Chapter Five

The demise of the Theatre of Action and the Theatre Collective in 1936 and of the Theatre Union in 1937 may have been a major factor prompting the New Theatre League to become a producing agent. The New Theatre League took on the task of choosing the right troupe for each play--for instance, having the Let Freedom Ring Troupe or the Brookwood Players or some other group give performances "Presented by the New Theatre League." The League also began to show more interest in Broadway-type musicals and full-length plays, but the themes of the shows reflected the same interests the League had had in the earlier part of the decade: expression of the propaganda line of the moment. Goldstein claims that all the three-act plays and musicals of the League dealt primarily with the struggle of organized labor, except for Maid in Japan, by Maurice Stoller and Elie Siegmeister.[476] [Please note: clicking on an endnote in the text will take you to the referenced note. To return to your spot, click your browser's "Back" button.] By l938, musicals then appear to have been performed with more frequency. Montreal's New Theatre performed an original musical revue by Mel Tolkin and Reuben Davis, We Beg to Differ,[477] which was then performed by the Philadelphia New Theatre,[478] Trenton's New Theatre,[479] and the Allaben Players of New York.[480] The Philadelphia New Theatre also put on Tolkin and Davis's Inside America in 1940.[481] Finally, the Theatre Arts Committee (TAC), originally formed in 1937 to raise money for the Republican cause in Spain, was composed primarily of prominent show business people and opened its Cabaret TAC in 1938.[482] The midnight cabarets spotlighted "the news instead of Nudes";[483] they demonstrated, with what Will Geer called their "phenomenal success," that "laughter can be a most effective method of attack."[484] Gassner suggests that the leftist movement's focus on more immediate causes, such as Spanish Loyalism, which had been evident during the middle of the decade, may have helped lead to the decline of sympathetic support for the workers' theatre movement.[485]

By 1939, however, epic theatre, political cabaret, plays with music (such as Cradle), and living newspapers were still considered to be "new developments" in contemporary theatre that the workers' theatre would consider in its New Theatre School.[486] And by the end of the thirties, very little leftist theatre was performed, except for workers' theatres scattered around the country, for the successful and still-running Pins and Needles, and the Cabaret TAC. Even the TAC's cabarets ended, though, when Schaffer of the Labor Stage denounced the TAC as a Communist front. On April 14, 1940, Actors' Equity forbade its members to participate in TAC activities.[487]

Published versions of this script can be found in One Act Play Magazine, October 1938, 359-93, and in James V. Hatch, ed., Black Theatre U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans, 1847-1974 (New York: Free Press, 1974), 262-77.

Langston Hughes founded the Harlem Suitcase Theatre with his one-act musical, Don't You Want to Be Free? Opening on April 21, 1938, the show played 135 performances in a fraternal hall on weekends (the longest run a play had had to date in Harlem),[488] then went on to a New Theatre Night on June 10, 1938 at the Nora Bayes Theatre, where it shared the bill with Ware's Mighty Wind A' Blowin'. Goldstein calls it a well-paced, imaginative treatment of the black experience, depicting scenes of discrimination in a restaurant, harsh landlords, mother and child affection, and the bloody Harlem riots of March 1935. The show included spirituals, blues, and jazz to treat Black American history. Hughes directed the production himself: he relied on constructivist techniques of Meyerhold and Oklopov, with an arena-style setting in two parts, connected by a runway, free of scenery except for a lynch rope and auction block. The scenes were unified by a black spokesman who appeared in every scene, who never grows older.[489] One of the principles of the Harlem Suitcase Theatre was that scenery be kept to a minimum--only what could fit in a suitcase.[490]

Hughes wrote the play based on some of his poems, both racial and radical, linking them together with blues and spirituals added. The Harlem Suitcase Theatre was launched as a branch of the International Workers Order, which was linked to the Communist party. Carroll Tate, a veteran bandleader, was music director and played the piano.[491]

Arnold Rampersad says in his biography of Hughes that over 200 people attended the premiere performance. Don't You Want to Be Free? was given many more performances at various places and times: in Chicago in 1938, directed by Fanny McConnell and Ted Ward;[492] revivals at the Harlem Suitcase Theatre[493] and by the Harlem People's Theatre in 1939;[494] in Philadelphia;[495] and in Los Angeles with the New Negro Theatre.[496]

Don't You Want to Be Free? is the only workers' musical from the thirties written by a black about blacks, and this is a curious fact considering the leftist movement's concern for equal rights. Other workers' theatre plays with black characters or dealing with black concerns had been written by white playwrights, such as Stevedore by Peters and Sklar, and Alice Holdship Ware's Mighty Wind A'Blowin', Like a Flame, and Together. Even when New Theatre magazine devoted its July 1935 issue, its "Negro Number," to black theatre of the workers' theatre movement and announced two contests for black plays, held in conjunction with the National Committee for the Defense of Political prisoners, a Communist front group, few acceptable black plays originated. One play was to be about Angelo Herndon, who was to be a judge for the contest, and the other was to be on the general topic of black life. Clifford Odets wrote Remember, a one-act play about the difficulties of a black family on relief which was performed under Odets's direction for the Negro People's Theatre in October 1935 and then disappeared, never having been copyrighted or published. The winner of the contest, however, was Hughes's Angelo Herndon Jones, which was not entirely successful. The winner of the second contest was Bernard Schoenfeld's dramatization of Hughes's essay, "Trouble with the Angels," about an abortive walkout in Washington of the actors playing angels in The Green Pastures because the theatre owner refused to sell tickets to blacks. Schoenfeld made one change from the essay: the angels carry out their strike threat. The New Theatre League added this play to their repertory.[497] Most of the white writers did not understand the plight of black life, said New Theatre's editor Herbert Kline, and tended to depict blacks as either having "admirable `peculiarities'" or as being "lily white" and idealized.[498] In fact, "League plays dealing with the racial issue were as often as not the work of uncompromising authors who never overcame their amateurism or their prudence," Goldstein claims; despite all the attempts of the Communist party to make its claim in the black community, it never succeeded in doing so; and despite New Deal concern for blacks, no civil rights legislation was passed during the thirties.[499] Robert S. McElvaine in his book about the thirties claims that few substantive gains in the area of civil rights occurred during the decade. Some of Roosevelt's policies, however, encouraged in part by Mrs. Roosevelt and by reactionary attitudes of some southern politicians to the Democratic Party's attempts to improve conditions for blacks, helped begin "a change in the American racial climate," but one that left blacks "dependent on whites in the government." For instance, Roosevelt prohibited racial discrimination on projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which toward the end of the decade would employ a percentage of blacks proportionately higher than existed in the general population; the Public Works Administration (PWA), under the direction of Harold Ickes, built several integrated housing projects and, in 1936, paid 31 percent of its wages to blacks; a black advisor to the President was appointed in 1933; Roosevelt appointed NAACP attorney William Hastie as the nation's first black federal judge in 1937; the Justice Department created its Civil Rights section in 1939; and seven of Roosevelt's eight choices for the U.S. Supreme Court advocated civil rights for blacks. Furthermore, blacks' life expectancy rose and illiteracy dropped during the decade, and by 1941 the percentage of blacks in non-WPA government jobs was higher than the population as a whole. However, regardless of these gains and of pressures from the Communist party, from the C.I.O, and from blacks themselves, during the thirties little was accomplished in the direction of civil rights other than raising the expectations of many blacks and of enlisting many whites in the cause.[500]

Don't You Want to Be Free? relates the history of blacks in America in five major sections, all related to the verses of the opening song, which sets the tone for the show. The major set pieces on stage are a slave auction block and a lynch rope.[501] The play opens with a young man[502] speaking to the audience about the simplicity of the show and about its major subject: "this show is about what it means to be colored in America" (360).[503] He sings a song about being Negro, from freedom in Africa to slavery in America to sharecropping in the south to blacks' contributions to American music to racial discrimination and lynchings to self-determination (360-361). The musical proceeds to show, in verse, music, dialog, and dance, each of the six verses of this opening song--somewhat loosely, but with a discernible pattern.

The first section of the play deals with blacks in Africa and as slaves in the New World. The first scene shows a boy and a girl in Africa, dressed in bright colors and singing of the glory they once felt about their freedom in the jungle, then they lament the loss of their freedom through slavery, in the white man's "circus of civilization" (361-362). The next scene shows an Overseer selling slaves, who finally join in singing in "a great wave of revolt . . . disguised as a song" (366). The Young Man tells the audience that the lives of great black leaders will continue as inspiration for blacks. Sojourner Truth enters and tells the Young Man to remember those who fought for freedom, and everyone exits, singing "Glory! Hallelujah!" (366-368).

The second section of the play shows blacks after slavery: freed, but still oppressed. A man and a woman enter in old clothes and sing about how they are treated as nothing but "a herd of Negroes." They are the bosses of nothing, and with the Jim Crow laws and the lynchings, they are no better off than before (368-369).

The third section of the play deals with blacks as victims, working hard for little money, denied money they have earned, forced into prostitution, accused of rape, and lynched. The Young Man mentions great leaders--Christ, John Brown, Angelo Herndon--who were killed but did not die. A million more will take their places, he declares, because "You can't kill the working class" (370-372).

The next section of the show deals with the blues--blacks' contributions to American music that arose from deep suffering. Characters sing different kinds of blues: the weary blues, the family blues, the loveless blues, the left-lonesome blues, and the morning-after blues (373-379).

The last section of the play deals with the American blacks in the nineteen-thirties. Many are unemployed because of the Depression or working in demeaning jobs catering to the white man's needs (379-383). When the Young Man tells his mother that he has lost his job, she recites a long poem about how he should not give up hope even though the struggle is hard (383-385). The Harlem riots of 1935 arise because of the way blacks are treated--landlords raise rents, insurance companies will not offer certain policies to blacks, blacks are refused service in Harlem restaurants, stores refuses to hire black clerks, editors refuse to print letters from blacks--amid the repeated refrain, "Harlem is tired." When the Overseer calls the Young Man a radical, a White Worker enters and says that all workers, black or white, are feeling hard times. The riots begin with everyone entering the stage and voicing their complaints, until someone from the audience asks the Young Man if riots will really solve anything. The Young Man suggests a better solution: organize. Organize with other blacks, even organize with white workers, since the white worker's problem is the same, "if only he knew it." "What power in the world can stop us from getting what we want?" the Young man asks, when all workers get together (385-392). The chorus begins singing the final song, advocating unity between blacks and whites to fight for better conditions. The stage directions suggest that audience members are invited to come on stage and sing along, so that "the players and the audience are one" (393).

Hughes never again sounded such an explicit Marxist note in his works, according to Rampersad. The Marxist ending, with the call to organized action, seems to have been tacked on at the end and was not really an integral part of the action in what was essentially a racial, not radical, play.[504]

As a reflection of and stimulus to the leftist movement, Don't You Want to Be Free? dealt with the injustices levied on blacks but focused also on oppressive conditions all workers had to face. The show's call to action at the end, advocating black/white unity, reflected a principal concern of the movement since the early thirties.

As a reflection of and reaction to the workers' theatre movement, the play was able to incorporate many aspects of agitprop, symbolism, and realism, to move freely from place to place and time to time. Its handling of serious matters within the format of a musical had perhaps been influenced by earlier shows and might be an encouragement to future ones.

Don't You Want to Be Free? is organized thematically, every scene focusing on an aspect of racial discrimination. American Black history, from its beginnings to 1937, is reconstructed in such a way as to emphasize the poor treatment afforded blacks in the United States. Don't You Want to Be Free? also has some characteristics of a ritual structure. The use of Negro spirituals, the emphasis on traditional black music, and the double meaning implicit in the pride blacks have for originating the blues and the pain those blues express, take Don't You Want to Be Free? beyond the realm of simple thematic treatment into the spirit of ritual.

The characters in Don't You Want to Be Free? are stereotypical insofar as each of them represent more than just an individual. The Overseer, the insurance man, the editor, and the landlord all represent various manifestations of white prejudice and discrimination--a fact that is reinforced by having those characters all played by the same actor. Even the white worker has no particular personality; he simply recites left-wing dogma regarding unification of black and white workers. The black characters--the young man, the young girl, the parents--all represent blacks as they have been treated throughout American history. None of the characters are given detailed characterization by Hughes; they are clearly meant simply to serve a particular function in his discourse.

Hughes places the different scenes in specific places that have importance to American blacks: Africa, the American south, and New York's Harlem district. Setting the play in these places does not, however, limit the play's relevance for audiences in places other than New York City, as evidenced by the fact that the show was also performed in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Audiences did not have to live in New York to know the significance of Harlem, America's largest black community, and the riots that occurred there in March of 1935, nor did they need ever to have lived in the south to realize the oppressive conditions there. In fact, setting the play in these locations made the play directly significant for all American blacks.

The performance techniques in Don't You Want to Be Free? combine realism, Living Newspaper-style epic theatre with constructivist-style bare-bones scenery, agitprop, and fantasy. Often the characters address the audience directly, as in the opening scene and almost all of the songs. The scenes between the overseer and the young man and between the mother and her son contain elements of realism, counteracted of course by the fact that few realistic props or sets appeared on stage. The young man's encounter with Sojourner Truth combines fantasy with a call to action resembling the agitprop plays of the early thirties. The final scenes of the play are pure agitprop, with a call for all workers, white and black, to unite and claim power over their destinies.

Characteristics of a social movement document can be seen in Don't You Want to Be Free? insofar as the enemy--white Americans of the past, and those of the present who do not believe in the principles of the left-wing as it relates to the rights of black Americans--is painted as evil and oppressive. Previously powerful and domineering, white society deludes itself that its power will last. Even worse, many white workers continue to discriminate against blacks, unaware that both black and white workers are being subjected to the same forms of oppression. Hughes argues for blacks and whites to participate together to overcome their oppressors. Drawing on the useless and devastating effects of the Harlem riots, Hughes offers a better way: teach the white workers that only together will they form a strong enough coalition to win. Mentioning the unions that have already accepted black members into their ranks helps to argue for the audience's participation.

The propaganda in Don't You Want to Be Free? is entirely agitational, with its purpose to unify its audience by depicting conditions of the past and offering a new way for the future. As collective protest, the show tries to urge its audience to remedy conditions by mass action.

Ritual in Don't You Want to Be Free? consists of the use of familiar types of music, reconstructions of historical events, and demonstrations of collective power. Hughes establishes a feeling of communitas with his audience by detailing blacks' common history, using music originated by blacks as a symbol of their solidarity, and helping to fulfill a stabilizing and revitalizing function for those blacks who feel a need for action to reestablish their place in American society.

Don't You Want to Be Free? was able to incorporate Negro spirituals--old favorites--with new lyrics to new tunes (no information exists about who composed the music), but each is set apart from the narrative. They are clearly songs, but each of them focuses on a specific and immediate topic. The lyrics in Don't You Want to Be Free? are based on Hughes's poetry. Primarily serious in tone--never whimsical or humorous--each lyric centers around the feelings of blacks in America. The girl sings of her dream to be free, the boy wanders the roads singing the blues, various feelings are expressed in the blues section, the hotel worker laments his inability to get ahead,[505] the old shoe shiner caters to the white man, the woman going home to Harlem welcomes her chance to return to her own people, the mother urges her children to stand up like free people, and the young man sings of his loyalty to his country. Each of these songs focuses on individual concerns but connects them with the play's theme of oppression. Some have a political statement to make, but some simply try to clarify the picture of what it is like to be black in America. A few of the songs contain specific topical references. For instance, the boy's song to the editor notes that blacks fought in the War of 1812 and the War Between the States, but blacks are still treated like the Scottsboro Boys because of Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, his earlier scene with Sojourner Truth mentions famous abolitionists, who are unable to keep blacks from being treated as "a herd of Negroes," and the Mulatto Girl's song to the boy's body sings of lynchings committed in the south.

An unusual play because of the fact that it was by a black about blacks and because it was a musical, nothing like Don't You Want to Be Free? would be repeated during the period of the workers' theatre movement. The rest of the plays in this study return to concerns evident in the earlier part of the thirties, some of them becoming more assimilated and resembling mainstream theatre, and some appearing to go full circle back to early agitprop.

The music, says a note on p. 13, can be found at the Cultural Department of the American League for Peace and Democracy, New York City Division -- 112 E. 19th St. NYC.

Big Boycott of 1938 appeared in Contemporary Scene, a quarterly anthology of sketches published by the China Aid Society with the assistance of the American League for Peace and Democracy, a vigorous Communist front organization.[506] I find no evidence that the show was ever performed, but its publication suggests that the subject it dealt with was important enough for a Communist-affiliated organization to consider. Japanese planes bombed the American gunboat Panay on a Chinese river on December 12, 1937. The bombing received some attention, but, perhaps because of its remoteness from the U.S., many did not seem to find the incident as significant as events in Europe; only a minority of Americans thought the U.S. government should force Japan to respect American rights in China.[507] Only one full-length musical from the workers' theatre movement dealt with the problem of Japanese aggression (Japan had signed an anti-Comintern pact with Germany in 1936 and moved further into China in 1937),[508] but that show is not available: Maid in Japan, with book by Maurice Stoller and music by Elie Siegmeister. Big Boycott of 1938, in one act, is the workers' theatre's only available musical dealing with the subject.

Big Boycott of 1938 is organized thematically, for the purpose of arousing in the audience a fear and hatred of the Japanese for their aggressive war with China and their anti-Communist alliance with Germany. However, the show approaches the subject with a style reminiscent of early agitprop, although its use of song reflects the workers' theatre's increasing interest in using music as part of their productions. The Japanese are not the only ones being accused, of course, in keeping with the major themes of the workers' movement. American industrialists and manufacturers, anti-New Dealers, importers, owners of businesses, and the plain American consumer are all open to criticism for their patronage of Japanese products, the most apparent of which is silk.

The characters in Big Boycott of 1938 are all stereotypes, functioning in the play as representatives of a particular class or attitude, Only the members of the chorus, the announcer, and the salesgirl represent the reasonable point of view, in terms of the show's aim: stop buying Japanese goods. The salesgirl twice sings a song about how she refuses to wear silk stockings even though her work requires her to, stating in her reprise that a "pair of silken stockings put a bullet into that gun" (12), while the chorus urges the audience to "slip a ban on Japan" (10, 12).[509] The "bourgeois" attitude that many leftists felt about the American middle class shows itself in the attitude of the woman who walks on stage by accident, who would rather play a game of bridge than fight to control evil in the world, and in the attitude of the woman shopper who fails to "see the danger in a little piece of silk" and feels that it is none of America's business what the Japanese are doing in China (5-6, 8-9). The store owner, manufacturer, and importer represent American business interests who, as always in the leftist theatre of the thirties, care little for anything other than making and keeping money. The importer states what the left wing felt was the attitude of business: he hates to hear the cries of the "raped Chinese," and he does not like Mussolini or Hitler, but "they've all such lovely gold" (10). In the end, say the woman shopper and the importer, no harm is done by buying and selling silk (9, 11). The Japanese industrialist, who reappears on stage as a militarist, represents the American left-wing's view of Japanese imperialism as a means to achieve military superiority. He callously kills the American consumer, all the while claiming that he is "very careful to put Chinese in front of gun" (12).

The performance techniques in Big Boycott of 1938 are presentational, half musical comedy and half epic theatre. Realism is never attempted or even considered as a means of communicating the message of the show, and the audience can never have any question that they are watching theatre. For instance, the woman who wanders on stage refers to a show called "I'd Rather be Tight"; this reference is a self-reflective technique that Feuer suggests occurred often in Hollywood musicals of the thirties: a reminder that the audience is watching theatre, and that other theatre is also affecting their lives.[510] Shakespeare used the technique often, referring to the events on stage as part of a theatrical performance, and in Big Boycott of 1938 the self-reference of the text is reinforced by a reference to a show that every one had heard about. I'd Rather Be Right opened on November 2, 1937: with George M. Cohan, the great song-and-dance man, playing Franklin D. Roosevelt, the great (or, to many, the not-so-great) President, and mildly ridiculing the Supreme Court battles and the fireside chats of the President. I'd Rather Be Right was a musical that may have seemed to many a light-hearted satire on the American political system, but to many leftists became "propaganda for indifference to politics," as was earlier stated about Let 'Em Eat Cake. This is, of course, what the authors of the Big Boycott of 1938 wanted, since the message of the play is paramount. The "prolog" of the show also resembles vaudeville: a man and woman display a woman's "nude" leg, which they say should be covered, but not with Japanese silk. They appeal to the audience to avoid buying Japanese silk and to listen to the rest of the show, but, if nothing else, at least they have seen "a gosh-darned pretty leg" (7). The leftist theatre at least realized the attraction of comedic and racy entertainment, and actually used it some of its work. By 1938, the leftist theatre appeared ready to use burlesque and vaudeville techniques to attract and maintain its audience's attention, while at the same time ridiculing those techniques of the commercial theatre.

Big Boycott of 1938 demonstrates characteristics of a social movement because it vilifies its enemies through ridicule and because it puts into the mouths of the anti-boycott characters the words the leftist movement imagines they say to each other. The National Labor Relations Board (N.L.R.B.) and unions are developments the capitalists do not approve of because profits become smaller, and they wish someone like Mayor Hague of Jersey City, a reactionary and active anti-New Deal democrat, would come to the rescue (9). In an attempt to provide a sense of urgency, the play brings on a Japanese industrialist, who wears a silk hat, carries a machine gun, and calls for the death of the "neutrals" (12). The play implies that something must be done immediately to keep the Japanese under control, for if allowed to continue their present actions they may begin to attack us all. The only way to take action against Japan, as private citizens, is to boycott Japanese products and affect it economically.

The type of propaganda in Big Boycott of 1938 is agitative; although most of the audience most likely sympathized with the play's concerns already, many were probably in the same situation as the salesgirl: they may have had to wear silk hose for their jobs. The year 1938 was one of increasing prosperity in which the poverty of the Depression seemed to be subsiding, and many people would have wanted the luxury of silk stockings that they could not afford before. Big Boycott of 1938 tries to convince them that their luxury helps the Japanese in their aggression and that the only way to stop them--short of putting the force of the U.S. military in their way, a prospect that was not forthcoming--was to boycott their products.

Ritualistically, Big Boycott of 1938 interprets recent events in such a way as to reinforce the correctness of the left wing's stand on major political issues, both foreign and domestic. The boycott that is recommended becomes a show of collective power and purpose--even the common worker can have an effect on world affairs--and thus helps to establish a spirit of communitas.

The lyrics sung by the businessmen in Big Boycott of 1938 are all satiric, mocking the attitudes of the capitalists, simplifying and clarifying their reactionary point of view. The lyrics of the salesgirl and the chorus attempt to emphasize the power of the common workers and spur them on to take action. Emphasizing primarily political concerns, the lyrics make only a few specific topical references, to such things as Woolworth's (a store that apparently still buys Japanese silk stockings), the National Labor Relations Board, Mayor Hague, Mussolini, Hirohito, Hitler, and, of course, unions. I have not been able find the music by Saul Aarons, but it appears that the lyrics were not set to popular tunes but to original music.

Big Boycott of 1938 is a crude musical to appear so late in the thirties, but it seems indicative of the problem the workers' theatre may have had in finding good left wing musical material. The next musical to be promoted by the workers' theatre had to be found outside of the United States and its first performance in the U.S. was in Philadelphia, not New York City; its concerns seem so general that it can hardly be called a workers' musical at all.

The script for this show does not exist; however, the copyrighted music and lyrics (1939 by the New Theatre League) can be found in the Special Music Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

Written for the Montreal New Theatre in 1939, We Beg to Differ became one of the New Theatre League's most popular musicals during the end of the decade. As the first full-length musical to be published by the League,[511] co-lyricist and composer Mel Tolkin felt it was just topical material and not in any way "leftist." He had little knowledge of or sympathy with the New Theatre League, but felt, rather, that the workers' theatre movement "was just a theatrical outlet." His only connection to the League, in his view, was that it "published something of mine." We Beg to Differ was Tolkin's first foray into the theatre; he says, "that was when I discovered I was a songwriter."[512] His attitude about his show for the New Theatre League, that it was just topical stuff, represents a view I feel many must have had during the late thirties, when left-wing and liberal views appeared so similar.

The show was written by Mel Tolkin and Reuben Davis. Tolkin wrote many of the songs by himself, and on others Davis contributed lyrics. Davis wrote almost all of the sketches according to Tolkin. Tolkin also told me that Reuben Davis and Reuben Ship are the same person.[513] It seems likely that Ship did write at least some of the lyrics or sketches.[514] In any case, Davis did not write all the lyrics, since some of the songs found in Lincoln Center's Special Music Collection (for instance, the title song) are by Tolkin alone.

The Montreal New Theatre announced its "original musical revue" as promising to be Canada's Pins and Needles.[515] When the show first opened in the U.S. on December 14, 1939, as the Philadelphia New Theatre's first full-length revue,[516] Ernest Pendrell of Daily Worker reviewed the production. He described the show as having nineteen scenes dealing with capitalism, unemployment, Japanese militarists, imperialistic war, the Saturday Evening Post, M.G.M., Paramount, non-union products, 20th Century Fox, Martin Dies and the House Un-American Activities Committee, swing, and White Guard Russians. Pendrell noted a few skits specifically. A "Personal Friend of the Czar," who wanted the director of the 1939 World's Fair and former New York Commissioner of Police Grover Whalen to erect a White Guard pavilion at the fair, told how he escaped from the Soviets and ended up at the Saturday Evening Post: "It was either Lenin or I." Martin Dies of the House Un-American Activities Committee interviewed the Marx Brothers, or vice versa, prompting Chico to proclaim, "Well I'm satisfied that he's a citizen of the United States, but is the United States?" There is some satire against the "President's friend, the source close to the foreign office, the official spokesman." Imperialist war, said Pendrell, is no war for humanity in this revue--just imperialist war--and the company asks for action against it in the finale. Pendrell expressed gratitude to the New Theatre of Philadelphia who "worked against unusual hardship to bring us a left-wing revue." Pendrell went on to comment that the importance of the show lies in the revue form and its popularity in our history. The revue is a form of popular entertainment, he suggested, that holds our morals and political instincts up to scrutiny, and this is one of Philadelphia's first left-wing revues.[517]

Bern Maxwell of Daily Worker reviewed the show when it opened in New York in February 1940. He called it a "topical and tuneful revue" done by the former Allaben Players, a group that began at Allaben Acres during the summer. Songs included "It Must be Union Made," a production number featuring "the first labor-angle strip tease, injecting the classic burlesque routine with new progressive meaning"; "What's in a Name," in which the Marx Brothers investigate Mr. Dies; "A Fair Day's Work," a good-natured ribbing of the 1940 World's Fair; and "Rasputin's Song," a musical interlude, sung by a pseudo "Mike Romanoff" character. Cyril Endfield directed, Davis did lyrics and sketches, and Tolkin did music and piano. Maxwell commented that Endfield, a New Theatre school teacher and director, had done the show in Montreal and Philadelphia, where the show packed the house.[518]

In March, Daily Worker again reviewed the production, "an intimate revue running slightly over one hour" performed by the New Theatre Revue Troupe and produced under the auspices of the New Theatre League. The review said that a new number had been added that weekend: "All's Well in the U.S.A.," written by Mel Tolkin and lyricist Reuben Ship. The review also noted that Jerry Jaraslow, a comedian of the social theatre, was added to the troupe, which had begun as the Allaben Players.[519]

We Beg to Differ, as a revue similar in form to Pins and Needles, has a thematic organizational structure. No copy of the sketches is available, but most of the music and lyrics from the show are available at Lincoln Center. From looking at the program, it appears that We Beg to Differ was a series of sketches and songs, none connected with the others except in a general theme. However, the theme was not as specific nor as pointed as it was even in Pins and Needles, which was able to assimilate leftist ideas into the American mainstream. The themes of We Beg to Differ were stated clearly in Pendrell's review of the show: it was against capitalism, fascism, reactionism, and isolationism, and for organized labor and the U.S.S.R. The anti-isolationist stance of We Beg to Differ makes clear it was not overtly Communist since that party still opposed American entry into the war in Europe. While the show attacks appeasement--"sitters on the fence"--in its last song,[520] it also condemns the rich Astors, the red baiting of Dies, the concentration camps of Germany, the federal budget cuts of arts projects, and the conservativism of Hoovers and Hearsts, so the workers' theatre published and publicized it. Clearly interventionist, the show represents a leftist but not party-line Communist vision.

The characters in We Beg to Differ are of various classes depending on the sketch. The capitalists and the rich and the politicians are depicted as foolish and insensitive, but the workers are depicted as oppressed yet committed to make a better world. The settings in the show vary, but all are located in the United States, except perhaps for the song that takes place on the beach during vacation. The settings, in other words, seem to play little part and have little significance in the meaning of the pieces in the show. The performance techniques in We Beg to Differ remain constant throughout the show. No concern is made for realism, and all the songs and sketches appear to have been done in a presentational style, often with direct address to the audience.

By this time in 1939, the workers' theatre movement had all but disappeared and had become assimilated into commercial theatre. We Beg to Differ was primarily just "topical stuff," as Tolkin has said. The only real enemies in the show are the American reactionaries, exemplified by the Dies Committee, the D.A.R., the G.O.P., and the K.K.K.; foreign fascists, such as Mussolini and Hitler; and appeasers, such as Chamberlain. The show does little to argue for group participation, except for the last song, which warns that it is later than we think to fight the evils of fascism and reactionism. The title song and "Slings and Arrows" try also to urge the audience to take an active role in influencing world events.[521] "It Must be Union Made" and "The New Slant on Love" remind the audience of the importance of supporting the union label, the former consisting of the "labor-angle striptease" that Maxwell of Daily Worker mentioned, in which a young woman would rather "wear last year's tan" or "resort to a fan" rather than wear clothes that do not show the union label;[522] "Let's Spend an Evening in the Park" reminds the audience that the cost of entertainment is prohibitively high, referring to, among other things, cabarets (perhaps the Cabaret TAC's?) that were so popular with well-off liberals;[523] and "Having a Wonderful Time" and "On the Isle of Boola-Boola" show the fact that workers have no real respite from the drudgery of their jobs and the reality of world events.[524] "Rasputin" simply mocks the pre-Revolution Russian aristocracy and its frivolous lifestyle.[525] "Awake and Swing" and "And the Angels Swing" seem to be capitalizing on the swing craze that was sweeping the country; the former contains no social comment, whereas the latter seems to suggest something about the plight of song writers during a period when a craze becomes so popular: you had better write swing music or else no one will pay to listen to it.[526]

The propaganda in We Beg to Differ is quite mild, and has as its purpose to ridicule reactionaries and fascists and to show sympathy with the plight of the worker. There seems to be little attempt to establish a spirit of communitas with the audience, except insofar as some of the songs urge the audience to take specific group action, thus helping to stabilize and revitalize what had become a weakened movement.

The lyrics in We Beg to Differ are primarily comic and satiric, but some poignancy comes through on "On the Isle of Boola-Boola," "Having a Wonderful Time," and "Let's Spend an Evening in the Park," while bitterness characterizes the final song. All of the songs were original and liberal, and vaguely left-wing, which may have been one of the main things that prompted the New Theatre League to publicize the show and publish it as its first musical. The lyrics emphasize personal concerns affected by social conditions, and their light-hearted approach to the problems of labor and the worker made We Beg to Differ a welcome success for the New Theatre League and for a workers' theatre that was attempting to become accepted as a legitimate theatrical outlet.

"The John Lenthier Troupe on Tour," New Theatre News 1, no. 5 (December 1939): 12-15, incorporates the script of Middleman; this article is reprinted in Taylor, 172-177.

Goldstein says that Middleman, whose author's name was never divulged in print, was a ten-minute piece about rising prices featuring a pair of pants and explaining the reasons for their high price, and that it won first prize in a contest held by the John Lenthier Troupe. However, he says, the play resembles nothing if not the earliest sketches of the Workers' Laboratory Theatre and Prolet-Buehne: "With this troupe the radical theatre seemed to have come full circle."[527]

According to an article in New Theatre News, the John Lenthier Troupe was the mobile unit of the Let Freedom Ring Company, named for an actor in Newsboy from the Boston New Theatre who had died fighting for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War.[528] For its fifth summer season beginning April 25, 1939, the Troupe presented its program of ballads, skits, and short plays in Philadelphia and Chicago before moving on to California, where during the summer it played weekends in the Imperial Valley in San Francisco, San Joaquin Valley, and Kern County. During October, the Troupe played government migratory workers' camps throughout California.

Because like most new theatres the Troupe needed material, particularly material suitable for the audience of agricultural workers it was trying to reach, it ran a contest for material, with Albert Bein, Bill Robson, and Will Geer as judges. Middleman was chosen the winner by actual performance, rather than simply by a reading, and was played at a Grapes of Wrath party in Bakersfield, California.

The first regular performance by the Troupe, along with a new group of ballads, was given in Indio, California, in the middle of date country. In Kern County in October, during a cotton strike, new ballads were written for the show. The John Lenthier Troupe wanted to call attention to the fact that the TAC Cabaret material did not interest the migrant workers much; it seemed too sophisticated. They liked songs and ballads and parodies of popular songs that were simple and direct. The play Middleman was thus printed in New Theatre News in the hopes that other workers' theatre groups would show the play, performed with "sufficient precision and deftness." The Troupe hoped to continue its work every summer. "At first reading it [Middleman] may seem impossibly naive" to Broadway-conditioned theatre groups, but "this slight sketch can be tremendously effective," even for experienced audiences, according to the author of this article, but especially effective for audiences of farmers and workers (174). The article then goes on to print the script of Middleman.

The entire play consists of a narrator describing the activities of a farmer, a tailor, and a middleman who mime actions on stage. She introduces the piece as a song that is appropriate to the idea that some people have property and some do not, that some have more than they need and some need more than they have. Since this is introduced as a song, perhaps the entire play, and not just the final song, was accompanied by music or some parts of the show were sung. The actions on stage show the farmer and the tailor getting bilked by the middleman, who controls a bridge separating the two, to such an extent that the farmer ends up with no potatoes and the tailor with no pants, having given most of them to the middleman. Finally, the farmer and the tailor work together: after all, says the narrator, "Is there anything Un-American about that? Is there anything Thomas Jefferson , or George Washington, or Abraham Lincoln wouldn't like about that?" (175). The show ends with a "Concluding Chorus" about Uncle Sam, bankers, oilmen, and merchants forming unions (who "made a hell of a prof-fit"), and encourages the audience to join newly-formed unions and cooperatives of farmers, cottonpickers, and other workers (176-177).

In a Times article about Will Geer and his activities, Geer discussed his travels for the last three summers--1937, 1938, 1939--touring with what the article calls "his little company." In Indio, California, he was presenting a show for campers in which "the consumer literally loses his pants to the middleman." Popcorn was used to simulate snow for the shivering actor, and when some of it went into the audience, children left their seats to eat it. "Sounds funny," said Geer. "You know, they were hungry."[529] The narrator, in fact, refers directly to the audience and its poverty during the skit: she acknowledges that the audience might be laughing when the characters have no pants, but suggests that "I'll bet some of you fellows out there don't have such very good pants yourself" (175).

Middleman, with its lack of sophistication, would probably not have survived in New York or other large cities, but the farm workers were apparently affected by its simple story and presentation. Organized around the framework of storytelling and mime, the written script gives little indication of what the actual performances might have been like. The use of popcorn to simulate snow, which the Times says was used in the show, suggests that the John Lenthier Troupe was attempting to develop a true theatre for the people, using simple stories and plots, simple sets and costumes, and visual storytelling techniques. Organized causally, the story outlines a simple exchange of goods as it would occur in the typical capitalist economic system; organized thematically, the entire show has only one point to make about the corruption of the system; and organized ritualistically, Middleman uses an event familiar to the audience to bring home its point.

The characters in the play are representative of members of the working class--the class that produces goods--but both the farmer and the tailor could have been replaced with other workers without any loss of meaning to the play. The location of the play is also purposefully unclear, to give the impression that this type of corrupt capitalism could and does happen wherever the workers are not given control over the goods they produce.

Middleman's performance techniques could be adapted to almost any situation for any audience, within certain limitations. My reading of the play has it being performed primarily as a farce, except for the rousing and militant ending song. However, the show could be performed quite seriously, with a great deal of pathos. Or it could combine farce with dead-pan seriousness. The narrator addresses the audience directly and even tries to involve them in the story by asking them questions about what they would do if placed in that situation; the situation for each audience would be somewhat different and the performance techniques would most likely differ as well.

Since migrant farmworkers in California were a disorganized group, Middleman had to argue in some way for group participation so that the ending song would have its intended effect. The enemy--the middleman, and, by extension, capitalism--is portrayed as simultaneously powerful and vulnerable, powerful because he manages to get everything of material value from the farmer and the tailor and vulnerable because when the farmer and the tailor unite they can overcome the middleman. This simple concept was the most important element of the show and was intended to help the farmworkers realize that they could have some degree of legitimate power if only they would organize. The fact that the show was performed before poor laborers provides a sense of urgency--many of them probably did not, as the narrator suggests, have good clothes or warm shelter--and commitment to change comes from the realization of the middleman's actions. In fact, this seems to have been one of the reasons some members of the John Lenthier Troupe instituted a summer tour of migrant workers' camps in the first place: as an unsophisticated and unschooled group unfamiliar with the workers' theatre movement around the country, the migrant farmworkers constituted a ready-made audience who would allow the Troupe to go back to the most basic elements of political theatre.

The propaganda in Middleman was agitational, with its purpose to depict the workings of the capitalist system and to exhort the farmworkers to fight for better conditions by joining together. Although Middleman depicts a situation that must be widespread and inevitable in any capitalist system, the only solution offered is collective protest--join a union and a cooperative.

As ritual, Middleman summarizes the development of the concept of private property and commerce during the narrator's introduction, and reconstructs much of recent history in a general way with its plot, but the use of characters and situations familiar to the audience establish a commonality that almost reaches the level of communitas. The show attempts to show a change in the social order--the farmers' and the cottonpickers' unions are compared to the oilmen's and the bankers' "unions" and are implied to be as strong and powerful and as "American" as Uncle Sam himself. The cooperation between the tailor and the farmer constitutes nothing that great democratic leaders of the past would not approve of, the show suggests. This helps to revitalize and stabilize the audience by reinforcing the idea that protesting for change is a particularly American thing to do. Thus, collective protest, seen previously as something leftist, is presented as an activity accepted by the American way of life.

The only song lyric in the script that is presented as a song--the entire script may have been sung or accompanied by song--is the "Concluding Chorus," which reemphasizes the idea of unionization and collective action. The final chorus also urges the audience to take specific action to remedy their situation. I do not know whether the music for the song was original or whether the lyrics were set to a tune that was already popular, but the reference the lyrics make to the associated farmers' union and to the "decent pay ($1.25)" that the cottonpickers are asking for indicate that the show attempted to appeal to the farmworkers in part by mentioning events with which they were familiar (177).

I have found only two primary sources--New Theatre News and the New York Times--that mention this show, and the Times does not even mention it by name but instead refers to it only as it relates to Will Geer, who was becoming more famous for his work on Broadway. The show seemed to have had little apparent influence on the workers' theatre movement; readership of New Theatre News was more limited than that of New Theatre magazine,[530] so only a limited number of people would have heard of Middleman at all. Even so, the author of the New Theatre News article acknowledges that most people would find the show too unsophisticated for the cultivated worker audience. As an indication of the direction in which the workers' theatre would go, however--directly opposite to the slick sophistication of We Beg to Differ--Middleman shows a move back to the early days of the workers' theatre. The last three shows examined in this study continue this gradual regression.

An uncopyrighted and unpublished typescript of this show is available at the Special Music Collection of the New York City Public Library at Lincoln Center.

The Life in a Day of a Secretary won the prize by the New York Joint Council of the United Office and Professional Workers, "a Communist party stronghold, for a short piece on any phase of the life of office workers." Goldstein says that the union got "a touching pastiche of solos, duets, and choral passages on the grueling, unfulfilling daily routine of the typical office girl, but not a work destined for repeated performances."[531]

In 1940, Lou Cooper, director, pianist, and conductor of the Flatbush Arts Theatre, (variously called the Flatbush Arts Players and the Flatbush Arts Group) said his group was formed in 1938 with three people and has since performed for approximately 75,000 people. The Life in a Day of a Secretary, "the best of our sketches" according to Cooper, was performed at the St. Felix Theatre in Brooklyn; at Vassar College on a double bill with The Cradle Will Rock, at which they recorded the performance; and for two weekends on the same double bill at the United Office and Professional Workers of America, Local #16. New Theatre News in December 1939 announced that the Flatbush Arts Group would open its fall season of 1940 with The Cradle Will Rock and The Life in a Day of a Secretary, a "music play" that won first prize in a New Theatre League contest but has yet been produced by too few groups.[532] Cooper felt that the best results with revues come when serious numbers are carefully balanced with satirical sketches,[533] which does not account for his opinion of The Life in a Day of a Secretary, since much of the show seems so heavy-handed and depressing.

The Life in a Day of a Secretary contains a series of songs, connected by a chorus, about a secretary's life in and out of the office. The show has linear yet non-plot construction: it consists of a series of vignettes expressed through song. Characterization is limited, but in moving from hour to hour in the day of a secretary each individual character is specifically developed.

The songs of the musical, and thus its entire "plot," move smoothly from one to another, often by means of a "chorus" that takes on various characters. The chorus is permanent and the action continuous; individual scenes evolve from the chorus and return to it. The Life in a Day of a Secretary is organized both thematically and ritualistically. Each scene illustrates the theme of endless drudgery, fruitless desires, and numbing poverty, all brought about by an oppressive capitalist system that keeps the workers suffering and the rich luxuriating. Each scene builds from previous scenes, culminating in an expression of hatred for the laborious emptiness and a call to action to remedy the situation. Ritualistically, the show presents scenes that its audience, members of the United Office and Professional Workers Union, would have been familiar with; many may even have experienced during the day what they saw in The Life in a Day of a Secretary that evening. The show does not leave audience members with a sense of resignation about their plight, however, since it tries to uplift them and offer them a way to combat their grueling and unfulfilling lives. Every song leading up to the exhortative finale, though, reminds the audience how miserable their lives are, and the power of the final song to lift the audience's spirits after seeing so much drudgery must be open to question (22).[534]

The characters in The Life in a Day of a Secretary are principally the common workers--secretaries, painters, salesmen--contrasted with the bosses and the rich. The bosses are represented by Mr. Clive, and the rich and leisurely diners at Longchamps represent the lifestyle the secretaries wish for but realize they will never have (6 and 10).

The Life in a Day of a Secretary takes place in New York City, a huge, impersonal, and bustling city whose subways and Broadway houses and dance halls and myriad hotels and cramped buildings emphasize the relentlessness of working every day in an uninteresting and unrewarding job. I have found no evidence that it was performed anywhere other than New York City; not even Philadelphia or Newark saw a production, and it seems limited in its capacity to be transferred to less urban areas.

The performance techniques in The Life in a Day of a Secretary make it somewhat different from the other musicals in this study. The fluid action and important function served by members of the chorus, who become subway riders or diners or people on the street as the need arises, and who comment in song on the action of the play, give the play both a classic and a modern feel. The chorus helps each scene to move smoothly into the next, establishing the scenes and situations so that realistic sets are not needed to suggest changes of locale. The chorus involves itself in all aspects of the show and becomes the consciousness of the audience members.

As a document of a social movement, The Life in a Day of a Secretary shows some of the characteristics of a movement in its declining stage. The show attempts to vilify its enemies--capitalism and the power of the bosses--by its depiction of a typical office worker's day. The sense of urgency and commitment expected from such a document, however, seems dissipated by the emphasis on the negative and depressing aspects of workers' lives. The only argument for group participation comes in the final song, but its acknowledgement that the show has presented only "life without glory" makes the call to action weaker than most of the other musicals examined in this study. Unlike Don't You Want to Be Free? and even We Beg to Differ, The Life in a Day of a Secretary spends little time emphasizing the actions workers could take to improve their lives; instead, the show focuses on conditions that are so hard to improve.

The propaganda in The Life in a Day of a Secretary was agitational, intended to depict cruel conditions and to exhort the audience to take action. Although the general theme of the show seems to be one of collective protest, at least as suggested by the final song, The Life in a Day of a Secretary also emphasizes individual protest. The second-to-last scene, which involves a boy and girl who are so tired that they cannot even romance, focuses on the individual lives of workers and how they are affected: he arrived late for their date because he had to work late; she has to get up in the morning to get to work on time (15-17 and 20).

The chorus, with its repeated refrains and its comments on the action, constitute the most ritualistic aspect of The Life in a Day of a Secretary, and it helps the show to approach a spirit of communitas. But the chorus does not quite succeed because the subject of the show comes so close to depression and resignation. The show advocates a change in the social and economic order but makes no specific proposals for change. Thus, The Life in a Day of a Secretary may stabilize its audience in reaffirming its view of the relationship of work to their lives, but the show does little to revitalize the workers' commitment to action.

The lyrics in The Life in a Day of a Secretary contrast the images usually associated with the big city with images that the workers see every day. Stockbrokers and bankers are contrasted with roach-infested cold-water flats (1); the modern subway becomes a zoo with people packed in like cattle (2-3); the office is shown as a collection of machines (4); the luxury liner of workers' dreams is contrasted with the mundane office water cooler (12); and Broadway, the Great White Way, is compared to drunks in hotel rooms and chorus girls coming home in the dark (18-20). All of these images add up to "secondhand lives," in the view of The Life in a Day of a Secretary, rather than in vivid, significant lives that have something to contribute to the world. Written to original music by George Kleinsinger, the lyrics stress personal concerns as they relate to social and economic conditions. As such, The Life in a Day of a Secretary keeps in spirit with the attitudes of the popular front period but is less militant and more pessimistic than other workers' musicals of the thirties. The show contrasts sharply with the last two workers' musicals examined in this study: The Life in a Day of a Secretary's simple view of the plight of the worker places little emphasis on important world events; the next two musicals focus almost exclusively on world events.

An uncopyrighted and unpublished typescript of Peace in Our Time is available in the Theatre Collection of the New York City Public Library at Lincoln Center.

Peace in Our Time is an example of an anti-war show that the New Theatre League pressed upon its troupes, according to Goldstein.[535] In 1940, and much of the way through 1941, the Communist party stance, and therefore that of the League, was anti-interventionist, primarily because of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact of August 1939.[536] The "reasonableness" of the popular front was replaced by revolutionary rhetoric and militancy, seeing the Allied cause as imperialist and trying to keep the U.S. out of Europe's war.[537] Some popular slogans for the movement were "Keep America out of the War," "Peace...it IS wonderful," "We ain't knittin' for Britain," "Footlights Across America for Peace," and a phrase that appears in this musical, typical of the spirit of the times, "The Yanks Are Not Coming."[538] The vehement anti-fascism that characterized many levels of society and that helped make the leftist movement seem more a part of the mainstream of American attitudes changed to a vehement anti-war stance. For instance, Lem Ward, a director for the Federal Theatre Project and member of the executive board of the New Theatre League, expressed this change of attitude well in November 1939. He feared that anti-Nazi plays and movies (he had just seen Confessions of a Nazi Spy) would stir up sentiment that would send us into war. The progressive theatre should not fight fascism by singling out only the "outward manifestations" of fascism as they are seen in Europe, but also fascism wherever it appears--"under Deladier, under Chamberlain or Hitler or here at home in Mr. Dies' chamber." The chief job of the League and the progressive theatre, Ward declared, was to keep America out of the war, and, for that reason, anti-Nazi plays that were good six months ago were still good but should not be performed: the plays had not changed, but the world had.[539]

Peace in Our Time was a series of playlets, sketches, and songs that the League put together to stress its new anti-war stance.[540] I have found nothing to substantiate that the show was actually performed in its entirety, although some individual songs or sketches ("The Yanks Are Not Coming," for instance) definitely were. Written during the "pact period" of 1940, the League offered the show to its theatres, perhaps along with "peace kits" of other various songs and sketches.[541] Peace in Our Time is the workers' musical that most closely resembles a peace kit. Its disorganized structure--a variety of different forms of entertainment by different authors--seems to reflect the disorganized politics and policies of the leftist movement during this time, representing leftists trying to reconcile their pacifism with non-party-line concerns about containing the fascist threat. We Beg to Differ was the last of the workers' musicals to be written primarily by the same team of writers. Peace in Our Time and the next musical, V for Victory, are as disorganized as the leftist movement was.

Peace in Our Time has thematic, rather than causal or ritualistic, organization. Each of the skits and songs tries to reaffirm in the audience the anti-war stance advocated by the Communist party and thereby of the workers' theatre movement and, to some extent, the popular front attitude that was widespread in the United States at this time. The skits and songs were apparently thrown together as the New Theatre League tried to find material to express its anti-war stance, since the various selections in the show come from different sources.

The first scene is comprised entirely of a song by Mike Quinn set to the tune of "Finiculi, Finicula" called "The People Now are Getting Sore."[542] It spouts a typical anti-war stance from a leftist perspective:

The next sketch is "International Hookup." The skit parodies a radio show used for the purpose of militaristic propaganda (2;1-8;7). The radio show also includes a section for children, during which is told the story of Harold the Fascist and the little rabbit named Peter, the democrat. Harold goes around annexing everyone, until Uncle John Ferdinand gets jealous and decides that "if there's any more carving up to be done, we will all do it," to which Harold responds, "Nuts, Neville" (6;5-7;6).[544] This skit resembles the best of agitprop, and was adapted from a skit by the Theatre of Action. Points are clearly made, directed at the audience; satire, some quite bitter, plays an important part; and the anti-fascist/capitalist stance ties right in with the anti-war stance. This skit blames war on the same things the left criticized during the First World War: greed, capitalist oppression, and imperialism.

The third sketch consists of a recitation of Mark Twain's satirical "A War Prayer," a satirical burlesque of a bedtime prayer. The poem prays that God will help tear the enemy apart, destroy their children, and desolate their land. An effective and chilling recitation would make clear the danger and horror of believing that God was always on our side in our battles (9;n.p.).

The next skit consists of another poem, this time about poison gas, made for war by workers to destroy workers in other countries. An indictment of the capitalist war machine, the poem urges the audience to realize the consequences of working for the military industry (9;n.p.).

The next sketch is an "Anti-War Scene" from Odets's Waiting for Lefty, in which a worker refuses to spy on a fellow worker, even with the promise of a significant raise in pay, and who, when fired, punches the boss in the mouth. The scene shows the bravery of the independent worker in the face of external political pressures and encourages audience members to act responsibly to discourage war and a war attitude (10;1-13;4).[545]

The last piece of material in Peace in Our Time is another poem, "The Yanks Are Not Coming," by Mike Quinn, who also wrote the first poem in the show. In an introduction to the poem, the purpose of including it in the show is made clear--"to make this slogan the slogan of all American labor." Again, greed for profit is blamed as the cause of war, and the audience is reinforced in their belief that "we'll never go again" (14;n.p.).

The class of the characters in Peace in Our Time does not seem particularly relevant in the satiric skits or the bitter songs; only in the scene from Odets's Waiting for Lefty does the economic class of the characters seem relevant, since the worker loses his job at the hands of the boss. The tone in the other selections suggests that the audience is quite aware that they are watching a number of anti-war sketches and that the characters will not be realistic. The settings of the various selections, similarly, make little significant difference to the meaning of the show.

The performance styles vary according to the needs of the particular selection. "International Hookup" represents a regression back to agitprop, and was even based on material from the Theatre of Action, the renamed Workers' Laboratory Theatre. As such, the characters are caricatures, parodying national and international figures and mocking those who favor war with Germany and Italy. In this scene, the characters speak directly to the audience during much of the action. The only other dramatic scene is the "Anti-War Scene" by Odets. This is a realistic scene in which the fourth wall is observed.

Peace in Our Time blames the war mentality on the same thing as the Communists always had: capitalism. The enemy, those who want to fight a war, is seen as powerful and unwilling to relinquish control, while at the same time is viewed as conquerable if those who are against war band together. The lyric by Stephan Faber, "Gas," both blames the capitalist system and urges the workers to join together to fight their oppressors.[546] Blaming the gas, and by extension the possibility of war, on the rich who own the means of production and the judges and courts that will interpret laws in their favor, the lyrics go on to point out that the gas, made by workers, will only be made to hurt other workers. "The Yanks Are Not Coming" and "The People Now Are Getting Sore" make the same point: the private tills will grow while young workers are forced to commit "money-murder" (13;n.p.). The only solution both these selections propose, however, is joining together and refusing to support the war. They increase a sense of urgency and commitment to strong anti-war belief, but their arguments for group participation in an anti-war movement appear weak.

The propaganda in Peace in Our Time was integrative--it served the purpose of reaffirming the Communist party's anti-war stance to audiences of the popular front. Accusing capitalists of fomenting a war atmosphere, the show attempted to increase individuals' sense of anger and their desire to enter into collective protest.

As ritual, Peace in Our Time does not succeed. Its disjointed structure does not lend itself to a feeling of communitas and does not really display a change in the social order. The Odets scene shows how the ideal popular front individual would act if placed in a situation of supporting the war machine, and the other selections condemn the idea of war, but the show only slightly revitalizes and stabilizes the anti-war movement.

The lyrics in Peace in Our Time are of one kind: anti-capitalist and anti-war. "The People Now Are getting Sore" is set to a familiar tune, but "Gas" and "The Yanks Are Not Coming" may not have been set to music at all.[547] None of the lyrics refer to specific current events or historical events or persons, but each refers in a general way to the growing war in Europe. For instance, "Gas" mentions specific places where gas is being manufactured, and "The Yanks Are Not Coming" refers to British pounds, German marks, and French francs, but all of the songs take a view that is more generally against war than specifically against this particular war.

Peace in Our Time came at a time that was unique, an anomaly for the workers' theatre and the Communist party, a time when the Communists and the workers' theatre supported Russia's alliance, or non-aggression agreement, with Germany. By June 1941, Russia had been invaded by the Germans and the isolationist anti-war stance changed abruptly to one of enthusiastic support for the Allies against the Axis powers. The next, and last, musical in this study reflects that new attitude, a return to the attitude that had been held before Russia's agreement with Germany.

A copyrighted and published version of this show is available at the Forty-Second Street branch of the New York City Public Library.

V for Victory reflects the change in the League's view when Hitler invaded the USSR; it insisted that American forces join the Allies against the Nazis. I again have no evidence that this show was performed in its entirety, but it was still offered in the League's play catalog as late as 1942. The "`V' Collection" was described as "fifty-seven pages of anti-Nazi skits, etc., with two plays by Brecht."[548] That description fits the published version of V for Victory. Apparently the individual pieces were expected to be performed individually, not necessarily all together: the title page mentions that this is a "book of skits."[549]

V For Victory is organized thematically; its varied sections and the fact that the sketches may not have been performed all at one time keep it from having a causal structure and diminish its ability to function ritualistically. Some of the sketches and songs may serve ritualistic functions or may have causal structure, but the complete work, seen as a whole, relates its individual sections thematically. There are two major themes in V For Victory: on the one hand, the skits deal with the viciousness of the Nazi regime and all American and international fascists or fascist sympathizers; on the other hand, the skits praise the heroism of those who fight Naziism.

The first skit, for instance, is "Stormtrooper," by Bertolt Brecht, in which a stormtrooper tells a German worker and some servants how he informs the Gestapo about Marxists and others who are against Hitler and the Reich by drawing a white cross on their backs with chalk. He and the worker play a game, in which the worker spouts anti-Nazi slogans which he really believes. By the end of the scene, one of the servants asks if she has a cross on her shoulders (1-9).

The second scene is an imitation vaudeville ventriloquist act called "Willie and Lindy," written by Muni Diamond. As a fascist comedy team, Lindy is made up as a dummy and sits on Willie's lap. To each question one of them asks in the style of comedy patter, the other responds with a joke about American fascism and isolationism, in which they mention names important to the left-wing movement and its attitude about fascism, each of which will be mentioned in other skits from this show. They ridicule William Randolph Hearst, right-wing newspaper magnate, and Burton Kendall Wheeler, who was a New Deal U.S. Senator from 1923 to 1947 and became a leading isolationist. The name "Lindy" refers to Charles A. Lindberg, whom the Communists felt was a puppet of reactionary forces because of his pro-German, anti-war stance. Along with pro-German conservatives, such as Henry Ford, and with socialists, such as Norman Thomas, Lindberg supported the right-wing America First Committee, which acted in effect as a cover for continued trade and industrial investment in German capitalism, which was now devoted to the war economy.[550] The use of the name "Willie" refers to William Kuhn, the head of the American Nazi Party. The scene ends with Willie and Lindy saluting American-style with their right hands while their left hands extend out for the Nazi salute (10-12).

"Alice in Nazi-Land," by Ira Sloman, Jr., is the next skit, which mocks German leaders and those Germans and Americans who fail to take action against them. The Dormouse represents the typical middle-class citizen who feels that "it can't happen here"; Alice represents the typical American who feels that all the international difficulty is just silly; and the Mad Hatter and the March Hare represent Hitler and his lieutenants. At the end of the scene, the Dormouse and the Hare descend on the Hatter because it is "execution time." That the simple middle-class citizen, represented by the Dormouse, and the Hare, representing those who support Hitler and his methods, attack the Hatter--who represents Hitler--seems to reflect the American left-wing's view that Hitler will eventually be defeated by his own methods. American fascism is attacked as well in this skit, as evidenced by a comparison between an American chain gang and a German concentration camp (13-19).

Ben Irwin adapted a scene from Brecht's The Mother into "The Little Green Bundle," a playlet that replaces Brecht's Revolutionary Workers distributing pro-Communist leaflets with the German underground distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. A mother passes anti-Nazi pamphlets on to another anonymous member of the German underground who turns out to be her son. They manage to trick the Gestapo agent following them and get him arrested; the son escapes with the pamphlets, while the mother hands out some extras to the other passengers, telling them to pass the pamphlets on to others (20-27).

A song comes next, called "It Can't Happen Here," by Jack Murray. The song disputes the common claim of many that fascism cannot take over in the United States--noting in particular the claims of Norman Thomas, Charles Lindberg, and Burton Wheeler--suggesting that many elements of fascism have already come to America. Although written in a humorous style ("But then it's nothing new to see Der Feuhrer kiss an ace [Lindberg]"), the song condemns American organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the America First Committee, and American isolationists (28-30).

Another Brecht playlet, "Justice," revolves around a German judge's confusion about how he is decide a case in which the parties are a Jew, his Aryan partner, a Marxist landlord now in a concentration camp, three stormtroopers, and the Gestapo. No decision will satisfy everyone, and in the end the judge walks into the courtroom with no idea what kind of "justice" he is to deliver (31-41).[551]

Another song, "Hitler's Christmas Carol," by Abe Gottlieb, has Hitler asking Santa Claus for all the parts of the world he wants--send him Hoover and Wheeler, he says--in order to satisfy himself and his friend Mussolini. Santa responds that no one, except the English Tories, is impressed with the Nazis, and he would rather Hitler hang from a Christmas tree (42-44).

"The Bishop of Munster," written by H.S. Kraft, is a monolog by a minister to his congregation about how he will continue to speak out about the evils of Naziism and to include Jews in his prayers despite warnings by the police that he must not do so. He cites the great Bishops of Munster of the past who were assassinated and jailed because they dared to speak the truth. He cites "the thousands of brave workers, . . . Ossietsky, Mirendorf, the Catholic Luebke, Brandes and Thaelman" and the "nameless thousands" who have dared to speak out. The scene concludes with the sound of marching feet and a woman's scream (45-47).

Emanuel Eisenberg's "My Feet are Firmly Planted on the Ground" found its way from Parade into this group of songs and sketches but with some modifications because of new international circumstances and new enemies to target. The line criticizing the NRA is changed to criticize appeasers, the liberal becomes the ostrich, "the rich are human, too" becomes "the Nazis are human, too," the verses about Oswald Garrison Villard and Mussolini are eliminated, and the song ends not with feet planted on the ground, but rather planted "in mid-air" (48).[552]

The next sketch, by Lewis Allan, has "Senator Blowhard" presenting a press conference in which he removes pieces of his clothing one by one as he tries to explain that he is just a man of the people.[553] It is not that he and the America First Committee like Hitler, he says; they just dislike democracy. He compares himself to great Americans--"Herbie Hoover--Charlie Lindberg--take your pick." When he removes his pants to show that he is an ordinary person, a large swastika can be seen on his shorts (49-50).

Allan also wrote "The Isolationist," which mocks those countries that try to remain neutral in the face of the growing fascist threat in Europe. In the country of Morphia, Ebenezer is a member of the Morphia First Committee and is convinced that the Nazis will not start any trouble "long as we mind our own business." When the Nazis arrive, also members of the Morphia First Committee, they argue about who will shoot him, but Ebenezer's wife grabs the gun and shoots him herself, yelling that she had been waiting for the chance (51-53).

"Heil Hitler," written by Arny Freeman of the Chicago Repertory Group, consists of a song or recitation by a man dressed as Hitler. He urges any one who is "willing/ To spend half your life in drilling/ And the rest of it in killing" to come to his Germany. You will get everything you ask for, except butter, he says; you will wear clothes made of paper, and you will enjoy a vacation in a concentration camp, "If you're just as nuts as I am" (54-55).

The last sketch in V For Victory is was written by D. DeKoven and M. Lorber, also of the Chicago Repertory Group. "Japanese Ambassador's Speech" is a parody of Japanese explanations for their involvement in a war against China, during which Chinese women and children and some Americans were killed. "Chinese women and children continue to intercept projectiles slipping off Japanese planes now in practice maneuvers over China," explains the Ambassador, suggesting that Japan simply wants to wed with China, who is a "little bashful like nice girl on honeymoon." He presents a "humble apology" to the American people for killing one hundred fifty Americans and raping fifty missionaries, which Japan will never do again. He also apologizes for sinking the S.S. Panay: "Probably never do again." He announces that tomorrow Japanese planes will bomb the American embassy and an apology will follow the next day (56-57).

The two general themes--anti-fascism and isolationism on the one hand and heroism against fascism on the other--can be seen in the different sections of V For Victory. For instance, "Stormtrooper," "Alice in Nazi-Land," "Willie and Lindy," "Justice," "Hitler's Christmas Carol," "My Feet are Firmly Planted on the Ground," "Senator Blowhard," "The Isolationist," "Heil Hitler," and "Japanese Ambassador's Speech" all relate to the theme of Nazi terror and fascist sympathies. "Little Green Bundle" and "The Bishop of Munster," while still relating in some way to that same theme, relate also to the theme of the heroism of anti-Nazism. The numbers are held together in no other way; as a "book of skits," V For Victory is a hodge-podge of anti-Nazi sentiment.

The characters in V For Victory vary, of course, from sketch to sketch; "Stormtrooper," "Justice," "The Bishop of Munster," "Little Green Bundle," and "The Isolationist" contain relatively realistic characters in realistic scenes that depict the effects of German Naziism on people's lives. "Willie and Lindy," "Alice in Nazi-Land," "Senator Blowhard," and "Japanese Ambassador's Speech" satirize fascists, sympathizers, or isolationists with stereotyped and stylized characters in scenes that are clearly not meant to be realistic. The songs, "Hitler's Christmas Carol," "My Feet are Firmly Planted on the Ground," and "It Can't Happen Here" all contain condemnations of fascists and sympathizers, while the latter two exhort those complacent about the threat of fascism to take action. No fascist is treated sympathetically, and no anti-fascist is criticized; the world as seen in these skits clearly pits good against evil.

The setting of the various skits changes depending on the nature and purpose and subject of the sketch; some scenes (those by Brecht, in particular) take place in Germany, while some occur in the United States. The setting of each depends on whether the sketch is focused on European or American fascism. The performance techniques vary also, depending on the type of sketch, from the realism of "Little Green Bundle" or "The Bishop of Munster" to the vaudeville style of "Willie and Lindy" or "Alice in Nazi-Land."

As a document of a social movement, V For Victory vilifies its enemies, painting them as simultaneously powerful and vulnerable, and a sense of urgency builds throughout each of the sketches and songs. By defining the enemy as vastly powerful, the urgency becomes apparent; by defining the enemy as cruel and foolish, the necessity of group action to fight the enemy becomes desirable.

The type of propaganda in V For Victory is both integrative and agitational: it is integrative because it tells its audience members what they want to hear and agitational because it attempts to inspire its audience to take fascism seriously and work to fight it. The propaganda in the show tries to accuse fascists abroad and at home of violations against humanity and thus focuses on collective protest; since it emphasizes the individual's part in the struggle, in such scenes as "The Little Green Bundle" and "The Bishop of Munster," for instance, the show focuses also on individual protest.

The ritual aspects of V For Victory are limited because of the show's variety-show format; since I find no record of the show ever having been performed in its entirety, I have no reason to believe that all the numbers were performed in the order found in the published script. Its ability to serve a ritual function is thus restricted. However, V For Victory does reconstruct recent history and current events from an anti-Nazi perspective, and in that way it may have encouraged a sense of communitas in its audience members.

The lyrics to the three songs in V For Victory mock the Germans' austere war economy and mindless chauvinism. They also ridicule misguided liberalism; isolationists such as Burton Wheeler and Norman Thomas; and pro-fascists such as Lindberg, the British Tory party, and the Hearst newspapers.

Little change had occurred in the leftist theatre's views of its enemies--only now it called itself "progressive theatre" rather than "workers' theatre," and its enemies became isolationists instead of war mongers. But most of the enemies stayed the same, while the leftist theatre simply found different reasons to condemn them.

V For Victory is the last workers' musical I have been able to find between 1928 and 1941, and by 1942 the workers' theatre had almost entirely disappeared, its proponents caught up in the demands of the Second World War. New Theatre News suspended publication with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany, though the New Theatre School remained open for the 1941-42 academic year. "Progressive" theatre groups began to disband because of the draft and because of the possibility of highly-paid overtime work in plants retooled for the war effort. The New Theatre League disbanded along with them, closing its offices during the summer of 1942.[554] While not all leftist theatre was directly connected with the New Theatre League, as many of the musicals in this study can demonstrate, the League was a sort of spiritual figurehead for the workers' theatre movement and its major catalyst. With the demise of the League came the demise of the workers' theatre movement; or perhaps, more aptly, with the loss of interest in the workers' theatre movement by artists and audiences came the loss of the League's reason for existence.

For thirteen years, the workers' theatre movement had moved, with frequent stops and starts, toward a form that would make socially and politically significant works for the theatre acceptable to the American public. Its musical theatre held a place in that development, but one whose significance is unclear. In Chapter Six I will discuss the possible significance of the American workers' musical in the development of the American workers' theatre movement, in the development of American theatre in the thirties, and in its use of propaganda and ritual for the purpose of perpetuating a social and political movement for change.

[476]Goldstein, 186; Siegmeister wrote to me (June 10, 1989) that Maid in Japan (1939) was his first work composing for the theatre, it was amateurish, and he has removed the work from his catalog and would refuse to allow it to be presented or publicized--even if he knew where to find the libretto, which he does not. The show was an "exposé" of Japanese imperialism; his wife refused to wear silk stockings because the Japanese were invading China.

[477]"Shifting Scenes," New Theatre News 1, no. 3 (January-February 1939): 22.

[478]New Theatre News 1, no. 6 (January 1940): 4.

[479]New Theatre News 1, no. 7 (February 1940): 11.

[480]Daily Worker, September 23, 1939, clipping from Lincoln Center.

[481]Free Library, program; Tolkin, however, does not remember anything about the show and denies having anything to do with it.

[483]TAC 7 (February 1939): 16.

[484]Will Geer, "Foreword," Skits and Sketches, Second Collection (New York: New Theatre League, 1939), 4.

[485]Gassner, "The One-Act Play in the Revolutionary Theatre," 267-68.

[486]"New Theatre School," New Theatre News 1, no. 3 (January-February 1939): 6.

[487]Himelstein, 206; Goldstein, 211.

[490]New York Herald-Tribune, 7 June 1938; from clippings, Lincoln Center.

[491]Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford, 1986), 356-58.

[492]Ibid., 358, 366; New Theatre News 1, no. 2 (December 1938): 18.

[493]N.Y. Times, 5 July 1939; Daily Worker, 13 January 1939; from clippings, Lincoln Center.

[494]Daily Worker, 22 November 1939; clippings.

[495]Daily Worker, 11 June 1940; clippings.

[498]Ibid.; Goldstein cites Herbert Kline in "Drama of Negro Life," New Theatre (February 1936): 26-27.

[500]Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 (New York: Times Books, 1984), 187-195.

[501]Rampersad, 358, says there were three chairs, a table, a screen, a slave block, a tree stump, a heavy rope tied in a noose at center, a carpet sweeper, and an American flag hanging left of center.

[502]Played by novice actor Robert Earl Jones, James Earl Jones's father, according to Rampersad, 357.

[503]Page numbers in parentheses refer to the Langston Hughes, Don't You Want to Be Free?, found in One Act Play Magazine, October 1938, 359-393; the script can also be found in James V. Hatch, ed., Black Theatre U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans, 1847-1974 (New York: Free Press, 1974), 262-277. A note at the end of the script says that certain of the poems in the play are reprinted from The Weary Blues and The Dream Keeper, by permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. For instance, the show contains the poem "Cross," which Goldstein, 168, says Hughes often read in public readings.

[505]Hughes worked for a while as a bus boy in a Philadelphia hotel.

[506]Goldstein, 173, 436, notes that the anthology, edited by Albert Prentis, formerly on the editorial board of New Theatre, was apparently issued only twice, and that the American League for Peace and Democracy had before 1937 been called the American League Against War and Fascism.

[509]Page numbers in parentheses refer to the published script, found in Contemporary Scene 1 , no. 2 (Summer 1938): 4-13; this issue can be found at Lincoln Center.

[510]Jane Feuer, "The Self-Reflective Musical and the Myth of Entertainment," Quarterly Review of Film Studies 2, no. 3 (August 1977): 313-26.

[511]"Repertory Ramblings," New Theatre News 1, no. 4 (November 1939): 14; New Theatre League, "Plays for a People's Theatre, 1940-1941" (play catalog), p. 12; clippings, Lincoln Center.

[512]Mel Tolkin, telephone interview, July 14, 1989; Tolkin moved to California after the war and became the head writer for Sid Caesar's Show of Shows (writing its theme song in the process), wrote jokes for Bob Hope, and ended up writing for the Archie Bunker series and winning an award.

[513]Ibid.; Goldstein, p. 214, says that the music and lyrics are by Davis and Tolkin, with sketches by Reuben Shipp; clippings from Lincoln Center say that the music and lyrics are by Reuben Davis and Moe Tolkin; the program from Philadelphia New Theatre says "by Reuben Davis and Mel Tolkin." Vaughn, p. 159, notes that Reuben Ship, the radio writer, was sworn in at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in September of 1952, as an unfriendly witness.

[514]"Repertory Ramblings," New Theatre News 1, no. 4 (November 1939) says that Tolkin and Reuben Ship wrote the original 16 sketches and songs; a clipping of Daily Worker, 2 March 1940, claims that "All's Well in the U.S.A." is a new number written by Mel Tolkin and "lyricist Reuben Ship"; but a clipping of the earlier Daily Worker, 29 February 1940, calls Tolkin the composer and pianist and Davis the lyricist and sketch writer.

[515]"Shifting Scenes," New Theatre News 1, no. 3 (January-February 1939): 23.

[516]New Theatre News 1, no. 4 (November 1939): 5, 14; I am unsure about the date of the opening; We Beg to Differ was performed on weekends at the New Theatre Studios, at 311 North 16th Street in Philadelphia.

[517]The description in this paragraph comes from Ernest Pendrell, "Something New, They Say," Daily Worker, 15 December 1939; clippings, Lincoln Center.

[518]Bern Maxwell, "Progressive Theatre Group's Beg to Differ," Daily Worker, 29 February 1940, clippings; however, the Allaben Players were apparently ready for bookings to do We Beg to Differ by September 1939, according to Daily Worker, 23 September 1939, clippings. Maxwell listed Phil Leeds and Adele Jerome (both of Pins and Needles) in the cast, as well as Ted Thurston, Frances Endfield, and Willie Allen. Pendrell also noted that Herbert Sutcliffe Jones did sets for the show and that the cast included Ed Felbin, Sam Belsham, Luis Cordano, Lynn Maurel, Evelyn Bitters, Harriet Mathews, and Jones.

[519]Daily Worker, 2 March 1940, clippings.

[520]Lyrics by Mel Tolkin and Reuben Davis, music by Mel Tolkin, "It is Later Than You Think," 40-43; all the songs in this section are from We Beg to Differ which can be found in the Special Music Collection of the New York City Public Library at Lincoln Center.

[521]Lyrics and music by Tolkin, "We Beg to Differ," 1-2; lyrics by Tolkin and Davis, music by Tolkin, chorus by Shakespeare, "Slings and Arrows," 8-10.

[522]Lyrics by Tolkin and Davis, music by Tolkin, "The New Slant on Love," 11-14; "It Must be Union Made," 35-39.

[523]Lyrics by Tolkin and Davis, music by Tolkin, "Let's Spend an Evening in the Park," 27-31.

[524]Tolkin, music and lyrics, "Having a Wonderful Time," 17-22; lyrics by Tolkin and Davis, music by Tolkin, "On the Isle of Boola-Boola," 3-7.

[525]Lyrics by Tolkin and Davis, music by Tolkin, "Rasputin," 15-16.

[526]Tolkin, music and lyrics, "Awake and Swing," 23-26; lyrics by Tolkin and Davis, music by Tolkin, "And the Angels Swing," 32-34.

[528]"The John Lenthier Troupe on Tour," New Theatre News 1, no. 5 (December 1939): 12-15; reprinted in Taylor, 173-177; the group included Horta Ware, Will Geer, and Burl Ives, among others, and was joined for a performance in Hollywood by Woody Guthrie; page numbers in parentheses will refer to the article as reprinted in Taylor.

[529]Will Geer, quoted in Theodore Strauss, "Road Presents: Or From Brakerods Through Canebrake and Now to Tobacco Road," New York Times, 21 January 1940, IX, pp. 1-2; at p. 2.

[530]New Theatre News was published bi-monthly from the end of 1938 to 1940.

[531]Goldstein, 188, says the Flatbush Art Players performed the show for the New Theatre League contest on June 24, 1939; New York Times, 22 January 1939, sect. 10, p. 6, says the contest was held by the New Theatre League and the United Office and Professional Workers of America and that Kleinsinger, the pianist and composer, was a student at Juilliard.

[532]"Curtain Calls," New Theatre News 1, no. 5 (December 1939): 3.

[533]New Theatre News 1, no. 10 (May 1940): 9-10.

[534]Page numbers in parentheses refer Alfred Hayes, Jay Williams, and George Kleinsinger, The Life in a Day of a Secretary, 1939, typescript available at the Special Music Collection at Lincoln Center.

[535]Goldstein, 214; he also suggests that We Beg to Differ is another example of an anti-war musical, but I have already noted the discrepancy I feel appears in We Beg to Differ's apparently anti-appeasement stance.

[536]The date the pact was signed seems to be in dispute: Goldstein, 209, and Levine, 179, say it was signed on August 24; Johnpoll, 326, and Palmer and Colton, 825, say August 23; Lieberman, 5, says August 22.

[538]Ibid.; Goldstein, 213; Lieberman, 53.

[539]Lem Ward, "Letter to the Editor," New Theatre News 1, no. 4 (November 1939): 12.

[540]The subtitle of the show is, "From a promise by Mr. Neville Chamberlain after Munich. A series of sketches and recitations including: INTERNATIONAL HOOKUP."

[542]Goldstein, 213-14, says Quin (with only one "n") was a San Francisco Communist.

[543]Peace in Our Time, Lincoln Center, call number NCOF p.v. 166. Page numbers are odd in this manuscript. Some of the skits are on numbered pages, but the whole script is not. Therefore, I have placed in parentheses first the actual page number and second, the page number as it appears in the script. Thus, since the first song was on the first actual page that was unnumbered, I cited it as p. 1 (the actual number) and n.p.(the skit had no page numbers).

[544]This connection between Neville (Chamberlain) and Ferdinand the Bull may be alluding to the children's book, The Story of Ferdinand, by Munro Leaf (N.Y.: Viking, 1938), about the Spanish bull who wants to do nothing but "sit just quietly and smell the flowers"; the book may have been a thinly-veiled metaphor for the Spanish people at the beginning of the Spanish civil war, and in this instance clearly refers to British appeasement.

[545]A notice is placed before the scene: "This scene which was not published or produced with the original play may be presented as a single scene, complete in itself with a brief introduction explaining the source of the material and its pertinence today."

[546]I do not know whether or not this lyric was set to music.

[547]Lou Cooper of the Flatbush Arts Theatre says that his group performed a "musical setting" of "The Yanks Are Not Coming"; he does not say whether the group wrote the music or not; New Theatre News 1, no. 10 (May 1940): 9. However, Gordon, 188, says that the Flatbush Arts Theatre used this song, with musical setting by Lou Cooper, to precede their performance of The Cradle Will Rock in April 1940, on the twenty-third anniversary of the U.S. entrance into the First World War.

[548]Invoice, New Theatre League, June 19, 1942; 1940-41 List of Plays, 1942; New Theatre League files, Lincoln Center. According to the invoice, a copy of the "`V' Collection" was sent by the New Theatre League to a Margaret Mayarga on June 16, 1942, just prior to the official ending of the League.

[549]V For Victory: Sketch Collection, Compiled and Edited by the New Theatre League, Edition of the National Educational Department of the International Workers Order, 1941; New York City Public Library, Forty-Second Street branch, call number NBL p.v. 709; page numbers in parentheses will refer to this edition.

[551]This playlet, as translated in 1944 by Eric Bentley, also appears as "In Search of Justice," in Eric Bentley, trans. and ed., "The Jewish Wife" and Other Short Plays by Bertolt Brecht (New York: Random House, 1965), 19-39.

[552]Refer to Chapter Three for a discussion of the song as presented in Parade.

[553]Goldstein, 204, says Allan was a composer for the TAC who wrote "Strange Fruit," which Billie Holliday made famous.

[554]Goldstein, 216-17.

Chapter Six...