The musical is a most traditional theatre form, the political variety of which was developed most effectively in Europe by such artists as Brecht, Weill, Eisler, Meyerhold, and Piscator, but which did not obtain the same results when attempted in the United States.   This incongruity resulted in part from the unique circumstances of the American left wing during the thirties and, in turn, from the unique characteristics of the musicals themselves.

      American workers' musicals at first emphasized radical techniques in an attempt to create a sense of communitas between the performers (who represented the leftist movement) and the audience.  Their reliance on unrelenting polemic and repetitious ritual, while unifying audience members who were already committed to the "hard" left-wing cause, tended also to undercut any appeal they may have had to the unconverted, non-Communist, "soft" left.  In a well-organized and highly unified movement this use of radical techniques may have worked well, but, in the disjointed circumstances of the American Communist party, the uncompromising message and its strident delivery alienated many fellow-travelers and potential members.  The fluctuating policies and methods of the Communist party, which was highly influential but also quite small, further served to exacerbate the constant rejection of radical theatre by non-Communist leftists.

      The theatre of the hard left found itself using many of the techniques of the soft left, however, and incorporated them into theatrical productions whenever possible.  With a softer message, many of the workers' musicals became more successful, incorporating more traditional theatrical techniques as well.  Thus, the more successful works were able to create a broader, but also more diverse, theatrical popular front.

      The Communist party in America had serious competition fighting for lost souls in the abyss of the Great Depression, which was part of the reason it softened its severe leftist stance.  Not only were socialists vying for Americans' commitment, but also were the growing movements initiated by Huey Long, Charles Coughlin, and Francis Townsend.  Long wanted to take from the rich and give to the poor, Coughlin hoped to redistribute wealth through manipulation of money, and Townsend's cure for the depression was to distribute two hundred dollars a month to every citizen over sixty.  McElvaine suggests that the three populist movements, while considered by later observers to be leaning toward conservatism, were in fact in strong competition with leftism.  Coughlin's appeal, says McElvaine, while containing a potential for fascism, was not to the right wing before 1936 but was instead to poor Americans who felt exploited by rich bankers.  Long's "Share Our Wealth" program appealed to the same group; but, while he did much good for the poor of Louisiana and gave many the impression that he had established "a real democracy" in his state, his methods smacked of fascism and totalitarianism.  Only Townsend's plan, claims McElvaine, was essentially conservative from the start but did not appear that way to many who favored it.  In reaction to the fear that demagogues and leftists would unite, a fear McElvaine calls unlikely, Roosevelt added even more competition to the hard left by strengthening his commitment to satisfy his left-wing supporters; in 1935 he began his "Second New Deal," during which he tried to woo the affections of a working class he felt would slip away.[555]  [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.] Paul Conkin suggests that Roosevelt's image of a great reformer in the campaign of 1936 has been interpreted in different ways by different historians:  either Roosevelt's emphatic class appeals were actually a false smoke screen to conceal conservative economic policies or they represented a dangerous radicalism.[556]  McElvaine, however, concurs with many historians who feel that Roosevelt's shift was not so much one of philosophy but of politics.  When Roosevelt felt that playing the middle would no longer attract enough voters, he had to choose sides:  he turned to the left because that was the direction followed by the majority of Americans.[557]

      The Communist party in America reacted to its competition by embracing the Popular Front policies of the Comintern.  If the rest of the country would not shift as far to the left as the party would like, then the party, and its theatre, would have to move closer to the middle.  Roosevelt was re-elected in 1936 by eighty percent of the votes of union members, eighty-one percent of unskilled workers, and eighty-four percent of those on relief; he received almost twenty-eight million, or over sixty percent, of the total votes cast.[558]  The Communist party candidate received only 80,000 votes, significantly less than the 103,000 the Communists managed to win four years earlier.[559]  The workers' theatre had to broaden its appeal to include a wider range of the American population--the hard left would have to compete with the soft left while appearing to support it.  Many of the concerns that had been the exclusive domain of the hard left in the early thirties became concerns of the soft left in the second half of the decade.  The Communist theatre softened its stance and its methods in response to the country's shift to the left, becoming less pessimistic and intransigent, more optimistic and flexible. 

      Carl Burgchardt has argued that pamphlets distributed by the American Communist party during the thirties changed radically between the Third Period, before 1935, and the Popular Front period, beginning in 1935.  During the Third Period, pamphlets tended to alienate the general public with hysterical distortions, blunt attacks against potential allies such as socialists and organized labor, aggressive language that suggested an acceptance of violence, a profusion of esoteric terms and theoretical concepts not generally understood by most Americans, and tactless presentation of unyielding goals and methods.  During the Popular Front period, however, Communists attempted to gain new members and to attract the non-communist left, especially those liberals who found, as John Diggins suggests, an "immense appeal" in the Popular Front, who had "urged a common front against fascism and who found themselves in the mid-thirties without a viable ideology."[560]  Burgchardt notes that the pamphlets changed to reflect Popular Front attitudes:  invitations to join the party were less threatening than before, pamphlets tried to identify with rather than insult readers by referring to them as citizens and Americans rather than as workers and proletarians, the anti-fascism of the pamphlets increased, pessimism decreased, the broad problems that had been stated before in terms of capitalism and communism were put in terms of more specific problems and solutions, the American Dream replaced the social revolutionary model of communism, and the image of the revolutionary Communist became that of a one-hundred percent American.  In other words, the pamphlets of the Communist party during the Popular Front period did everything they could to overcome the view of Communists as subversives.[561]

      The musicals of the workers' theatre movement reflect this same ideological shift toward the center but also contain unique characteristics that distinguish them from non-musical workers' theatre.  The drama of the American left wing during the thirties was often characterized by what Michael Blankfort called a "pendulum structure":  central characters experienced a dramatic swing to the left--from conservatism to militant class consciousness.[562]  In workers' musicals, however, the pendulum structure was not used:  characters were either already converted to goals consonant with the workers' movement or they remained forever unconverted.  The characters in most of the musicals were stereotypes--either they were on the correct side or not--and those characters who agreed with left-wing ideals were praised and had their say, while those who did not agree were ridiculed.  Commitment to mass action was taken for granted in all the musicals examined in this study, except Big Boycott of 1938, Middleman, and The Life in a Day of a Secretary, all of which exhibited characteristics of early-thirties agitprop drama in an attempt to encourage a re-commitment to left-wing goals.

      The stridency of left-wing drama was also less apparent in workers' musicals, primarily because of the use of humor and music, which were able to soften the tone of much of the polemic.  The use of music allowed the workers' theatre to appeal to a broader range of the public and to focus on more general appeals than leftist drama did.  Bowers and Ochs suggest that songs used in social movements have the primary function of solidification, reinforcing the cohesiveness of the group's members.[563]  However, Stewart, Smith, and Denton, after examining 714 songs written for or adopted by twenty-one American social movements since the Revolutionary era, have concluded that songs are seldom designed to sustain social movements.  They analyzed the songs for their persuasive content under the following headings:  1) transforming perceptions of history, 2) transforming perceptions of society, 3) prescribing courses of action, 4) mobilization, and 5) sustaining the movement.  They conclude that songs of radical social movements used more ridicule and invective, highly organized movements used more optimistic songs and more frequently addressed strategies and tactics members should use to achieve the movement's goals, most songs suggested legal means to bring about change, and most tended to identify abstract demands rather than specific issues.  They also suggest that social movement songs seldom used satire and ridicule.[564]  The songs of the workers' musical theatre differed from most social movement songs primarily because of their use of humor.This is unclear and unfinished--fix it.      Humor in workers' musicals allowed the audience to ridicule and satirize the evils of capitalism.  Furthermore, the workers' musical was less subject to the dictates of Comintern doctrine:  since the pendulum structure of socialist realism did not seem appropriate for the musical, workers' musicals found it necessary to borrow heavily from traditional theatrical forms of vaudeville, burlesque, and topical revue.

      Workers' musicals differed not only from leftist drama, but also from mainstream drama and musicals in their more pointed criticism of social and political structures, in their presentation of characters, and in their lack of complex plot development.  Workers' musicals presented harsh social and political criticism to a greater extent than did the mainstream non-musical drama, which depended in part on less direct references to current events and more on general references to the human condition.  They presented characters who lacked depth and usually bluntly represented some aspect of American society, whereas mainstream drama required characters with some intricacy of feeling and personality.  Moreover, workers' musicals furnished less complex plot development than mainstream drama--in part because of the nature of the musical theatre form and in part because of the simplicity of their message--and thus allowed for no misinterpretation of the message delivered through script and lyrics.

      Workers' musicals can also be distinguished from mainstream musical comedy because of their barbed and biting satire and their ultimately serious purpose.  While some Broadway musicals presented political or social satire, most notably Of Thee I Sing, Let 'Em Eat Cake, As Thousands Cheer, Strike up the Band, and I'd Rather Be Right, and many musicals of the Depression contained references to current political, economic, and social situations, few were as caustic as musicals of the left-wing.  Furthermore, few Broadway musicals had such serious purpose as workers' musicals, perhaps with the exception of Knickerbocker Holiday, a thinly-veiled warning against governmental interference that the show's writers chose to place in colonial America.

      In general, traditional American theatre emphasized optimism and good humor with some sense of escape; the more strident workers' musicals offered bleak or harsh satire with no chance of escape except to join with other militant workers.  For instance, the majority of workers' musicals from the decade tended to rely on ridicule and invective to condemn capitalist society:  Art is a Weapon, Sweet Charity, Worlds Fair, Who's Got the Baloney?, Parade, Big Boycott of 1938, Peace in Our Time, and V For Victory all ridiculed and caricatured capitalist society, and all ended with a call for militant action.  Middleman, The Life in a Day of a Secretary, Don't You Want to be Free?, Sit-Down!, and Who Fights This Battle?, while also ending with calls to action, relied not so much on ridicule as on sympathetic treatment of the oppressed, impoverished, and disenfranchised.  The uncertainties present in musicals presenting complex thought, such as The International and Johnny Johnson, were less appealing to those who wished for a quick and easy answer.  The workers' musicals found by the movement to be the most popular tended to emphasize optimism by suggesting that immediate transformation of society could take place through direct action:  the "strike" ending of The Cradle Will Rock, like the ending of Waiting for Lefty, encouraged a sense of hope in the audience that a more just society could and would be achieved.  Furthermore, Cradle was able to demonstrate a sense of humor that Lefty was not.  The cheerfulness of Pins and Needles and We Beg to Differ appealed to audiences most because they were able to deal in a light-hearted manner with such common things as advertising, contemporary music, and labor unions.  The success of workers' musicals, measured in both traditional terms of audience appeal and radical terms of propagating an idea, came in direct proportion to the extent to which they moved toward more light, comfortable satire, close in spirit to mainstream Broadway musicals such as Of Thee I Sing and Let 'Em Eat Cake.  Audiences found the shows more appealing and comforting, and the message of the hard left, while blunted somewhat, could still be discerned.

      The hard left had a specific problem during the thirties that the workers' musical was not able to rectify and indeed helped exemplify.  To fight the system with musical theatre, for the Communist left, was only to speak to each other or to a small part of others who wanted to fight the system with different methods.  To use tactics of the enemy--those of the mainstream theatre--was to allow some measure of success.  The workers' theatre was able to use the musical to deliver its message to a wider portion of the American population than it would have if it had retained its intransigent refusal to use theatrical forms with which Americans were familiar.  However, by catering to its audience, the workers' musical became part of the mainstream theatre of the thirties, diluting its message and making it weaker than originally intended.

The following is a modification of part of the original chapter, moved to here.

      The musicals of the workers' theatre movement can be seen as a significant element in the development of American theatre of the thirties because of their unique contributions to the workers' theatre movement, to American musical theatre, and to American drama.  First, the workers' musical played an important part in the development of the workers' theatre movement of the thirties, though primarily through the few more successful shows rather than the entire canon of work.  The popularity of the musical form in the commercial theatre at first repelled the workers' theatre movement--too much fun and humor would dilute the message and make the significance of the issues less critical.  But attempts were soon made to incorporate musical comedy techniques in some shows of the workers' theatre because of their ability to attract audiences and give them a more palatable message, which led the movement away from agitprop and socialist realism toward a more popular and appealing form.  The workers' musical was a form of workers' theatre that was not forced to emphasize the serious struggle of the worker against evil forces, but could instead remain a haven for humor, satire, and parody.  Since the musical had to appeal to a broad range of people, its message necessarily had to be less severe than the non-musical dramas of the workers' theatre.  While only a few of the workers' musicals showed much success--with audiences, with mainstream and leftist critics, and through repeated performances--those less-successful workers' musicals allowed the workers' theatre movement to realize the value of the musical form and to encourage the few workers' musicals that are remembered beyond the thirties.  Furthermore, while musicals gave the workers' theatre movement a means to broaden its appeal, they also helped lead to the victory of the soft liberal left over the hard radical left--if the theatre of the soft left was more fun and entertaining, many may have thought, then it is the movement to travel with.

      The workers' musical also contributed to the development of the American musical theatre.  First, the workers' musical expanded channels for social comment in the theatre and may have influenced the American public's acceptance of the musical as a means for addressing social and political issues.  The topical revue form was the most popular with audiences, while shows such as Johnny Johnson, Don't You Want to be Free?, and The Life in a Day of a Secretary added a poetic and lyrical touch to the movement's repertoire, combining aspects of the integrated book musical with social comment.  Helen Krich Chinoy, who performed in the thirties with theatrical troupes of the International Workers' Order, has suggested that the greatest contribution of the left-wing theatre of the thirties was not its political orientation but its aesthetics "of poetry in the theatre and the dynamics of theatrical presentation."[565]

      Similarly, the workers' musical helped influence the development of the American theatre during the thirties.  Because it was able to use music and humor--bastions of the mainstream theatre--to deliver a propagandist leftist message, it may have encouraged mainstream playwrights to realize that plays with a message did not always have to be serious and somber.  The American workers' musical helped mainstream theatre realize the value of combining humor and seriousness, and also encouraged assimilation of liberal/leftist ideas in theatre of the thirties.

      The workers' musical's ability to convey a propagandist message to its audiences was influenced by the type of propaganda techniques it used, its ability to emphasize ritual, and its potency as a force in the social movement of leftist theatre in the thirties.  First, only a few workers' musicals emphasized causal plot structure because causal plot required a measure of depth in the treatment of vital issues.  However, the workers' theatre movement aimed to achieve the opposite goal:  acknowledgement of depth confessed to unanswered questions about left-wing values that would lead in turn to a public not committed to significant anti-capitalist and anti-fascist political and social action.  The lessons learned from Lawson's The International were apparently taken to heart by the workers' theatre:  the show took intricate plot to extremes, and most audiences were confused about the play's message as a result.  Art is a Weapon, Sweet Charity, Worlds Fair, and Who's Got the Baloney?, the first four workers' musicals coming after The International, contained almost no plot at all but instead used short, sharp, and pointed comments about specific issues to unify their audiences toward common goals.  While Art is a Weapon contained no humor, which the other three explored, it resembled the others insofar as it simplified issues so that audiences would understand and sympathize with left-wing concerns.  Not until Parade in 1935 did a full-blown workers' musical come to the workers' theatre movement, but its impact was dissipated by vitriol and a half-hearted commitment to its production.  The workers' musicals that followed shortly after Lawson's play virtually eliminated the use of a causal plot structure.  Most musicals of the workers' theatre movement focused instead on a plot that revolved around a theme or themes or that attempted to involve the audience and players in a ritual type of experience.

      The themes of workers' musicals, while varying somewhat, have some general similarities.  During the first part of the decade, the musicals focused on a condemnation of capitalist exploitation of workers, poverty, unemployment, and the duplicitous "social fascism" of the New Deal, with worker-controlled production, unemployment relief, and mass action as their primary solutions.  During the second half of the thirties, as the American Communist left wing eased away from its strict adherence to party dogma, right-wing fascism, imperialism, racism, bourgeois liberalism, and the military-industrial complex were denounced, while support of organized labor, of racial equality, and of a general anti-establishment awareness were encouraged. This is very vague: Grimsted. While almost all of the musicals addressed these concerns to a degree, some individual musicals focused their attention more on specific issues:  Don't You Want to Be Free? stressed racial harmony and mass action; Sweet Charity focused on the duplicity of capitalist charity; the New Deal and its capitalist bedfellows were ridiculed in Worlds Fair; Who's Got the Baloney? dealt with municipal elections; devoted Communist peasant soldiers and the evils of fascism during the Spanish civil war were the subjects of Who Fights This Battle?; war-mongering was the focus of Johnny Johnson and Peace in Our Time; Big Boycott of 1938 urged that American consumers fight Japanese aggression; The Life in a Day of a Secretary detailed workers' drudgery; and Sit-Down!, The Cradle Will Rock, and Middleman focused specifically on organized labor as a solution to workers' problems. 

      The three topical musical revues of the workers' theatre, Parade, Pins and Needles, and We Beg to Differ, took pot shots at almost all the issues addressed by the workers' theatre.  The International addressed, albeit vaguely, the issues of capitalist imperialism and war, and Art is a Weapon tried to stress the importance of recognizing the propaganda inherent in capitalist art; the former had not yet found a receptive audience, while the latter was attempting to cultivate whatever audience it had.  Middleman, Life in a Day of a Secretary, and Big Boycott of 1938 seem to be throwbacks to the agitprop of the early thirties, stressing the power of organized workers, the drudgery of the common worker, and the influence of economic pressure on foreign nations and our policies toward them.  V for Victory is the oddball of the bunch, coming as it did at an odd time during the period of the workers' theatre movement:  it advocated war, contrary to what the movement had stood for throughout the thirties.  But the war it advocated was one against a power so great that the left-wing movement felt there was no alternative.

      Ritualistically, each workers' musical attempted to establish a spirit of communitas, with varying degrees of success, within their audiences and their performers.  The greatest obstacle to the establishment of ritual atmosphere in the various musicals, however, may have come from the changing nature of the left-wing movement during the thirties.  Not until after the production of The International did the workers' theatre movement have conditions that were ripe for its growth.  The urgency necessary for a sense of communitas did not exist until the beginning of the Depression, when early shows aiming to agitate and propagandize tried to build a collective and committed audience.  By the middle of the thirties, the American left-wing became almost indistinguishable from the liberal, the workers' theatre movement became more assimilated into mainstream American theatre, and the group consciousness that the workers' theatre wanted to instill in its audiences became less focused and specific and applied to a wider range of the population.  After the success of The Cradle Will Rock and Pins and Needles during the last part of the decade, the workers' theatre found itself trying in vain to compete with commercial theatre and the Federal Theatre Project, whose productions could be as politically relevant as those from the workers' theatre.  As liberalism seemed to subsume leftism and there appeared to be little difference between the two, the workers' theatre movement had a need to shake its audience out of complacency.  Some musicals directed their attention on specific issues of concern to the leftist movement and reverted back to using agit-prop techniques--specifically Big Boycott of 1938, Middleman, The Life in a Day of a Secretary, Peace in Our Time, and V For Victory--as a way of increasing their audiences' sense of class-conscious unity and of making the workers' musical distinct from the commercial musical comedy.  However, as a contrast and as an example of the confused state of the workers' theatre movement at the end of the thirties, the New Theatre League published its first full-length musical, We Beg to Differ, which consisted of what one of its originators has labeled as topical material, not Communist-oriented propaganda.  Therefore, it appears that the workers' theatre movement itself did not believe that most workers' musicals successfully communicated an effective propagandist message, as those musicals with the most direct and agitative tone were passed over for those that more closely resembled the commercial theatre.

      Propaganda techniques used in the workers' musicals were similarly ambivalent:  while the workers' theatre at first seemed inclined to satirize the "bourgeois" social and political situation, in such shows as Sweet Charity, Who's Got the Baloney?, and Worlds Fair, it also seemed willing to laugh at itself, albeit sometimes begrudgingly, in such shows as Pins and Needles and We Beg to Differ.  When it tried to blame social and political problems on ideas and institutions Americans held to be of importance--such as the liberal mind, the press, the police, the New Deal, and education--the workers' musical was rejected in 1935 with Parade but praised two years later with The Cradle Will Rock.  Perhaps the greatest barrier to clear propagandist messages in the workers' musical may have been the rigid yet contradictory policies of the organized left wing in America during the thirties--on the one hand, workers' musicals that attempted to conform to the doctrine of the Communist party appealed primarily to those audience members already committed to the cause; on the other hand, Communist party policies changed so frequently during the thirties that those committed audiences may not have known how they were to feel.  Furthermore, the changing attitudes of the Communist theatre during the Popular Front period encouraged musicals that did not reflect hard-line Communism, so the message, like thirties leftism itself, was made more acceptable to a wider audience.

      The most common propaganda technique in all the workers' musicals is the call to mass action.  Sometimes this call was a form of agitative propaganda--urging audiences to take action against their oppressors.  More often, the call constituted a form of integrative propaganda--exhorting the audience to take action did not always have the intended effect, but may have instead tended to reinforce beliefs that the audience already held and to fulfill a stabilizing and revitalizing function for members of the movement.  The propagandist themes of most of the texts centered around what Smiley calls collective protest and revolutionary protest, which he distinguishes from plays of individual protest and social protest.  Plays of individual protest resembled mimetic rather than didactic drama and stimulated social awareness indirectly, while plays of social protest accepted the inevitability of capitalism.   Plays of collective protest, according to Smiley, suggested that the only hope for workers will come from militant mass action; plays of revolutionary protest attempted to agitate by portraying characters who actively resisted capitalism.[566]  Revolutionary protest, however, while an important idea for the leftist movement and leftist drama theoretically, never really found a place in the workers' musical.  The musical form seemed to place constraints on the type and content of the messages of the shows; musicals emphasized the necessity for, the possibility of, the hope for, and the inevitability of the workers' victory by mass action over the evils of capitalism, but did not depict the unified revolution in action.Does not make sense.

      The American workers' musical developed during a time of great change in the country's history; acting upon it were intricate forces that led to its formation, its practice, and its demise.  Many elements of the environment surrounding the workers' musical need further study so that an assessment of musicals of the American workers' theatre movement can be fully understood.  First, the influence of European theatre forms on the American workers' musical is an area that should be addressed:  Jorns has suggested that, while American workers' theatre did not understand European theatre forms, it produced some successful, though misinterpreted, adaptations to European forms.  Other studies need to address the influence of European theatre forms on the American workers' musical.  Similarly, studies need to be undertaken to consider the possible influence of the Federal Theatre Project, among other New Deal programs, on the decline of the workers' musical.  Roosevelt's New Deal, in some ways, made the workers' theatre unnecessary in the minds of many Americans, though the movement kept fighting anyway.  The Federal Theatre Project, whether purposefully or coincidentally, may have rendered the workers' theatre innocuous at best and bothersome at worst.  The Federal Theatre Project organizationally absorbed much of the personnel of the workers' theatre movement and appealed to the audience the movement had spent more than half a decade trying to cultivate; its productions simply replaced Communist "symbols and conflict-structures" with leftist ones.[567]  Furthermore, the workers' musical could not compete with mainstream theatre commercially, and, against the Federal Theatre's inexpensive and equally relevant musicals, the workers' musical had little chance to flourish.  Further influences on the workers' musical from professional theatre personnel and from professional and socially-committed composers of music need also to be studied further. 

      David Henry has suggested several paths for the study of social movements, all of which would contribute to an understanding of the workers' musicals of the thirties.[568]  First, examination of a movement's documents will help lead to an understanding of their role in advancing and maintaining the movement, as well as an understanding of the context surrounding it.  This study has examined one type of document of the American left wing in the thirties, while other studies have focused on publications, posters and pamphlets, and plays.  Further studies could attempt to correlate all the documents of the workers' theatre movement for the purpose of assessing their function within the movement and its historical context.  Second, Henry suggests that the role of social, political, and artistic theoreticians would be a valuable area for examination.  Levine's study of left-wing dramatic theory has addressed that issue, but further studies are needed to assess the function of theory in the movement's history and development.  Third, the effect that individuals serving leadership functions had within the movement would also yield valuable insight into the workings of a social movement.  Fourth, the international nature of social movements needs to be examined.  Jorns's study of American adaptations to European forms addresses this issue, but further examinations need to be made of the nature of left-wing theatre in the thirties in all areas of the world, in an attempt to reveal the influences that made each country's movements distinguishable from, yet similar to, others'.  Finally, the influence of social movements on other movements needs to be examined.  To what extent, for instance, did the workers' theatre movement of the thirties influence the Chicano theatre and the black theatre of the sixties, feminist theatre, and gay theatre?  Were Hollywood movies of the fifties influenced by those who moved with the workers' theatre of the thirties?  Were Broadway musicals of the forties, fifties, and sixties influenced in any way by the social consciousness of the thirties?  Did early broadcast television reflect influences of thirties leftist theatre?  These and other questions, not within the scope of this study, are fruitful areas for further examination.

      Ultimately, the musicals of the workers' theatre movement failed to offer the kind of theatre that the movement was searching for.  Too humorous, frivolous, and light-hearted, and too difficult for unsophisticated performers to handle, the workers' musical regressed at the end of the Depression from its ardent Communism to a hodge-podge of leftist-liberal sentiment.  While attempting to institute the idea of the socially-significant musical, the workers' musical became simply "topical stuff," either no different from the mainstream musical or so different that it was deemed unsophisticated and thus unsuccessful.  Only a few of the musicals are remembered at all by most theatre historians; but each of those that became famous were perhaps influenced by the other workers' musicals that do not remain in our memory and which constitute a significant development of theatre in the thirties.