was hired
as the first FSA photographer.

- ♪ [singer] When the
farmer comes to town

♪ With his wagon broken down

♪ Oh, the farmer is the
man that feeds them all

♪ If you'll only look and
see, I think you will agree

♪ That the farmer is the
man that feeds them all

♪ The farmer is the man,
the farmer is the man

♪ He lives on credit
'till the fall

♪ Then they take
him by the hand

♪ Then they lead him
through the land

♪ And the merchant, he's
the one that gets it all

- [Orson Welles] While Lange
tried to capture people

in motion with small cameras,

the second photographer
Stryker hired preferred

the large plate
camera and the tripod.

Walker Evans was already
acknowledged as one

of the great photographic
artists of the time

when he joined FSA.

♪ (fiddle music)

Evans refused any
touch of the exotic.

His photos never deprived people
or things of their dignity.

He never degraded a subject
into a mere illustration.

Ben Shahn, the next
photographer to join FSA,

was already famous at
the time as a painter.

His wife, Bernarda Bryson Shahn,

remembers why he
took up photography.

- Once it is made
into a work of art,

it becomes a symbolic thing.

In other words, it
becomes the universal. .

and he had a very strong
feeling about that,

and particularly in the days
when he was using a camera,

he had a very strong
feeling of the importance

of specific things.

♪ (fiddle music)

- [Orson Welles] Three
things left their mark

on FSA photographs:

Dorothy Lange's precise
sense of the moment

of highest intensity,

Walker Evans' great
respect for the dignity

of human beings and objects,

and Ben Shahn's
conviction of the meaning

of details seen in
the right context.

These techniques were
extensively practiced

by the younger
photographers Stryker hired.

Among them was Arthur Rothstein,

who during the '30s shot
over 50,000 photographs

for FSA before going on to
become chief photographer

for Look Magazine.

- The type of
photography that we did,

whether we did it
consciously or unconsciously,

could be called a social
documentary type of photograph,

and that type of photograph,

to my way of thinking,
is characterized

by a selection of
significant details. .

significant details which
comment on the relationship

between people and
their environments,

and significant details
which make the photograph

more meaningful than just
a mere record of the scene.

This is from the
very first assignment

that I did in October, 1935.

The photograph is interesting,

not only because it shows
this man with dignity,

reading a book, the
sign on the wall,

"Christ is the head
of this house,

the silent listener
to every conversation,"

combined with a picture
of Clara Bow over here,

and the Colosseum over there.

And, from this, you
get an idea, perhaps,

of this man's interests.
This is his home: neat,

well-organized, a little
lace cover for the table,

and these other aspects
of his environment.

♪ (guitar music)

- [Orson Welles] Rothstein
was a New Yorker.

The West for him was
unknown territory,

strange at times,
surprising and exotic.

♪ (guitar music)

Quite the opposite
holds true for painter/
photographer, Russell Lee.

He grew up in the West,

and had a great commitment
to its ways and people.

- This is actually
a picture of a family

in Southwestern Iowa, that
is eating Christmas dinner,

as it so happened.

This was on the first
assignment that I had,

which is the family
of Earl Pauley.

The character of
the room, this. .

cream separator. .

All of these things are
important to tell

the surroundings of
this particular family,

or. . here's a
detail, very simple,

of the entrance to a
home that tells quite a bit

about the home there,

the general disrepair.

This was in Oklahoma,
and. . much before the days

of electricity as you can see.

You have the old
fashioned washboard here,

and the woman did the
work as you can well see.

People at that time
had very little idea

of what was going on in
one part of the country

that they were not from.

The communication was very poor.

Transportation was
very poor at the time.

There was no television.

Radio was not. .

too prevalent,

and electrification,
rural electrification,
was not existent.

♪ (banjo music)

- [Orson Welles] Lee's
familiarity with Westerners

and their world could best be
seen in his most famous work,

in one of the very
first picture essays,

a series about a self-help
community called Pie Town.

- Pie Town was
isolated. . really,

and here was a contact
with the outside world.

This was the post office,

the gas station,
and the stage down.

Well, there was a woman
here a long time ago,

who would bake very good pies.

It so happened that this
was on the road west

from Arkansas,
Louisiana and Texas,

and many people who were
displaced by the tractor,

or by the drought or whatever,

were moving to California,
trying to find work. .

and this was one place where
many people had stopped,

and they had begun to
form a community there,

of these displaced people.
They were farmers,

and here was a chance to get
some cash money right away

to get established.

So people in the community
would welcome the newcomers.

They would help them to. .
construct their own house.

About the only thing
that the newcomer needed

was maybe a dollar to
buy some nails with.

There was one building in
particular that was a school,

it was a community hall,

and it was a church,

and they used it
at the right time.

This was a community sing,

and just a detail of
three of the ladies.

- Well, most of us were familiar
with the work of Lewis Hine. .

and before that, Jacob Riis.

They were sociologists
with cameras,

and we thought that we would
follow along those same lines,

to be sociologically oriented
with our photographs.

♪

- [Orson Welles] Jacob Riis, the
Danish immigrant who wrote

"The Making of an American"

and "How the Other Half
Lives," was the pioneer

of socially conscious
documentary photography.

In the late 19th Century,

working as a police
reporter in the slums

of Manhattan's steaming
Lower East Side,

he took his famous photos.

Riis hoped they would
make clear to the well-off

just how necessary
progressive reform was.

Reform was also the goal of
Lewis Hine's photographs.

Taking pictures of Ellis Island
before the First World War,

Hines found ways
of arranging people

and things to give him
striking documentary images.

♪ (soft music)

He asked people to look
directly at the camera,

something portrait
photographers and

studios had deliberately
tried to avoid.

♪ (soft music)

The social documentary,
both photographic and written,

was at once a historical record,
and a tool to change society.

♪ (soft music)

It was rediscovered in the '30s
as the most characteristic way

to express the American vision.

♪ (soft guitar music)

The social documentary,
with its emphasis on

significant detail, became
the form most widely practiced

by the more than 10,000 members
of the Federal Writers' Project.

Between 1935 and 1940,
they produced over
3,000 publications,

most of them dealing
with local history.

The major work was a series
of 50 travel guide books

to the United States.

Each volume contains
a social history

of the state it covers.

In charge of the travel guide
series was the national editor

of the Writers' Project,
Jerre Mangione.

- Robert Cantwell,
who strikes me as one

of the most discerning of
the critics of the '30s. .

thought that the books
were extremely valuable

because they presented
America in a way that no one

had ever seen America before.

Far from being the very thrifty,

sober kind of people that
Americans had been considered,

he found in these
volumes much evidence

that they were
ingenuous and naive,

and that they were gamblers,
and. . for example, they would. .

they would toss a coin to see
where a boundary line should be.

Or they would. . they were. .

sort of childish in
some respects. They were. .

You've heard of spite fences,
where a person would put

up a fence just be
hostile to his neighbors.

There were also spite
hotels, and spite railroads,

just to get even
with some competitor.

♪

- [Orson Welles] The depression
hit worst in the very region

which most attracted the
populist-minded artists,

writers and photographers
of the time: the Midwest.

They felt the
attitudes they found

among farmers and miners would
help to build a new society.

These ideas are most
clearly expressed

by a labor journalist, feminist,

poet and novelist who
was the driving force

behind the Minnesota Writers'
Project. . Meridel Lesueur.

- And all those struggles. .

I think the first taking
over of a grocery store was

in Minneapolis, where everybody
just leaned against the glass

and it broke and then we all
went in and took groceries.

The best ham I ever had

I took out of that
grocery store.

(chuckles)

The Midwest. .

it has a deep democratic
populist history, because. .

it was settled really by
the Homestead Act,

where an amazing thing
happened and it never happened

in the world before, where
you got 160 acres of land

for simply developing it.

What is little known is
that in North Dakota,

the people actually
took over the state,

actually voted in what was
called the Nonpartisan League.

It was really for
one year in 1918,

a socialist state in the
middle of the United States,

and then it was smashed
down in the First World War.

I think that a lot of the
pressure on the Roosevelt regime

for relief, and for. .

the projects, and the
WPA projects, and the
CCC it was called,

came from the Middle West.

In fact, many of the
laws like social security

and unemployment insurance
were created in North Dakota

in the Nonpartisan League days.

♪ (banjo plays)

- [Orson Welles] Thus, it was
the Midwestern countryside

with its small towns
that became the setting

for the most influential
novel of working class life.

"The Disinherited"
by Jack Conroy.

Conroy, a miner's son,
grew up in Moberly,

a small mining town
in central Missouri

and spent most of
his life there.

- This used to be the
Wabash Railroad Station

in the days when Moberly
was a great railroad center.

Eight trains daily came in
here, from all directions.

Now there are no
passenger trains at all.

You can see the
station is boarded up.

The freight trains come through,
but no passenger trains at all.

When I think of coming
back to Moberly,

I think of Vachel
Lindsay's lines

about Springfield, Illinois.

People going into
Springfield see nothing

but a dingy little
mining town. .

but I think of Vachel's lines
about Springfield, Illinois.

He said "Let not our
town be large, remembering

that little Athens
was the Muses' home,

that Oxford ruleth the
heart of London still,

and Florence brought
the Renaissance to Rome. "

♪ (banjo music)

- [Orson Welles] Writers thought
that only from such small towns

as Florence, Athens or Moberly,

a genuine civilization
could originate.

Some anthropologists
of the 1930s looked

for enduring culture
in primitive tribes.

Conroy looked for it in Moberly.

This insistence that
the American small town

had world importance
was expressed by
Conroy's publication

in Moberly of two magazines:

"The Anvil," which later
merged with "Partisan Review,"

and "The Rebel Poet. "

♪ (banjo music)

"The Rebel Poet's"
manifesto outlined the mood

and outlook of the
writers of the period.

- "We champion the calls of
the weak and defenseless.

We combat the greed
of industrial barons,

who are converting
American laborers

into abject serfs.

We ridicule the musty echoes
of the Fin de siècle slogan,

"Art for art's sake,"

and inscribe on our banner,
"Art for humanity's sake. "

- ♪ [singer] When you're
asked about living

♪ This is what you say

♪ We're so darn poor and
ragged we can never get away

♪ And it's hard times, and
old coalmans and mines

♪ A hard time, poor boy. .

- I come back. .

to Moberly here, from Toledo. .

you know?

Scrambling around
as best I could,

selling some stories to
the American Merkley,

that kept me alive.

My wife's wages working
at a shoe factory,

for about $6 a week. .

and some book reviews for the
St. Louis Post Dispatch. .

and in the meantime,
I'd been communicating
with Nelson Algren,

an old friend who had
contributed to "The Anvil"

and all that.

So he got me to come up there

and I stayed at his
pad until I finally got

on the Chicago Project.

- I was just knocking around
the country from 1931 to 1935. .

and so I was very pleased
when I found I could go up

to his office and
get a regular check,

which was about $85 a
month to begin with,

but I rose very
rapidly to $125 a month

within about four years' time. .

but it gave me leisure,

that is, I could go up
there at 10 in the morning

and sign out at noon, and say
you were going to the library

and go to the racetrack.

- The singer and dancer
named Katherine Dunham. .

you know, is also a specialist
in West Indian folklore,

and folk dancing, and all that.

So she was our
supervisor, and she quit. .

and they put Arna
Bontemps and I on the job.

Arna and I worked
together out there,

and we were doing a study

called the "The
Negro in Illinois. "

♪

- [Orson Welles] "The
Negro in Illinois,"

later published under the title

"They Seek a City,"

was only one in a
large number of studies

in black history the Federal
Writers' Project produced.

The most important were
the "Ex-Slave Narratives,"

interviews with several
hundred former slaves

of whom over 10,000 were
still alive in the '30s.

♪ (soft upbeat banjo music)

This concern to document
local and regional history

was accompanied by an
equally strong interest

in the great themes of American
and Western civilization.

♪ (soft guitar music)

One of the more successful
attempts could be seen

in the Bronx Post
Office in New York City,

the mural competition
for which was won

by the late Ben
Shahn, and his wife,

Bernarda Bryson Shahn.

- Probably well over
a hundred artists

entered that competition,

and it was certainly
a great day for Ben

when the telegram came
that he had won it,

and he was terribly happy.

I had submitted
some sketches, too. .

and they accepted
me as an assistant.

If one is involved with people,

and with politics,
and with ideas,

certainly he could never
find a readier audience

than he could in a big
post office like that.

And Ben chose for his
theme Walt Whitman's poem,

"I See America Working. "

And so he had all of the
kinds of working in the mural,

and then on the end
wall that he had Whitman

and the words of the poem,

and so that was the
key to the whole thing.

Whitman's total song
of his "Song of Myself"

was not really a song of myself,

it was a song of
myself as everybody,

and I would say that
that would correspond

to Ben's view 100% that
Ben felt his identification

with people, just totally.

- [Orson Welles] Shahn had
learned mural painting

from Diego Rivera, the famous
Mexican artist who came

to the United
States in the '30s.

One of Rivera's famous murals
was a dramatic rendering

of the Ford assembly plant
in Detroit, commissioned

by Henry and Edsel Ford.

♪ (upbeat banjo music)

New Deal artists emulated
Rivera's realism.

They wanted to apply his methods

to early American
themes and traditions.

♪ (upbeat banjo music)

One painter who admired
Rivera was George Biddle,

the brother of Roosevelt's
first attorney general.

The huge mural of Biddle's
commands the staircase

of the Justice
Department in Washington.

The painting quotes Supreme
Court Justice Louis Brandeis:

"If we would guide by the light

of reason, we must let
our minds be bold. "

♪ (soft flute music)

The mural vividly
illuminates the reformed
vision of the New Deal.

It shows the path of
the immigrant leading

from hard work and
dirty sweat shops

to the richly set
table of the New Deal.

Biddle portrayed several members

of Roosevelt's first
cabinet seated at the table.

♪ (soft flute music)

(footsteps)

The treasury employed artists
and paid them a modest salary.

It wasn't until 1935 under
the WPA that a program was set

up specifically for
the unemployed artist.

♪ (guitar music)

The museum curator,
Holger Cahill,

was appointed head of
the Federal Arts Project.

Cahill had made a name for
himself pioneering exhibitions

of American folk art.

He was considered a
compromised candidate

who could satisfy
both the radical

and the more academic
artists of the time.

Treasury Department
artists worked exclusively

on murals and sculptures
for federal buildings,

often with patriotic themes.

The Art Project artists,

thematically much
less restricted,

worked in many other areas.

There were print shops

where they prepared
posters urging examinations

for the eyes, the teeth,

and for venereal diseases.

♪ (guitar music)

Berenice Abbott
photographed New York City

for The Arts Project.

Fashion designers
worked in WPA workshops.

WPA artists designed postage
stamps and even the nickel.

♪ (soft guitar music)

And they created
a unique inventory

of American popular
arts and design.

♪ (soft guitar music)

Weather vanes, ship figureheads,

silverware, doorknobs. .

This index was the pet project
of folklorist, Holger Cahill.

These meticulous
drawings allowed hundreds

of artists to
practice their craft,

and to prepare for later
careers in the applied arts.

More than any other achievement,

the index fulfilled
the two major goals

of The Arts Projects:

to develop skills, and
to provide relief for
the unemployed.

- A New Deal did provide jobs.

Many such programs that
have been, of course,

maligned by those who hated
the New Deal, here in Chicago

and the "Chicago Tribune,"

when the leading opponents
had front page cartoons

all the time, damning
the New Deal.

And the usual clown was
the guy with the glasses,

the radical professor. .

and generally the man leaning
on the shovel was the attack

on the Works Projects
Administration, the WPA,

and so "These guys are
getting money for nothin' "

- [Orson Welles] "Reds in charge
of Federal Writers' Project. "

The attacks on the
WPA Arts Projects soon

became politically charged.

It was in this
atmosphere of suspicion

that the man who was later

to become Henry Wallace's
campaign manager

was made state supervisor

of the Illinois Writers'
Project, Curtis MacDougal.

- Well, it was a part of
an entire anti-New Deal,

anti-Franklin Roosevelt.

The camp there was
easily reactionary,

the economic royalists,
he called them.

We've called them
fascists and worse since,

and they deserve all
they were called.

They did everything they could
to throw obstacles in the way.

- [Orson Welles] Martin Dies, a
congressman from Texas, began

to make a political career out
of anti-New Deal sentiment.

In 1938, Dies set up a committee

to investigate
un-American activities.

Among the first called
before Dies' committee

were the directors of
the Federal Theatre

and the Federal
Writers' Project.

- It was obvious to
all of us that Mr. Dies

and his committee were
using the arts projects,

especially the Writers'
Project and the Theatre Project,

as a whipping boy, as a way
of attacking the New Deal.

It's very easy to
attack artists,

much easier than, say,

to attack the
larger groups of WPA

workers, such as construction
workers and so on.

So, the writers

and the theatre people were
constantly under attack.

- Well during the three years,

more than three years that
I was the state supervisor,

probably 1000-person. . the
Art Project in Illinois

was by far the largest
in the country.

New York, which gets so much
of the publicity, and the

books and articles had only 10%
of the total population. .

and we had about. .
probably 500 at a time. .

and of those are so many

that have become
very prominent since,

very successful, and
who if they hadn't

had been kept alive during
those horrible days,

never would have
come where they are.

- [Orson Welles] Saul Bellow,
the Nobel prize winner,

was involved with the project.

So it was Ralph Ellison,

the author of the
"Invisible Man. "

Studs Terkel became
famous for his collections

of oral history.

The poet, Conrad
Aiken, was involved,

as was Maxwell Bodenheim,

already a well-known
successful writer.

Richard Wright was supported
when he wrote his novel

"Native Son," probably
the most important book

which owes its existence to
the Federal Writers' Project.

- All of those people were
these lazy bums that worked

for me on the Writers' Project,

people that were
looked down upon

and condemned by the
old guard taxpayers

who resented the whole
New Deal Project.

- [Orson Welles] All of the
projects put to work skills

and talents, which might've
stayed undeveloped.

The record of The Arts Project
is the most staggering.

Practically without exception,

every American artist
born between 1900

and 1915 spent his formative
years in The Arts Project.

Most of their work from
this time has been lost,

and today we have
to rely on black

and white archive photographs.

Willem de Kooning painted
this ship's figurehead.

♪ (guitar music)

Jackson Pollock did these
harvest and factory scenes.

♪ (guitar music)

Mark Rothko painted
this landscape.

Stuart Davis did this
abstract painting.

Arshile Gorky did this mural.

Joseph Stella painted this silo.

- They were different types
of people, the artists were,

but at the same time they
were in warm sympathy

with the efforts of people who
were in trouble, and people. .

various people to organize.

- [Orson Welles] Most New Deal
art was quite unpolitical.

However, some artists felt
that the political message

was what counted.

Artists like William
Gropper at the time tried

to make a hero out of
the industrial worker.

Unlike the FSA photographers
who showed a genuine concern

for the individual,
Gropper's workers seemed

to have no individual
identity at all.

There's a vast difference

between the social documentaries
of the FSA photographers,

and the proletarian realism
of some WPA painting.

♪ (upbeat banjo music)

Social and political
commitment did not necessarily

mean superhuman workers.

Much more subtle is
Ben Shahn's portrayal

of textile workers in
a large mural painted

for a town now called
Roosevelt, New Jersey.

♪ (upbeat banjo music)

The town built in the 1930s
was a New Deal experiment

in urban planning,
with workplace

and housing located together.

Shahn's mural is an argument

for the ideal printed
on the poster.

The principle of American labor,

the right of every
man and woman to work.

♪

- And many theorists
were communist.

I was a communist
at that point. .

and the central committee

of the Communist Party
was breaking its neck

to dominate what was going on,

and they were giving out orders
which were happily ignored

because artists
don't take orders.

♪

- [Orson Welles] Bernada
Bryson Shahn was an editor

of "Art Front" magazine.

It acted as a forum for the
radical artists of the time.

In spite of quarrels
with the Communist Party,

many artists remained either
members or close sympathizers.

Outside their work, they
submitted to the frequent shifts

of the Moscow Party Line, and
supported the party's campaigns

against more independent
artists like Diego Rivera.

- The tragedy of Rivera was
that he wanted to be accepted.

The dream of his life was
to be thoroughly accepted

by the Communist Party,

but he was natively
intransigent.

He couldn't be controlled,
and they hated him. .

and so anybody who
worked with him,

including Ben, became a target
for their disapproval, and. .

they constantly
excoriated poor Rivera,

who constantly sought
to be accepted by them.

- I attended that famed
meeting in a thronged hall,

where Diego Rivera began. .

his speech, which was

translated by Luis Lazarich,

a well-known lithographer. .

and his translation continued
for about 15 or 20 minutes

and then he threw his
hands up in disgust

and an unwillingness to continue

with what he called
the bourgeois notions

that Diego Rivera
was introducing

to the radical
New York audience,

which were members of
the John Reed Club,

and people began shouting
and pushing and shoving,

and there were characters
who I got to know later,

such as Jacob Burck who was a
cartoonist for the Sun Times,

who stood up in a corner
and denounced Diego Rivera

for every utterance he made,

and principally it was based,

it seemed to be, on the
fact that he chose to speak

in French, bourgeois French,
instead of proletarian Spanish.

It was just before the
1936 insurrection in Spain,

of course, and that kind
of fired up tempers.

- [Orson Welles] It was not so
much doctrinaire party communism

but an emotional solidarity
with the oppressed

that moved people to join
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade

and fight in Spain.

"Communism is 20th
Century Americanism. "

This inscription
graced the halls

of the American Communist
Party headquarters.

- The Communist Party was a
respectable party at the time. .

and it's a difficult
question now.

You say, "Were you a communist?"

Of course, everybody who
had any grain of knowledge

of what was going
on was a communist.

The only trouble is. .

the climate of the word,
the connotation of the word

was something quite
different now.

- There was a law. .

it was mandatory that
when people were hired

on these projects, there
was to be no questioning

of their political affiliation.

The republicans insisted
on that provision

because they were afraid
that they would be left out.

- [Orson Welles] Paradoxically,
there were many on the left

who had moral difficulties
with joining projects sponsored

by the government and
designed, perhaps,

to co-opt radicals into
the reformist camp.

One such critic was the
Writers' Project nature editor,

the poet Kenneth Rexroth.

- Taking money, I mean,

for the left to take money
from the bourgeois state,

St. Paul has a phrase for this.

It's called, "Making friends
out of the mammon of iniquity. "

- Pigeons like men are
easily tamed by food.

If you give a hungry
man a job like that,

he's going to be
less discontent. .

and it wasn't exactly
an evil sort of thing,

but a humanitarian
sort of thing.

- [Orson Welles] While
conservative criticism mounted,

artists and writers
demonstrated for the right

to continue to produce
politically partisan art.

These pressures from inside

and outside presented
great difficulties

for the project administrators.

A diplomatic wizard
of sorts maneuvering

on two fronts was Henry Alsberg,

the director of the
Writers' Project.

- The head of it was the
man who got Emma Goldman

and Alexander Berkman
out of Russia,

Henry Alsberg, who was

old time Pre-War I. .
liberal anarchist.

So that in this period

of the attempted
Bolshevization of America,

he was a kind of anomaly.

- [Orson Welles] In order
to get his writers

to abandon fashionable
proletarian realist styles,

Alsberg prescribed
exposure to reality.

One writer who was
sent from Manhattan

to explore Staten Island
for the Writers' Project

was the poet, Harry Roskolenko.

- When I worked for the
Writers' Project of the WPA,

I spent about three months
traveling all over the place

just to get some data,

some background
for the guide book,

the New York State Guidebook.

- [Orson Welles] Roskolenko
was a political activist

at the time.

Like many others,
he was convinced

that a revolution was
just around the corner.

- I think I was
sailing from Hamburg

to New York then, 1926. .

and we got wireless reports
about the Paterson Strike,

and the amount of
violence there.

Of course, like all sailors,

you're always thinking
of revolution,

revolutionary terms, uprising.

We were very radicalized. .
and we thought there

would be a revolution
in the southeast,

starting in New Jersey
and just swinging right
through the East.

- [Orson Welles] Little of
this revolutionary fervor

found its way into
the fact-filled report

on a home for old sailors
Roskolenko prepared.

- Now, these are
actually the notes

that I sent in. . in 1936.

Sailors' Snug Harbor, Richmond
Terrace between Tyson Street

and Kissell Avenue. . a
home for retired seamen.

"Here the mariners spend
their declining days provided

with everything from food and
shelter to tobacco and movies.

To be admitted, a
mariner must be 65,

an American citizen, and
prove that he has been at sea

for at least five years.

- [Orson Welles] But equally,
often the radical writers

did sneak their political
persuasions into the guidebooks,

and for the project
administrator,
that led to trouble.

- You know about what
happened in Massachusetts;

there was a great
to-do there when. .

a reporter discovered that
many more lines were devoted

to the Sacco and Vanzetti
case than were devoted

to the Boston Tea Party,

twice as many lines. .

and as a result of that,

the governor of
the state, Hurley,

who had written a letter
saying how happy he was

that this book was being
published about Massachusetts. .

changed his mind and
began to attack the book,

and attack the project, and
demanding an investigation,

a congressional
investigation and whatnot.

And a former
governor suggested

that all the Massachusetts
guidebooks be placed

in the common and burned. .

and certain libraries
refused to carry the book

and there was a great
noise made about it.

♪ (upbeat piano music)

- [Orson Welles] It was the
unabashed political tendency

in the seemingly
most innocent work

that most annoyed conservatives.

The children's theatre
is a good case in point.

Traveling all over the country,

groups of actors brought theatre
to millions of young people,

most of whom didn't even
know what a stage show was.

- We had trucks where
the side came down

and became a platform.

The top canvas rolled down
and became dressing rooms

on either side.

You carried your own
generator, and you would play

for 25,000 people
in different parts,

so it was a wonderful
going-to-the-people theatre.

♪ (upbeat piano music)

- [Orson Welles] Although
children had to be and
were entertained,

to the actors and
directors, children

were the revolutionaries
of the future.

The "Revolt of the Beavers. . "

a delightful play and the
most successful production

of the Children's Theatre,

illustrates this attitude.

The play showed class
structures in beaver society,

with its robber-barren beavers
protected by police beavers.

- I played the Gestapo
kind of beaver.

I was tough.

We had a team called
"Rough, Tough and Gruff. "

We were all made
up like beavers, and. .

and it was very exciting.
I mean, that's the kind

of acting that I
would love to do today.

♪ (upbeat piano music)

- [Orson Welles] The poor
exploited worker beavers

are busy planning a revolution
to overthrow a government

which only represents
rich beavers.

Of course, the
revolution succeeds.

♪ (upbeat piano music)

- We were accused
of being communists. .

a communist play,
because the beavers

were stripping the
bark off the trees.

And the Boy Scout troop
248 from the Bronx. .

were supposed to protest
this terrible thing

that was going on, and
the kids loved the play.

- [Orson Welles] More serious
political repercussions came

with the last black production
of the Federal Theatre:

a play called "Haiti,"
directed by Maurice Clark.

- This play was
about the struggle. .

of a Negro people in Haiti,
against an invasion. .

of Napoleon's army.

The original script called
for a French drawing room,

and I changed all that
to a big central section

of one of these old
plantation homes,

with a winding staircase.

I got some drummers from the
Congo, and finally we cast it

with some of the
leading black actors,

like Canada Lee,

and Rex Ingram, and some

of the prominent people
in the Negro Theatre.

It was about equally divided,

the white cast and
the black cast. .

and this is as
exciting and important

to me as the play itself,

the whole production itself was
what happened to these actors.

- [Orson Welles] "Haiti" marked
one of the first times

in the history of the
American professional theatre

that black and white
actors worked together

on the same stage.

- A whole kind of different
relationship started developing.

They were laughing together,
playing a piano. .

and instead of just
a work relationship,

a social relationship developed.

- [Orson Welles] "WPA Theatre
upheld Negro dating here.

Project heads encourage race
mixing as part of communism. "

These headlines played
on racist sentiments

and used them as a basis
for political attack.

The one division of
the Federal Theatre

which, more than any other,
attracted left wing actors

and directors was the
next to come under fire:

The Living Newspaper.

- The great innovation was
The Living Newspaper.

We were full of
tricks and wheezes,

but in fact, nothing
that we did

was theatrically particularly
revolutionary in its essence.

The Living Newspaper
was a whole new idea.

It was the notion of
using the news of the day.

It was sort of a magazine
technique for telling a story.

The first one they
did was Ethiopia.

That ended badly.
There were protests,

and the state department
actually demanded certain
changes be made.

- There was undoubtedly
congressional pressure against

what was seen as extreme
left-wing influence

in the Federal Theatre,

or at least in some of
the Federal Theatre, but. .

particularly perhaps in
The Living Newspaper.

- [Orson Welles] After the
first show was cancelled,

Joseph Losey, together
with two others, took over.

In a new show, they
refused to compromise

The Living Newspaper's
stark radicalism.

After a political showdown
with Federal Theatre director

Hallie Flanagan, Losey opened
a great success on Broadway.

The play was "Triple
A Plowed Under. "

♪ (drum music)

It dramatized the problems
of the farmers and workers.

The farmer gets a few
pennies for his milk,

while the worker pays
a high price for it.

The middleman gets rich.

Norman Lloyd, now a well-known
television actor and director,

regularly acted in
The Living Newspaper.

- The second play was
"Injunction Granted. "

It's interesting.
Losey directed that,

and Nicholas Ray, who
became a film director,

was the stage manager. .

and Virgil Thompson
did the music.

And this was a story

of the history of
labor in the courts.

- I was developing a form
which was towards circus,

toward vaudeville, using ballet
as well as actors, music,

mime and film,

influenced I suppose to
some extent by (mumbles),

and to some extent by
Brecht, and to some extent

by the Political Cabaret,
which I had already done.

- I played a clown in that.
It was all in pantomime,

commenting on the
stories that went along

with the various cases
which were acted out

in rather black and white terms,

but always with the
clown commenting. .

both to illuminate
things for the audience,

and hopefully for
humor, and so on.

- Again, the opening
was postponed,

postponed, never quite banned,

and finally, again
it came to a showdown,

and again we won,
and again it opened.

But, it didn't have much
chance and the spirit was gone,

and. . it didn't do as
well as the other,

although it was more
interesting, I think, by far.

And, it closed.

Then, I presented
various other projects,

all of them were turned
down, so I resigned.

It was as simple as that.

♪ (upbeat guitar music)

- [Orson Welles] The closing
of The Living Newspaper

was the beginning of the end.

Soon John Houseman and
myself came under attack.

We'd moved from
Harlem to Broadway

and had formed a new
group called Project 891.

- The actors we were
given were in one sense,

sort of the dregs
of the project.

All the other serious
projects had already

snatched up all the. .

apparently, and snatched
up all the conventionally
good actors.

But, Orson had a passion
for low comedians

and eccentric characters.
So in the end, what we got

was a very interesting
collection of actors,

and the first show we
did was "Horse Eats Hat. "

♪ (nursery music)

- [Orson Welles] This project
produced much controversy. .

and spelled perhaps the end

of what could've been
a national theatre

in the United States.

♪ (nursery music)

- Our next venture was, again,
not a classical venture at all,

but something that
had been brought to us

and we'd heard it, and
fallen in love with it,

and decided we wanted to do it,

and that was a labor opera or
whatever you want to call it,

by Marc Blitzstein called
"The Cradle Will Rock. "

- [Orson] Marc Blitzstein,
an admirer of Brecht,

wrote words and music
for this unique piece.

The play was cast with Will
Geer and Howard Da Silva.

- Larry is the organizer,

the labor organizer,
who's been pulled in

with the prostitutes and
with street people and so on

in a cleanup of the town,

along with the powers that be,

Mr. Mister and the rest. .

and who, when the
Moll, the whore,

asks him what he's
doing here, he says,

"Who, me?"

While he was pulled in he says,

"Who, me? Making a speech
and passing out leaflets.

The formal charges
are inciting to riot.

Ain't you ever seen my act?

While I'm creeping
along in the dark,

my eyes is crafty, my
pockets is bulging, I'm loaded,

armed to the teeth! .
with leaflets.

And am I quick on the draw!
I come up to you very slow,

very snaky, and with
one fell gesture. .

I tug a leaf in your hand.

And one, two, three,
there's a riot.

I'm the riot. I incited you. "

- I went to play the original,

my old part, which
I had rehearsed

with our repertoire
company at Mr. Mister,

which is John D. Rockefeller,

sort of combined with some
head of Republic Steel.

He is the owner of
this town, in which all

of the people are
prostitutes to him;

the owner of the paper,
the doctors and the lawyers,

and they are all prostitutes,
just as this little girl

on the street corner is.

The play is very exciting, and
has wonderful music, really.

Best music Marc
Blitzstein wrote.

- [actor] Cora, we're artists!

- ♪ (singing) And we love

♪ Art for art's sake

♪ It's smart, for art's sake

♪ To part, for art's sake

♪ With your heart,
for art's sake

♪ And your mind,
for art's sake

♪ Be blind for art's sake

♪ And deaf for art's sake

♪ And dumb for art's sake

♪ Until for art's sake

♪ They kill for art's sake

♪ All the art for art's sake!

- It rehearsed beautifully
and we were all madly

in love with what
we were doing. .

Then, suddenly, there were
a great many steel strikes

all over the country,
where some of which ended

in considerable violence.

There were other strikes,
but this happened to be

about steel, so that this
was particularly dangerous,

and the federal government,

or rather, the WPA
Administration,

who had to go back to Congress

that summer and get
new appropriations,

because originally they'd
only had it for two years,

and those two years
were nearly up.

So, since they had
to go to Congress,

they were very frightened
of producing anything

that would create
any kind of scandal

or any kind of backlash.

- The government
clamped down on it,

and refused to have it open,

and Howard Da Silva
and Hiram Sherman

and the rest of us had our wigs

and costumes snatched
away from us.

The sets were removed,

the theatre was padlocked
and the audience itself,

who was there for a preview,
was thrown out into the streets

and began milling around.

John Houseman and some
very enterprising people,

like Archibald MacLeish,
went out to get a theatre,

and we went out in front,

and entertained the audience
with little snatches of songs,

and everything I ever knew
from Walt Whitman on through,

until they came by in a fire
truck, and Marc Blitzstein

had a piano, and the
fire people were helping

and they announced they had
a theatre 20 blocks away,

up by the Central Park. .

and we moved, and asked the
audience to move with us.

They walked with us from
38th Street to 57th Street.

- I think the audacity of
the whole company of Will

and I having led the whole
company with all of us up

the 6th Avenue and having
produced it, despite the fact

that the Federal Theatre and
Congress had locked us out

and closed down the theater,

was in itself such
an audacious thing.

We probably pulled
enough of an audience

with us along 6th Avenue
who were wondering

where the hell this audience
was walking to Uptown?

- ♪ (singer) Oh the press, the
press, the freedom of the press

♪ They'll never take away
the freedom of the press

♪ We must be free to say
whatever's on our chest

♪ With a hey-diddle-dee
and a ho-nonney-no

♪ Or whichever side
will pay the best

- And on the stage Orson
Welles gave a speech,

Archibald MacLeish
made a nice speech,

our poet that's
still living today,

and John Houseman talked. .

And Marc came out, they wheeled
the piano out with the firemen,

and he sat down at the
piano and began to play it

as he did at auditions.

And as he got to
this first song,

the little girl,
a Catholic girl,

and quite reactionary
on most subjects,

got up suddenly in the
box and began to sing.

- ♪ (girl singing) Maybe
you wonder what it is

♪ Makes people good or bad

♪ Why some guy

♪ An ace without a doubt

♪ Turns out to be a bastard

♪ And the other way about

♪ I'll tell you what I feel

♪ It's just the nickel
under the heel

- And as we came to
each one of the parts,

the lawyers and the doctors,

Mr. Mister, Mrs. Mister,

Junior Mister, and all of them,

we all stood up
in whatever part

of the auditorium we were,

we followed the lead of this
little girl and sang our songs.

And it was a tremendous
success! A smash.

Everybody got up,
stood and cheered,

and so before the evening was
over, we'd raised enough money

to put it on in a
regular theatre.

We moved down the street to
The Playhouse on 48th Street,

and it went on for a long run,
with actors simply sitting

on the chairs,
without any scenery,

without any real costumes,

and singing along with Marc
Blitzstein on the piano.

- ♪ (singing) That's thunder,
that's lightning

♪ And it's going
to surround you

- [Orson Welles] The success
of "The Cradle Will Rock,"

despite the official
ban, brought down the
Federal Theatre.

Before the actors and
directors could even register

their protest, conservatives
mounted such a heavy attack

on Washington that Roosevelt
was forced to appease them

with drastic measures.

- ♪ (singing) The
cradle will rock!

- What Roosevelt had done
was to decide that in order

to stop this red-baiting
attack against him,

he would allow the Federal
Theatre to be dissolved.

Of course, it gained nothing
because they went right

on to dissolve everything else.

This was the beginning
of a whole new history

in the United States.

- Well, you can
answer that can't you?

- [Orson Welles] Writers,
actors and artists alike

had poked fun at Martin
Dies and his committee.

Now his hour had come.

In hearings,
broadcast nationwide,

Dies' House on Un-American
Activities Committee

investigated hundreds of
artists and intellectuals,

branding them subversive
and Un-American.

- The only way that
we can defeat their
aims and purposes is

to expose them
before they strike.

- And in one stroke of the pen,
this whole thing was destroyed.

I went down to my
office, which was. .

down in the 20s,

about 20th and Broadway,
down in that area.

We had two floors of offices
there for the Federal Theatre.

I went to go up to my
office, and they. .

they had sent in workmen, with
hammers, to destroy our offices,

which were partitions built

in this large
loft-type building.

And believe it or not,

these men were taking joy
in what they were doing.

They were swinging their
axes and hammers

and they were not only
breaking up these partitions,

they were splintering them. .

and I found my desk under a
whole pile of broken boards,

and dug in there to get out
what records I could salvage.

And that's how the
Federal Theatre went.

- [Orson Welles] Attacks on
the project mounted daily.

The next concession hit
the Writers' Project.

Control was transferred

to the individual states,
while responsibility

for publications
remained in Washington.

The doors were open
for censorship.

- We had. . one of our. .
best books was censored.

The Washington office absolutely
refused to publish it.

That was the history
of civil liberties

in the state of Illinois.

It was done under the
supervision of Marion Knoblauch

who's since then been a leader

in the Chicago Civil
Liberties Committee,

and finally it was published
by the Civil Liberties

Union with no mention whatever
of the Writers' Project,

all the work that was done
over a period of several years.

- All right, there's a
chapter on censorship. .

There's a chapter
on rights of aliens,

and that was a very sad chapter
during World War I and Illinois.

There's a chapter called "Rights
of Political Minorities. . "

and "The Rights of
Labor," and so forth.

"Rights of the Unemployed,"
or did I mention that before?

"Unconstitutional Police
Methods," you see,
these were all. .

and "Anti-semitism. "

- And it's a very factual
account! Nothing controversial.

They were just afraid
that their congressional

and journalistic critics
would descend on them,

and so they weren't
going to take a chance,

and they just said, "No, you're
not going to publish it. "

- So they sent two people
out from Washington,

investigators, and they
came to the project,

they interviewed almost
everybody but me,

and. .

then they did tell me
that it was a good book,

and they wanted it
to be published,

only there were a few
little places that needed

to be toned down.

♪ (upbeat banjo music)

- [Orson Welles] In the
Federal Arts Project,

the most violent attacks
were those provoked

by these paintings
in Coit Tower

on San Francisco's
Telegraph Hill,

especially Bernard
Zakheim's mural, "Library. "

It shows a worker taking
a volume of Karl Marx down

from a bookshelf.

♪

But still, the artist
felt ready to fight.

In some of the newspaper
headlines he painted,

Zakheim commented on the attacks
leveled against his work.

♪ (upbeat banjo music)

Later, when the rumors spread

that the whole Arts
Project was to be axed,

intellectuals and
artists mounted protests,

but often in terms which
only gave more ammunition

to their conservative enemies.

- "As this issue of The
New Anvil goes to press,

the Federal Arts Project,

which has rendered invaluable
service in bringing culture

to the people are threatened
by the onslaught of Torries,

who would either abolish
these projects altogether

or seriously hamper
their effectiveness

by drastic curtailments and
strangling restrictions.

No section of the Works
Progress Administration

has justified its existence
more than the Cultural Projects.

The efforts to destroy them
remind one forcibly of the words

of a Nazi arbiter
of public taste:

When I'd hear the word
culture, I'd cock my rifle. "

♪ (upbeat guitar music)

- [Orson Welles] But it wasn't
only the political statements

by theater people,
artists and painters that
antagonized conservatives,

it was also the appeal to
reform of the FSA photographs.

♪ (upbeat guitar music)

- It just came in that there
were concerted efforts to try

to get rid of this organization.

And it was called. .

and, I don't think it was
ever called "Communistic,"

but it was not
considered by some people

as being too desirable.

- At first we
weren't noticed much,

but. . congressmen,

being politicians,
always look for something

to criticize if they can,

and I happened to become
a controversial figure

for other reasons by that time,

and so we were pretty liberally
attacked by the politicians.

- [Orson Welles] For a while,
the FSA photographers managed

to stave off their critics by
making some pretty pictures. .

but it was of little
use in the long run.

Soon, the FSA photographers

were no longer documenting
daily life in America. Instead,

they would record the
life in the armed forces.

In 1940, the FSA photography
section was transferred

to OWI, the Office
of War Information.

All their pictures,
over 300,000,

are preserved in the
Library of Congress.

A whole decade of
American history is stored

and cataloged here.

It is the best organized

and publicly accessible
visual record of the 1930s.

Unfortunately, there were
no archives for the work

of painters and designers.

In the '30s,

James Brooks, now a well-known
abstract expressionist,

painted a mural for New
York's LaGuardia Airport.

- I heard from a friend,

he was the director
of the Boston Museum,

when he was down
visiting a friend,

that he had come through the
terminal on the way down,

and there was nothing
on the walls anymore.

And he wondered what
happened. I didn't know.

So I asked and I heard that
it had just been painted out,

without asking anyone,

by the port authority
who had recently

taken over the building.

The Marine Terminal
was the building

that I did a circular mural in

that circumscribed the lobby,
10 feet up from the floor,

10 and a 1/2 feet
up from the floor.

The height of the mural
actually was 12 feet,

3 inches by 235 feet.

It was a quite a complex job.

It's about the idea of flight.

It starts with man's
thoughts about flight. .

And this is early man being
oppressed by nature

and wondering what
it's all about

and where the
lightning comes from.

Then here's a modern
man and a woman walking

under a plane with the shadow
of a plane coming across her,

and the compass there.

♪ (soft music)

- [Orson Welles] Today,
no trace is left

of Brooks' gigantic mural.

It is painted over in
institutional green.

The fear and suspicion of the
post-war years left no place

for muralists' social
criticism and political art.

Hundreds of murals and
thousands of easel paintings

and posters were simply
lost, or destroyed.

♪ (soft music)

- How The Arts Project
died, of course,

is part of history
few know about.

The primitives took over.

The Neanderthals took
over, it's simple as that.

By the way, we say
right one or beat left,

that doesn't mean anything.
I think the idea that a
Neanderthalism took over,

not just anti-intellectual,

it's contempt for
working people too.

- Our committee is the
only agency of government

that has the power of exposure.

Therefore, this
investigation must go on,

without fear or favor,

and our slogan must be:

"No quarter to the
enemies of our country. "

- The the ending of the
Federal Arts Project,

or WPA itself, was
also a diminishing

of the vision of
possibilities. .

and I think this is
one of the horrors,

aside from making the
young ignorant of history,

particularly of labor,

but also making us
zombies in a sense.

And of course, it's not
accidental that. . when the war,

of course, happened,
a mobilization occurred,

but. . within the hot war
itself against fascism,

the seeds of the
cold war being sewn.

- I used to run under different
names like everybody did.

"True Confessions,"
Boston's "True Confessions"

started here in Minneapolis.

So you used to try and
write a true confession

under a different name. .

and. .

I wrote for women's magazines
under a different name.

I had about four or five names.

I'd. .

get a job waiting on tables,
and in a week the boss

would come and say, "I'm sorry. .
the FBI has been here. "

- [Orson Welles] Ironically
and sadly after the war,

many people were punished
for their involvement.

They were investigated

by the Un-American
Activities Committee

by Senator McCarthy
. and the FBI.

Not only their
work was destroyed,

but the very memory they
stood for was obliterated.

The WPA and its Arts
Projects blossomed

for a merely three
or four years. .

then they fell victim
to powerful forces:

conservatism, the war,

the prosperity of
the post-war years. .

but despite their sudden
and tragic demise,

these projects left us an
important cultural legacy.

The New Deal left us a
belief in ordinary people,

in older American values,

in a truly popular
American culture.

The artists of the
'30s gave a shape,

a vision, a form to the period.

They bestowed on us the gift
of memory of our people,

our places, and ourselves.

- ♪ (singing) I saw
an honest farmer

♪ His back was bending low

♪ Picking out his cotton

♪ He couldn't hardly go

♪ He piled it up
in the rail pen

♪ Until the merchant come

♪ That he might
take his cotton

♪ That he might give them some

♪ Goodbye, boll weevil

♪ For you know you've
ruined my home

♪ You know you've
got my cotton

♪ And the merchant's
got my corn

♪ I saw him in the summer

♪ 'Twas hot as it could be

♪ Strolling through
the harvest field

♪ The sweat was running free