1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:05,213 --> 00:00:09,342 - I think one of the horrors of our society, 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 4 00:00:09,342 --> 00:00:11,219 American society, maybe it's true of others 5 00:00:11,219 --> 00:00:13,054 but I know of this country, 6 00:00:13,054 --> 00:00:16,266 is this break with the past, a lack of continuity. 7 00:00:16,266 --> 00:00:18,018 Young people know nothing of the past. 8 00:00:18,018 --> 00:00:20,937 For that matter, even people who lived in the past have forgotten it. . 9 00:00:20,937 --> 00:00:22,897 and I think the New Deal, 10 00:00:22,897 --> 00:00:26,359 The Arts Project, is a good case in point. 11 00:00:26,735 --> 00:00:29,195 It's as though it never existed! 12 00:00:29,195 --> 00:00:32,240 Not even in history books, but not in memories of people! 13 00:00:32,240 --> 00:00:34,534 ♪ (dramatic drum music) 14 00:00:34,534 --> 00:00:38,538 - [Orson Welles] The 21st of October, 1929. . 15 00:00:38,538 --> 00:00:40,206 It was not just Variety 16 00:00:40,206 --> 00:00:43,043 that gave the market crash a bad notice. 17 00:00:43,043 --> 00:00:45,754 Many had idolized Herbert Hoover. 18 00:00:45,754 --> 00:00:47,881 Only a year before he had said: 19 00:00:47,881 --> 00:00:50,717 "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph 20 00:00:50,717 --> 00:00:54,721 over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. " 21 00:00:54,721 --> 00:00:58,558 By 1931, 12 million Americans were out of work 22 00:00:58,558 --> 00:01:00,894 and farm prices hit bottom. 23 00:01:00,894 --> 00:01:12,113 ♪ (banjo music) 24 00:01:12,113 --> 00:01:13,740 The Bonus Army: 25 00:01:13,740 --> 00:01:16,409 thousands of angry World War I veterans marched 26 00:01:16,409 --> 00:01:20,455 on Washington, and many spoke openly of revolution. 27 00:01:20,455 --> 00:01:24,250 Federal troops under General MacArthur attacked the veterans. 28 00:01:24,250 --> 00:01:27,378 Still undaunted, Hoover kept telling the country 29 00:01:27,378 --> 00:01:31,091 that prosperity was just around the corner. 30 00:01:31,091 --> 00:01:34,219 - ♪ [singer] Which side are you on, 31 00:01:34,219 --> 00:01:37,138 ♪ Which side are you on? 32 00:01:37,138 --> 00:01:40,517 ♪ Which side are you on, boys, 33 00:01:40,517 --> 00:01:44,354 ♪ Which side are you on? 34 00:01:44,354 --> 00:01:49,192 ♪ (banjo music) 35 00:01:49,192 --> 00:01:50,110 ♪ (upbeat music) 36 00:01:50,110 --> 00:01:53,947 - [Orson Welles] In 1932, the hero of the hour arrived: 37 00:01:53,947 --> 00:01:55,782 Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 38 00:01:55,782 --> 00:01:58,284 The popular governor of New York would be president 39 00:01:58,284 --> 00:02:01,287 of the United States for the next 13 years. 40 00:02:01,287 --> 00:02:03,414 He brought new enthusiasm, 41 00:02:03,414 --> 00:02:04,666 a New Deal. 42 00:02:04,666 --> 00:02:06,793 - So first of all. . 43 00:02:06,793 --> 00:02:10,130 let me assert my firm belief 44 00:02:10,130 --> 00:02:14,551 that the only thing we have to fear is. . 45 00:02:14,551 --> 00:02:16,136 fear itself! 46 00:02:16,136 --> 00:02:17,387 ♪ (upbeat music) 47 00:02:17,387 --> 00:02:20,265 - [Orson Welles] Roosevelt didn't offer only rhetoric, 48 00:02:20,265 --> 00:02:22,475 he offered realities. 49 00:02:22,475 --> 00:02:25,478 The New Deal provided jobs for close to 1/3 50 00:02:25,478 --> 00:02:28,022 of the nation's labor force. 51 00:02:28,022 --> 00:02:30,483 Public works like highways, dams, 52 00:02:30,483 --> 00:02:32,819 parks, and public housing. . 53 00:02:32,819 --> 00:02:35,488 ♪ (upbeat Swing music) 54 00:02:35,488 --> 00:02:38,658 These projects also had a larger purpose. 55 00:02:38,658 --> 00:02:41,119 The New Deal promised to restore meaning 56 00:02:41,119 --> 00:02:43,872 to the lives of millions. 57 00:02:43,872 --> 00:02:46,916 ♪ (upbeat Swing music) 58 00:02:46,916 --> 00:02:51,713 The WPA did not just help workers, 59 00:02:51,713 --> 00:02:55,341 it also puts unemployed artists to work. 60 00:02:55,341 --> 00:02:58,261 Jobs were created for thousands of musicians, 61 00:02:58,261 --> 00:03:02,390 painters, actors, dancers, and photographers. 62 00:03:02,390 --> 00:03:04,350 ♪ (upbeat Swing music) 63 00:03:04,350 --> 00:03:07,228 For $23. 86 a week, 64 00:03:07,228 --> 00:03:10,398 the standard WPA compensation, 65 00:03:10,398 --> 00:03:15,236 they gave the country an unprecedented artistic Renaissance. 66 00:03:15,236 --> 00:03:18,281 - The New Deal had this wonderful idea, 67 00:03:18,281 --> 00:03:21,868 not just about theatre. It extended to all professions; 68 00:03:21,868 --> 00:03:27,123 that it was better to take people off the relief rolls, 69 00:03:27,123 --> 00:03:30,710 let's say, to give them a small check each week 70 00:03:30,710 --> 00:03:32,879 to keep them alive. . 71 00:03:32,879 --> 00:03:36,007 rather than do that, it was better to put them to work, 72 00:03:36,007 --> 00:03:37,967 even though receiving the same amount of money 73 00:03:37,967 --> 00:03:40,220 and give them some self-respect 74 00:03:40,220 --> 00:03:41,721 that they were earning this money instead 75 00:03:41,721 --> 00:03:45,058 of just receiving it as charity. 76 00:03:45,058 --> 00:03:50,146 ♪ (indistinct singing) 77 00:03:50,146 --> 00:03:51,731 - [Orson Welles] In the performing arts, 78 00:03:51,731 --> 00:03:54,234 jobs were provided for playwrights, 79 00:03:54,234 --> 00:03:58,738 directors and actors, by the Federal Theater Project. 80 00:03:58,738 --> 00:04:04,994 ♪ (indistinct singing) 81 00:04:06,246 --> 00:04:09,374 The Federal Writers' Project sent hundreds 82 00:04:09,374 --> 00:04:11,834 of writers to talk to people all over the country. 83 00:04:11,834 --> 00:04:14,087 They found a vision of a better world 84 00:04:14,087 --> 00:04:16,923 in the lives of ordinary people. 85 00:04:16,923 --> 00:04:19,550 - It gave the writer a sense of his own country 86 00:04:19,550 --> 00:04:21,678 and of his immediate environment. 87 00:04:21,678 --> 00:04:24,430 He had to explore that environment in order 88 00:04:24,430 --> 00:04:25,848 to produce the books 89 00:04:25,848 --> 00:04:28,601 that the Writers' Project was preparing. 90 00:04:28,601 --> 00:04:31,145 - You went to the small towns and called a meeting 91 00:04:31,145 --> 00:04:35,108 in the city hall and asked them what their history was. 92 00:04:35,108 --> 00:04:37,819 No one had ever asked them before, probably, ever. 93 00:04:37,819 --> 00:04:39,988 "And what is your history?" 94 00:04:39,988 --> 00:04:43,241 And they came in hoards to tell us. 95 00:04:43,241 --> 00:04:45,493 - [Orson Welles] Such experiences were not only recorded 96 00:04:45,493 --> 00:04:49,205 by writers, but also by some of the country's leading photographers. 97 00:04:49,205 --> 00:04:52,709 They were hired by the Farm Security Administration 98 00:04:52,709 --> 00:04:55,295 to visually document the devastating effects 99 00:04:55,295 --> 00:04:57,880 of the depression on rural America. 100 00:04:57,880 --> 00:05:01,259 - There were some of us, including President Roosevelt, 101 00:05:01,259 --> 00:05:03,803 who realized that we were passing through a time 102 00:05:03,803 --> 00:05:08,516 which we hoped would never be repeated in American history. . 103 00:05:08,516 --> 00:05:11,811 and to have a record of it seemed very important at the time. 104 00:05:11,811 --> 00:05:17,984 - There was a need to produce a collection of photographs 105 00:05:17,984 --> 00:05:22,238 that would show the American people 106 00:05:22,238 --> 00:05:27,452 the terrible conditions under which 107 00:05:27,452 --> 00:05:30,830 farm people lived: the rural poverty, 108 00:05:30,830 --> 00:05:33,541 the migrant labor conditions, 109 00:05:33,541 --> 00:05:39,422 the environmental problems such as the Dust Bowl, 110 00:05:39,422 --> 00:05:43,676 and the great drought that took place in those years, 111 00:05:43,676 --> 00:05:46,846 and the general effects of the Great Depression. 112 00:05:46,846 --> 00:05:51,517 And there was a need to explain these problems as well 113 00:05:51,517 --> 00:05:55,605 as to justify the programs 114 00:05:55,605 --> 00:05:58,608 that Roosevelt and Tugwell had developed 115 00:05:58,608 --> 00:06:02,403 to alleviate these situations. 116 00:06:03,196 --> 00:06:08,785 - Before the '30s, the United States was an unknown island 117 00:06:08,785 --> 00:06:11,871 so far as art is concerned. Certainly, we had the eight. . 118 00:06:11,871 --> 00:06:16,376 We had a rather nice tradition of early American art, 119 00:06:16,376 --> 00:06:18,795 but it was not a world shaker, 120 00:06:18,795 --> 00:06:23,883 and after the '30s, just because every Tom, Dick, 121 00:06:23,883 --> 00:06:27,845 and Harry was able to make a good or a bad painting, 122 00:06:27,845 --> 00:06:29,806 and so many people got their training, 123 00:06:29,806 --> 00:06:33,893 so many different points of view were encouraged. 124 00:06:33,893 --> 00:06:36,145 They didn't ask whether you painted this way 125 00:06:36,145 --> 00:06:38,106 or whether you painted that way, they asked 126 00:06:38,106 --> 00:06:41,275 whether you needed help or wanted help. 127 00:06:41,275 --> 00:06:43,945 - [Orson Welles] Murals, posters and paintings by thousands 128 00:06:43,945 --> 00:06:47,824 of New Deal artists were mounted in public buildings, 129 00:06:47,824 --> 00:06:49,909 and public places. 130 00:06:49,909 --> 00:06:51,202 In the past, 131 00:06:51,202 --> 00:06:53,788 artists had been patronized by kings, 132 00:06:53,788 --> 00:06:55,915 bishops, and wealthy individuals. 133 00:06:55,915 --> 00:06:57,291 In this country too, 134 00:06:57,291 --> 00:07:00,795 the arts had to rely on private benefactors. 135 00:07:00,795 --> 00:07:02,839 Government sponsorship of the arts 136 00:07:02,839 --> 00:07:06,843 in the '30s was a unique experiment in American history. 137 00:07:06,843 --> 00:07:10,847 Of course, government sponsorship has its shortcomings. 138 00:07:10,847 --> 00:07:12,849 Often the bureaucracy may feel entitled 139 00:07:12,849 --> 00:07:16,436 to its own ideas about art and sometimes artists believed 140 00:07:16,436 --> 00:07:20,773 that they should only convey social and political messages. 141 00:07:20,773 --> 00:07:26,320 In both cases, art can become boring and propagandistic. 142 00:07:27,071 --> 00:07:29,073 When government sponsors the arts, 143 00:07:29,073 --> 00:07:31,659 success or failure largely depends 144 00:07:31,659 --> 00:07:34,620 on the individual administrators involved. 145 00:07:34,620 --> 00:07:37,123 WPA appointments were good ones. 146 00:07:37,123 --> 00:07:40,626 Most often than not, administrators took the artist's side 147 00:07:40,626 --> 00:07:42,003 and thank God, 148 00:07:42,003 --> 00:07:44,672 protected them from government interference. 149 00:07:44,672 --> 00:07:46,215 The Federal Theatre was led 150 00:07:46,215 --> 00:07:49,635 by an energetic young woman, Hallie Flanagan. 151 00:07:49,635 --> 00:07:51,471 She'd been director of the theatre workshop 152 00:07:51,471 --> 00:07:53,931 at Vassar College and was well known as the author 153 00:07:53,931 --> 00:07:55,808 of a travel report on her experience 154 00:07:55,808 --> 00:07:57,977 with the avant-garde theatres in Europe 155 00:07:57,977 --> 00:08:00,146 and in the Soviet Union. 156 00:08:00,146 --> 00:08:03,149 She was concerned with new forms of theatre, 157 00:08:03,149 --> 00:08:07,487 and with reaching audiences who had never seen live theatre before. 158 00:08:07,487 --> 00:08:10,740 - It was the first time, and in many ways, 159 00:08:10,740 --> 00:08:14,494 the only time that I knew of. . 160 00:08:14,494 --> 00:08:17,246 a federally sponsored theatre 161 00:08:17,246 --> 00:08:22,168 that regarded theatre as a communication, 162 00:08:22,168 --> 00:08:24,837 and therefore a social responsibility. 163 00:08:24,837 --> 00:08:27,840 - We're having a book burning on the green tomorrow night. 164 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:28,674 - A what? 165 00:08:28,674 --> 00:08:31,969 - We're going to burn up all this subversive literature. 166 00:08:31,969 --> 00:08:34,847 A lot of smutty stuff that's trumpin' public knowledge. 167 00:08:34,847 --> 00:08:35,932 Have you got any objection? 168 00:08:35,932 --> 00:08:39,101 - Well, you won't find any subversive books here! 169 00:08:40,394 --> 00:08:41,854 - Ohhh. . 170 00:08:42,146 --> 00:08:43,773 Now, how about this fella? 171 00:08:43,773 --> 00:08:47,360 Now this fella, Charles Dickens. . wasn't he a communist? 172 00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:50,238 - The line that I always quote 173 00:08:50,238 --> 00:08:52,823 because I think it's the best line that's ever been written 174 00:08:52,823 --> 00:08:56,661 on the subject was from Brecht's "Galileo" when he said, 175 00:08:56,661 --> 00:08:59,914 "A man cannot un-see what he's seen. " 176 00:08:59,914 --> 00:09:04,293 And a lot of people with a very strong morality of some sort 177 00:09:04,293 --> 00:09:09,549 which was inculcated. . and a part of the tradition. . 178 00:09:09,549 --> 00:09:13,719 saw things in the late '20s and the early '30s 179 00:09:13,719 --> 00:09:15,721 that they could not un-see. 180 00:09:15,721 --> 00:09:18,349 - [Orson Welles] One of the things the Federal Theatre people 181 00:09:18,349 --> 00:09:20,685 could not un-see was the plight 182 00:09:20,685 --> 00:09:23,396 of minorities in American society. 183 00:09:23,396 --> 00:09:25,064 For the first time in American history, 184 00:09:25,064 --> 00:09:28,818 the Federal Theatre offered black actors real opportunities. 185 00:09:28,818 --> 00:09:32,572 The first plays by and for blacks were done in Harlem 186 00:09:32,572 --> 00:09:35,741 at the new Lafayette Theatre under the direction 187 00:09:35,741 --> 00:09:38,494 of the actress, Rose McClendon, 188 00:09:38,494 --> 00:09:41,330 and the young producer, John Houseman. 189 00:09:41,330 --> 00:09:45,126 - The question was what kind of, just artistically, 190 00:09:45,126 --> 00:09:48,337 what kind of shows should you do? 191 00:09:48,337 --> 00:09:50,965 Because there were those who said we should go back 192 00:09:50,965 --> 00:09:55,678 and do the old stock company thing of using 193 00:09:55,678 --> 00:09:58,764 black actors to play in successful white plays. 194 00:09:58,764 --> 00:10:01,434 I was against that and the community generally 195 00:10:01,434 --> 00:10:05,980 had turned now to being against that sort of thing. 196 00:10:05,980 --> 00:10:09,525 There were those who had great ambitions for the theatre, 197 00:10:09,525 --> 00:10:11,777 there were those who 198 00:10:11,777 --> 00:10:14,238 felt the theatre should concern itself entirely 199 00:10:14,238 --> 00:10:18,951 with contemporary and indigenous problems, and so on. 200 00:10:18,951 --> 00:10:22,580 I did a lot of thinking and talking to a lot of people, 201 00:10:22,580 --> 00:10:25,291 and I finally came to the decision 202 00:10:25,291 --> 00:10:27,918 with. . this advice that I got, 203 00:10:27,918 --> 00:10:30,379 that the only way to run it was 204 00:10:30,379 --> 00:10:34,008 to cut the theatre into two halves. 205 00:10:34,008 --> 00:10:35,968 - [Orson Welles] One group was formed to produce dramas 206 00:10:35,968 --> 00:10:37,970 of contemporary black life. 207 00:10:37,970 --> 00:10:40,473 It was led by Carlton Moss. 208 00:10:40,473 --> 00:10:42,975 - Well, we opened that theatre, 209 00:10:42,975 --> 00:10:46,187 the Federal Theatre, the Lafayette section, 210 00:10:46,187 --> 00:10:48,814 the Lafayette Theatre with "Walk Together Children," 211 00:10:48,814 --> 00:10:49,732 which as I said, 212 00:10:49,732 --> 00:10:53,069 was a play that did not challenge the status quo. 213 00:10:53,069 --> 00:10:54,987 It was based on the scripture, 214 00:10:54,987 --> 00:10:56,656 "The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth. " 215 00:10:56,656 --> 00:11:01,285 That was its message that eventually 216 00:11:01,285 --> 00:11:04,664 the bad people can be persuaded to be good people. . 217 00:11:04,664 --> 00:11:08,584 if everybody follows the scripture. 218 00:11:08,584 --> 00:11:11,379 - Then, simultaneously with this, 219 00:11:11,379 --> 00:11:13,381 but it took longer to get going, 220 00:11:13,381 --> 00:11:18,344 we decided that we would treat the black actors simply 221 00:11:18,344 --> 00:11:21,555 as an actor, and that we would do great plays. 222 00:11:21,555 --> 00:11:24,558 We would do classics, we would do any kind of play we wanted 223 00:11:24,558 --> 00:11:29,689 and we would simply not admit that there was any. . 224 00:11:29,689 --> 00:11:32,066 question of color one way or the other. 225 00:11:32,066 --> 00:11:36,696 And obviously, the first playwright with whom one 226 00:11:36,696 --> 00:11:39,782 should try this experiment is obviously William Shakespeare. 227 00:11:39,782 --> 00:11:43,494 I had formed a great friendship with Orson Wells, 228 00:11:43,494 --> 00:11:45,413 who was then only 19 years old, 229 00:11:45,413 --> 00:11:49,250 but I had this total conviction that he was a genius. 230 00:11:49,250 --> 00:11:51,919 I asked him to try his hand 231 00:11:51,919 --> 00:11:54,463 at directing a Shakespearian play with black actors, 232 00:11:54,463 --> 00:11:57,049 and he was enormously enthusiastic. 233 00:11:57,049 --> 00:12:01,679 And immediately, the parallel between Macbeth and Scotland 234 00:12:01,679 --> 00:12:05,266 in the 13th Century, and the 235 00:12:05,266 --> 00:12:08,728 history of Christophe in Haiti, 236 00:12:08,728 --> 00:12:13,566 which was again, the rise of a soldier who becomes a dictator, 237 00:12:13,566 --> 00:12:16,861 and finally ends in a bloodbath. . 238 00:12:16,861 --> 00:12:20,156 that seemed a very interesting and close parallel. 239 00:12:20,156 --> 00:12:23,576 ♪ (dramatic adventurous music) 240 00:12:23,576 --> 00:12:25,619 - Arm! Arm and out! 241 00:12:25,619 --> 00:12:28,414 There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here. 242 00:12:28,414 --> 00:12:30,666 I a'gin to be aweary of the sun, 243 00:12:30,666 --> 00:12:35,254 and wish th' estate o' th' world were now undone. 244 00:12:35,254 --> 00:12:36,964 Ring the alarm bell! 245 00:12:36,964 --> 00:12:39,467 (bell rings) ♪ (trumpet blows) 246 00:12:39,467 --> 00:12:41,677 Blow, wind! Onward! 247 00:12:41,677 --> 00:12:44,305 At least we'll die with harness on our back. 248 00:12:44,305 --> 00:12:46,432 What's he that was not born of woman? 249 00:12:46,432 --> 00:12:49,602 Such a one am I to fear, or none! 250 00:12:49,894 --> 00:12:52,646 - Let me find him, fortune! 251 00:12:52,646 --> 00:12:55,274 Tyrant, show thy face! 252 00:12:55,274 --> 00:12:57,943 I cannot strike at wretched kerns, 253 00:12:57,943 --> 00:13:00,863 whose arms are hired to bear their staves. 254 00:13:00,863 --> 00:13:04,116 If thou be'st slain, and with no stroke of mine, 255 00:13:04,116 --> 00:13:07,286 my wife and children's ghosts will haunt me still! 256 00:13:07,286 --> 00:13:08,662 - What is thy name? 257 00:13:08,662 --> 00:13:10,206 (gunshot) 258 00:13:10,206 --> 00:13:12,833 (wind howls) 259 00:13:12,833 --> 00:13:14,376 (Macbeth cackles) 260 00:13:14,376 --> 00:13:16,212 - My name's Macbeth! 261 00:13:16,212 --> 00:13:18,214 (gunshots) 262 00:13:18,214 --> 00:13:19,340 (wind howls) 263 00:13:19,340 --> 00:13:20,800 Lay on Macduff, 264 00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:23,719 and damned be him that first cries, "Hold enough!" 265 00:13:23,719 --> 00:13:34,480 (shouting and commotion) 266 00:13:35,523 --> 00:13:40,861 - Our position was that we should get into that theatre 267 00:13:40,861 --> 00:13:44,990 a cross section, or get the largest possible audience, 268 00:13:44,990 --> 00:13:46,492 and in order to do that you had to go 269 00:13:46,492 --> 00:13:48,828 to where most people were. . 270 00:13:48,828 --> 00:13:52,665 and I remember in the opening of "Macbeth," 271 00:13:52,665 --> 00:13:54,458 we went to the Elks, 272 00:13:54,458 --> 00:13:56,252 which is a fraternal organization, 273 00:13:56,252 --> 00:14:01,382 and made an arrangement with them to supply a band for us, 274 00:14:01,382 --> 00:14:03,342 and then we went to the city and we got a permit 275 00:14:03,342 --> 00:14:04,510 and we had a parade. 276 00:14:04,510 --> 00:14:14,895 ♪ (jazz parade music) 277 00:14:14,895 --> 00:14:18,440 I had a crew of about eight people who plastered the town 278 00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:20,359 with placards and we used to write 279 00:14:20,359 --> 00:14:22,194 on the sidewalk on the corner. 280 00:14:22,194 --> 00:14:25,239 Then we visited every church in the community, 281 00:14:25,239 --> 00:14:28,033 so we got the clergymen involved. 282 00:14:28,033 --> 00:14:31,036 We began to get sell-out audiences. 283 00:14:31,912 --> 00:14:36,208 These were solid black audiences. 284 00:14:36,876 --> 00:14:38,419 Then you had, of course, 285 00:14:38,419 --> 00:14:41,046 you had all of these people coming from Downtown, 286 00:14:41,046 --> 00:14:43,090 white people who would have been attracted 287 00:14:43,090 --> 00:14:45,092 by exotic quality. 288 00:14:45,092 --> 00:14:48,012 - From his mother's womb, untimely ripped! 289 00:14:48,012 --> 00:14:49,430 (witches laugh) 290 00:14:49,430 --> 00:14:51,974 - Accursed be that tongue that tells me so! 291 00:14:51,974 --> 00:14:54,768 (witches laugh and screech) 292 00:14:54,768 --> 00:14:58,647 And be these juggling fiends. . no more believed. 293 00:14:59,273 --> 00:15:03,777 (cheering and commotion) 294 00:15:04,236 --> 00:15:06,113 - Hail king! 295 00:15:06,113 --> 00:15:09,366 ♪ (dramatic music) 296 00:15:09,366 --> 00:15:11,619 - [crowd] Hail king! 297 00:15:11,619 --> 00:15:16,165 - [Macduff] Behold! Where stands the usurper's cursed head. 298 00:15:16,165 --> 00:15:18,500 The time is free! 299 00:15:18,500 --> 00:15:20,836 All hail Malcolm! 300 00:15:20,836 --> 00:15:23,505 - See. . ! 301 00:15:24,256 --> 00:15:26,926 the charmed. . 302 00:15:26,926 --> 00:15:28,594 wound up! 303 00:15:28,594 --> 00:15:32,723 - The most significant thing about the Federal Theatre, 304 00:15:32,723 --> 00:15:36,101 particularly the Harlem section of it, 305 00:15:36,101 --> 00:15:39,146 was that it gave for the first time in the history 306 00:15:39,146 --> 00:15:40,606 of the American theatre, 307 00:15:40,606 --> 00:15:44,318 black technicians an opportunity to get experience, 308 00:15:44,318 --> 00:15:47,655 and it broke the 309 00:15:47,655 --> 00:15:53,285 anti-black stronghold that the stage hand union had. 310 00:15:53,285 --> 00:15:55,287 ♪ (soft guitar music) 311 00:15:55,287 --> 00:15:57,122 - [Orson Welles] All the arts suddenly became available 312 00:15:57,122 --> 00:15:59,124 to a vast audience. 313 00:15:59,124 --> 00:16:02,461 It was the beginning of a truly popular culture. 314 00:16:02,461 --> 00:16:05,089 ♪ (soft guitar music) 315 00:16:05,089 --> 00:16:07,049 Stage productions toured the country, 316 00:16:07,049 --> 00:16:09,259 actors played in high schools, public libraries, 317 00:16:09,259 --> 00:16:11,804 in tents and on truck platforms. 318 00:16:11,804 --> 00:16:15,432 The WPA encouraged painters to seek public places 319 00:16:15,432 --> 00:16:16,767 for their work. 320 00:16:16,767 --> 00:16:20,062 Artists used to brush, canvas and easel, 321 00:16:20,062 --> 00:16:23,440 received instruction in mural painting techniques and soon, 322 00:16:23,440 --> 00:16:25,901 large tableaus sprang up in court buildings, 323 00:16:25,901 --> 00:16:28,320 post offices and libraries. 324 00:16:28,904 --> 00:16:31,907 One of the leading painters on the Chicago Arts Project 325 00:16:31,907 --> 00:16:33,534 was Aaron Bohrod. 326 00:16:33,534 --> 00:16:36,495 - I guess my own inclinations were to go 327 00:16:36,495 --> 00:16:42,584 to ordinary subject matter in an effort to. . 328 00:16:42,584 --> 00:16:46,088 come up with an aesthetic result on the basis 329 00:16:46,088 --> 00:16:49,008 of everyday life. . 330 00:16:49,008 --> 00:16:51,176 unglamorous life. 331 00:16:51,176 --> 00:16:54,680 Went into every nook and cranny of the city of Chicago 332 00:16:54,680 --> 00:16:59,101 for the materials that I was interested in getting, 333 00:16:59,101 --> 00:17:04,940 and this is a South State Street subject that I did 334 00:17:04,940 --> 00:17:07,693 in the city of the storefronts 335 00:17:07,693 --> 00:17:11,447 and of the characters walking back and forth 336 00:17:11,447 --> 00:17:13,699 in the atmosphere there. 337 00:17:13,699 --> 00:17:18,162 The American artist was finally looking at his own country 338 00:17:18,162 --> 00:17:20,998 for his subject matter, 339 00:17:20,998 --> 00:17:24,001 whereas formerly it was the business 340 00:17:24,001 --> 00:17:27,880 of the talented young American painter going to Paris, 341 00:17:27,880 --> 00:17:29,840 not only for his tutelage, 342 00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:32,217 but for his subject matter, so that he came back 343 00:17:32,217 --> 00:17:36,221 and he painted some pretty impressionist paintings modelled 344 00:17:36,221 --> 00:17:39,683 after sturdier models. 345 00:17:39,683 --> 00:17:43,145 But here the American artist was looking 346 00:17:43,145 --> 00:17:45,564 at ramshackled red barns, 347 00:17:45,564 --> 00:17:49,318 at city streets which were either tumbled down 348 00:17:49,318 --> 00:17:51,403 or reasonably sturdy. 349 00:17:51,403 --> 00:17:55,240 But in any case, at his own country, his own city, 350 00:17:55,240 --> 00:17:58,118 his own back yard. 351 00:17:58,118 --> 00:18:00,162 ♪ (soft guitar music) 352 00:18:00,162 --> 00:18:02,790 - [Orson Welles] The post office lobby became the main stage 353 00:18:02,790 --> 00:18:05,751 for the rediscovery of populist traditions. 354 00:18:05,751 --> 00:18:09,088 ♪ (soft banjo music) 355 00:18:09,088 --> 00:18:10,881 Particularly in the middle and Southwest, 356 00:18:10,881 --> 00:18:13,592 this led to the creation of a new realism. 357 00:18:13,592 --> 00:18:16,345 It recorded the history of regions whose spirit 358 00:18:16,345 --> 00:18:20,182 had never before been expressed artistically. 359 00:18:20,182 --> 00:18:23,143 ♪ (soft banjo music) 360 00:18:23,143 --> 00:18:25,104 Gallup, New Mexico was a small town 361 00:18:25,104 --> 00:18:26,980 near the Navajo Reservation. 362 00:18:26,980 --> 00:18:31,527 Before 1935, Gallup never had paintings, and the Navajo, 363 00:18:31,527 --> 00:18:33,654 not to mention Navajo painters, 364 00:18:33,654 --> 00:18:37,032 had no way to make their views known. 365 00:18:37,032 --> 00:18:38,617 ♪ (soft banjo music) 366 00:18:38,617 --> 00:18:41,161 Now, Gallup's Library has an impressive collection 367 00:18:41,161 --> 00:18:44,373 of works by important painters of the Southwest, 368 00:18:44,373 --> 00:18:47,459 most of them native Americans. 369 00:18:47,459 --> 00:18:51,964 - Now, I regard this as probably 370 00:18:51,964 --> 00:18:55,843 the most exciting 371 00:18:55,843 --> 00:19:00,472 painting of all, and this is done by Harrison Begay. 372 00:19:00,472 --> 00:19:03,308 This is the famous 373 00:19:03,308 --> 00:19:05,227 Yébîchai. 374 00:19:05,227 --> 00:19:11,316 They dance, the nine-day dance, where women and men dance. 375 00:19:12,651 --> 00:19:17,656 - [Orson Welles] Harrison Begay is one of the most important Navajo painters. 376 00:19:17,656 --> 00:19:21,743 His career as a painter began with the Federal Arts Project. 377 00:19:21,743 --> 00:19:26,498 - My style of painting changed very little. 378 00:19:26,498 --> 00:19:31,670 I follow the old traditional Indian painting mostly. . 379 00:19:31,670 --> 00:19:36,300 although sometimes I do other kind of paintings. 380 00:19:36,300 --> 00:19:39,136 This is the painting I do. 381 00:19:39,136 --> 00:19:43,098 It's an everyday life of my people. 382 00:19:43,098 --> 00:19:47,060 But most of the demands. . 383 00:19:47,060 --> 00:19:49,688 by my people are these old, 384 00:19:49,688 --> 00:19:53,609 traditional paintings with designs, 385 00:19:53,609 --> 00:19:58,238 different kinds of legendary designs, 386 00:19:58,238 --> 00:20:01,950 traditional symbolic designs. 387 00:20:01,950 --> 00:20:04,411 That's what I do most of. 388 00:20:05,204 --> 00:20:06,371 - [Orson Welles] In the '30s, 389 00:20:06,371 --> 00:20:10,042 most of the Indian painters created their finest work. 390 00:20:10,042 --> 00:20:12,794 Unimpeded by financial pressures 391 00:20:12,794 --> 00:20:15,547 and commercial considerations, they could follow 392 00:20:15,547 --> 00:20:18,425 their own dictates rather than work for the trading post 393 00:20:18,425 --> 00:20:20,093 and curio shops. 394 00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:23,889 The leading Navajo muralist, 395 00:20:23,889 --> 00:20:26,892 today an arts teacher at an Indian school, 396 00:20:26,892 --> 00:20:29,728 was Andrew Tsinnahjinnie. 397 00:20:29,728 --> 00:20:32,439 - Well, we were in a group. . 398 00:20:33,482 --> 00:20:35,275 Indian artists were in groups, 399 00:20:35,275 --> 00:20:39,238 and you will work at a certain place, 400 00:20:39,238 --> 00:20:42,157 like Oklahoma and Tulsa. 401 00:20:42,157 --> 00:20:44,493 I was trained to. . 402 00:20:45,452 --> 00:20:49,915 to do the mural job large-scale. 403 00:20:49,915 --> 00:20:54,294 I had a helper, some boys helped me to. . 404 00:20:54,294 --> 00:20:58,423 put up some large murals, scaffolding. . 405 00:20:58,423 --> 00:21:01,593 and I painted some murals in Phoenix, Arizona, 406 00:21:01,593 --> 00:21:05,264 in an administration building. 407 00:21:05,264 --> 00:21:07,266 ♪ (soft guitar music) 408 00:21:07,266 --> 00:21:10,435 - [Orson Welles] To give a voice to the voiceless, 409 00:21:10,435 --> 00:21:12,688 either by encouraging them to speak for themselves 410 00:21:12,688 --> 00:21:15,107 or by calling attention to their plight, 411 00:21:15,107 --> 00:21:19,027 this could be the motto for all New Deal art. 412 00:21:19,027 --> 00:21:23,824 The voiceless, the deprived, included farmers, 413 00:21:23,824 --> 00:21:26,201 especially in the Midwest. 414 00:21:26,201 --> 00:21:29,454 They had fallen victim to sand storms and droughts. 415 00:21:29,454 --> 00:21:32,791 Many had lost their property and their work. 416 00:21:33,208 --> 00:21:35,168 Few across the country could grasp 417 00:21:35,168 --> 00:21:37,337 the catastrophe that had occurred. 418 00:21:37,337 --> 00:21:39,965 To understand and cope with the situation, 419 00:21:39,965 --> 00:21:42,134 Roosevelt and his secretary for agriculture, 420 00:21:42,134 --> 00:21:44,845 Henry Wallace, created a special division 421 00:21:44,845 --> 00:21:47,055 within the Department of Agriculture, 422 00:21:47,055 --> 00:21:49,308 The Resettlement Administration, 423 00:21:49,308 --> 00:21:52,978 later called the Farm Security Administration, FSA. 424 00:21:54,563 --> 00:21:57,316 It was headed by one of Roosevelt's intellectual advisors, 425 00:21:57,316 --> 00:22:00,736 the young Columbia university economics professor, 426 00:22:00,736 --> 00:22:02,988 Rexford Guy Tugwell. 427 00:22:02,988 --> 00:22:07,909 - This was a peculiar time when agriculture was changing. 428 00:22:07,909 --> 00:22:08,827 (clears throat) 429 00:22:08,827 --> 00:22:10,954 Not only was there were a depression, 430 00:22:10,954 --> 00:22:14,666 but the techniques of agriculture were changing. 431 00:22:15,167 --> 00:22:18,712 The cotton picker was just coming into use, 432 00:22:18,712 --> 00:22:23,300 and this meant that a great many people in the South, 433 00:22:23,300 --> 00:22:26,845 sharecroppers and others, had their jobs taken away 434 00:22:26,845 --> 00:22:31,016 from them, and there began this terrible 435 00:22:31,016 --> 00:22:32,893 movement to the cities. 436 00:22:32,893 --> 00:22:34,519 - [Orson Welles] Tugwell understood that the suffering 437 00:22:34,519 --> 00:22:37,314 of the farmers had to be publicized to the country, 438 00:22:37,314 --> 00:22:40,275 and photographs seemed to be the best medium. 439 00:22:40,275 --> 00:22:41,693 During his days at Columbia, 440 00:22:41,693 --> 00:22:44,112 he had published the first economics textbook 441 00:22:44,112 --> 00:22:47,115 to use photographs as illustrations. 442 00:22:47,115 --> 00:22:48,950 The pictures for this book had been assembled 443 00:22:48,950 --> 00:22:51,536 by his assistant, Roy Stryker. 444 00:22:51,536 --> 00:22:55,707 Tugwell now hired him to head the FSA photography section. 445 00:22:55,707 --> 00:22:59,378 - So when I went to Washington and took charge 446 00:22:59,378 --> 00:23:02,547 of this work that we were doing 447 00:23:02,547 --> 00:23:04,132 in the Department of Agriculture 448 00:23:04,132 --> 00:23:07,552 and then the Resettlement Administration, 449 00:23:07,552 --> 00:23:11,306 it seemed quite natural to me to send for Roy, 450 00:23:11,306 --> 00:23:14,935 and tell him that he was the kind of person we needed 451 00:23:14,935 --> 00:23:19,147 to make a visual record of what was being done. 452 00:23:19,147 --> 00:23:22,609 And besides, to make a historic record 453 00:23:22,609 --> 00:23:24,194 of what the times were like, 454 00:23:24,194 --> 00:23:26,822 because the times were very bad. 455 00:23:26,822 --> 00:23:29,324 - [Orson Welles] There was only one major record 456 00:23:29,324 --> 00:23:31,785 of the catastrophe in American agriculture. 457 00:23:31,785 --> 00:23:33,745 It was accompanied by an extraordinary collection 458 00:23:33,745 --> 00:23:36,415 of photographs, something unheard of at the time. 459 00:23:36,415 --> 00:23:39,334 It was written by a young economist from California, 460 00:23:39,334 --> 00:23:40,794 Paul Schuster Taylor. 461 00:23:40,794 --> 00:23:43,588 - Well, why did I want a photographer? 462 00:23:43,588 --> 00:23:46,842 I said because of the conditions that I see 463 00:23:46,842 --> 00:23:51,680 in the field are the conditions that need to be 464 00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:54,099 remedied. . 465 00:23:54,599 --> 00:23:57,436 and the only way that I can show the people 466 00:23:57,436 --> 00:24:01,648 who make the decisions in the cities what the conditions 467 00:24:01,648 --> 00:24:05,944 and the needs are is by showing them photographs 468 00:24:05,944 --> 00:24:08,113 to supplement my analysis 469 00:24:08,113 --> 00:24:09,781 - [Orson Welles] The young photographer who traveled with 470 00:24:09,781 --> 00:24:13,285 Taylor, and whom he later married, was Dorothea Lange. 471 00:24:13,285 --> 00:24:15,495 Her work revealed both her political commitment 472 00:24:15,495 --> 00:24:17,706 and her acute powers of observation, 473 00:24:17,706 --> 00:24:20,876 qualities Tugwell and Stryker were looking for, 474 00:24:20,876 --> 00:24:25,380 and Dorothea Lange was hired as the first FSA photographer. 475 00:24:25,380 --> 00:24:27,507 - ♪ [singer] When the farmer comes to town 476 00:24:27,507 --> 00:24:29,509 ♪ With his wagon broken down 477 00:24:29,509 --> 00:24:33,847 ♪ Oh, the farmer is the man that feeds them all 478 00:24:33,847 --> 00:24:37,851 ♪ If you'll only look and see, I think you will agree 479 00:24:37,851 --> 00:24:42,397 ♪ That the farmer is the man that feeds them all 480 00:24:42,397 --> 00:24:46,818 ♪ The farmer is the man, the farmer is the man 481 00:24:46,818 --> 00:24:50,405 ♪ He lives on credit 'till the fall 482 00:24:50,405 --> 00:24:52,824 ♪ Then they take him by the hand 483 00:24:52,824 --> 00:24:54,534 ♪ Then they lead him through the land 484 00:24:54,534 --> 00:24:58,747 ♪ And the merchant, he's the one that gets it all 485 00:24:58,747 --> 00:25:00,874 - [Orson Welles] While Lange tried to capture people 486 00:25:00,874 --> 00:25:02,667 in motion with small cameras, 487 00:25:02,667 --> 00:25:05,545 the second photographer Stryker hired preferred 488 00:25:05,545 --> 00:25:08,548 the large plate camera and the tripod. 489 00:25:08,548 --> 00:25:11,343 Walker Evans was already acknowledged as one 490 00:25:11,343 --> 00:25:13,845 of the great photographic artists of the time 491 00:25:13,845 --> 00:25:15,222 when he joined FSA. 492 00:25:15,222 --> 00:25:28,860 ♪ (fiddle music) 493 00:25:28,860 --> 00:25:32,405 Evans refused any touch of the exotic. 494 00:25:32,405 --> 00:25:37,202 His photos never deprived people or things of their dignity. 495 00:25:37,202 --> 00:25:42,207 He never degraded a subject into a mere illustration. 496 00:25:42,207 --> 00:25:45,001 Ben Shahn, the next photographer to join FSA, 497 00:25:45,001 --> 00:25:48,255 was already famous at the time as a painter. 498 00:25:48,255 --> 00:25:51,299 His wife, Bernarda Bryson Shahn, 499 00:25:51,299 --> 00:25:54,094 remembers why he took up photography. 500 00:25:54,094 --> 00:25:58,056 - Once it is made into a work of art, 501 00:25:58,056 --> 00:25:59,599 it becomes a symbolic thing. 502 00:25:59,599 --> 00:26:01,643 In other words, it becomes the universal. . 503 00:26:01,643 --> 00:26:05,730 and he had a very strong feeling about that, 504 00:26:05,730 --> 00:26:09,776 and particularly in the days when he was using a camera, 505 00:26:09,776 --> 00:26:13,905 he had a very strong feeling of the importance 506 00:26:13,905 --> 00:26:16,575 of specific things. 507 00:26:16,575 --> 00:26:36,720 ♪ (fiddle music) 508 00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:38,638 - [Orson Welles] Three things left their mark 509 00:26:38,638 --> 00:26:41,308 on FSA photographs: 510 00:26:41,308 --> 00:26:44,352 Dorothy Lange's precise sense of the moment 511 00:26:44,352 --> 00:26:46,605 of highest intensity, 512 00:26:46,605 --> 00:26:49,232 Walker Evans' great respect for the dignity 513 00:26:49,232 --> 00:26:52,235 of human beings and objects, 514 00:26:52,235 --> 00:26:54,487 and Ben Shahn's conviction of the meaning 515 00:26:54,487 --> 00:26:58,783 of details seen in the right context. 516 00:26:58,783 --> 00:27:01,411 These techniques were extensively practiced 517 00:27:01,411 --> 00:27:04,623 by the younger photographers Stryker hired. 518 00:27:04,623 --> 00:27:06,333 Among them was Arthur Rothstein, 519 00:27:06,333 --> 00:27:09,461 who during the '30s shot over 50,000 photographs 520 00:27:09,461 --> 00:27:13,465 for FSA before going on to become chief photographer 521 00:27:13,465 --> 00:27:15,675 for Look Magazine. 522 00:27:15,675 --> 00:27:19,429 - The type of photography that we did, 523 00:27:19,429 --> 00:27:22,641 whether we did it consciously or unconsciously, 524 00:27:22,641 --> 00:27:27,979 could be called a social documentary type of photograph, 525 00:27:27,979 --> 00:27:30,649 and that type of photograph, 526 00:27:30,649 --> 00:27:35,904 to my way of thinking, is characterized 527 00:27:35,904 --> 00:27:40,825 by a selection of significant details. . 528 00:27:40,825 --> 00:27:45,372 significant details which comment on the relationship 529 00:27:45,372 --> 00:27:48,333 between people and their environments, 530 00:27:48,333 --> 00:27:52,003 and significant details which make the photograph 531 00:27:52,003 --> 00:27:56,591 more meaningful than just a mere record of the scene. 532 00:27:56,591 --> 00:27:59,302 This is from the very first assignment 533 00:27:59,302 --> 00:28:02,389 that I did in October, 1935. 534 00:28:02,389 --> 00:28:04,641 The photograph is interesting, 535 00:28:04,641 --> 00:28:07,352 not only because it shows this man with dignity, 536 00:28:07,352 --> 00:28:10,021 reading a book, the sign on the wall, 537 00:28:10,021 --> 00:28:11,898 "Christ is the head of this house, 538 00:28:11,898 --> 00:28:14,859 the silent listener to every conversation," 539 00:28:14,859 --> 00:28:19,406 combined with a picture of Clara Bow over here, 540 00:28:19,406 --> 00:28:22,826 and the Colosseum over there. 541 00:28:22,826 --> 00:28:27,872 And, from this, you get an idea, perhaps, 542 00:28:27,872 --> 00:28:31,710 of this man's interests. This is his home: neat, 543 00:28:31,710 --> 00:28:37,048 well-organized, a little lace cover for the table, 544 00:28:37,048 --> 00:28:40,135 and these other aspects of his environment. 545 00:28:40,135 --> 00:28:42,721 ♪ (guitar music) 546 00:28:42,721 --> 00:28:44,431 - [Orson Welles] Rothstein was a New Yorker. 547 00:28:44,431 --> 00:28:46,683 The West for him was unknown territory, 548 00:28:46,683 --> 00:28:49,936 strange at times, surprising and exotic. 549 00:28:49,936 --> 00:29:02,449 ♪ (guitar music) 550 00:29:02,449 --> 00:29:07,078 Quite the opposite holds true for painter/ photographer, Russell Lee. 551 00:29:07,078 --> 00:29:08,413 He grew up in the West, 552 00:29:08,413 --> 00:29:11,916 and had a great commitment to its ways and people. 553 00:29:11,916 --> 00:29:15,295 - This is actually a picture of a family 554 00:29:15,295 --> 00:29:20,300 in Southwestern Iowa, that is eating Christmas dinner, 555 00:29:20,300 --> 00:29:21,760 as it so happened. 556 00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,220 This was on the first assignment that I had, 557 00:29:24,220 --> 00:29:26,347 which is the family of Earl Pauley. 558 00:29:26,347 --> 00:29:30,977 The character of the room, this. . 559 00:29:30,977 --> 00:29:33,646 cream separator. . 560 00:29:34,439 --> 00:29:37,358 All of these things are important to tell 561 00:29:37,358 --> 00:29:39,861 the surroundings of this particular family, 562 00:29:39,861 --> 00:29:43,782 or. . here's a detail, very simple, 563 00:29:43,782 --> 00:29:46,951 of the entrance to a home that tells quite a bit 564 00:29:46,951 --> 00:29:48,870 about the home there, 565 00:29:48,870 --> 00:29:51,164 the general disrepair. 566 00:29:51,164 --> 00:29:55,460 This was in Oklahoma, and. . much before the days 567 00:29:55,460 --> 00:29:57,212 of electricity as you can see. 568 00:29:57,212 --> 00:29:59,464 You have the old fashioned washboard here, 569 00:29:59,464 --> 00:30:04,219 and the woman did the work as you can well see. 570 00:30:04,219 --> 00:30:07,347 People at that time had very little idea 571 00:30:07,347 --> 00:30:10,225 of what was going on in one part of the country 572 00:30:10,225 --> 00:30:13,144 that they were not from. 573 00:30:13,144 --> 00:30:16,314 The communication was very poor. 574 00:30:16,314 --> 00:30:19,275 Transportation was very poor at the time. 575 00:30:19,275 --> 00:30:21,945 There was no television. 576 00:30:21,945 --> 00:30:24,572 Radio was not. . 577 00:30:24,572 --> 00:30:26,783 too prevalent, 578 00:30:26,783 --> 00:30:32,664 and electrification, rural electrification, was not existent. 579 00:30:32,664 --> 00:30:39,003 ♪ (banjo music) 580 00:30:39,003 --> 00:30:41,047 - [Orson Welles] Lee's familiarity with Westerners 581 00:30:41,047 --> 00:30:44,092 and their world could best be seen in his most famous work, 582 00:30:44,092 --> 00:30:46,344 in one of the very first picture essays, 583 00:30:46,344 --> 00:30:50,890 a series about a self-help community called Pie Town. 584 00:30:50,890 --> 00:30:54,936 - Pie Town was isolated. . really, 585 00:30:54,936 --> 00:30:58,022 and here was a contact with the outside world. 586 00:30:58,022 --> 00:30:59,566 This was the post office, 587 00:30:59,566 --> 00:31:02,777 the gas station, and the stage down. 588 00:31:02,777 --> 00:31:05,905 Well, there was a woman here a long time ago, 589 00:31:05,905 --> 00:31:08,533 who would bake very good pies. 590 00:31:08,533 --> 00:31:11,870 It so happened that this was on the road west 591 00:31:11,870 --> 00:31:16,374 from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, 592 00:31:16,374 --> 00:31:21,212 and many people who were displaced by the tractor, 593 00:31:21,212 --> 00:31:25,216 or by the drought or whatever, 594 00:31:25,216 --> 00:31:29,220 were moving to California, trying to find work. . 595 00:31:29,220 --> 00:31:32,599 and this was one place where many people had stopped, 596 00:31:32,599 --> 00:31:35,643 and they had begun to form a community there, 597 00:31:35,643 --> 00:31:39,814 of these displaced people. They were farmers, 598 00:31:39,814 --> 00:31:44,402 and here was a chance to get some cash money right away 599 00:31:44,402 --> 00:31:45,945 to get established. 600 00:31:45,945 --> 00:31:50,241 So people in the community would welcome the newcomers. 601 00:31:50,241 --> 00:31:54,829 They would help them to. . construct their own house. 602 00:31:54,829 --> 00:31:57,624 About the only thing that the newcomer needed 603 00:31:57,624 --> 00:32:00,084 was maybe a dollar to buy some nails with. 604 00:32:00,084 --> 00:32:04,255 There was one building in particular that was a school, 605 00:32:04,255 --> 00:32:06,257 it was a community hall, 606 00:32:06,257 --> 00:32:07,717 and it was a church, 607 00:32:07,717 --> 00:32:10,178 and they used it at the right time. 608 00:32:10,178 --> 00:32:12,263 This was a community sing, 609 00:32:12,263 --> 00:32:16,976 and just a detail of three of the ladies. 610 00:32:16,976 --> 00:32:21,606 - Well, most of us were familiar with the work of Lewis Hine. . 611 00:32:21,606 --> 00:32:25,193 and before that, Jacob Riis. 612 00:32:25,193 --> 00:32:28,655 They were sociologists with cameras, 613 00:32:28,655 --> 00:32:34,035 and we thought that we would follow along those same lines, 614 00:32:34,035 --> 00:32:39,707 to be sociologically oriented with our photographs. 615 00:32:39,707 --> 00:32:41,459 ♪ 616 00:32:41,459 --> 00:32:44,921 - [Orson Welles] Jacob Riis, the Danish immigrant who wrote 617 00:32:44,921 --> 00:32:47,006 "The Making of an American" 618 00:32:47,006 --> 00:32:50,551 and "How the Other Half Lives," was the pioneer 619 00:32:50,551 --> 00:32:54,347 of socially conscious documentary photography. 620 00:32:54,347 --> 00:32:55,723 In the late 19th Century, 621 00:32:55,723 --> 00:32:57,642 working as a police reporter in the slums 622 00:32:57,642 --> 00:33:00,144 of Manhattan's steaming Lower East Side, 623 00:33:00,144 --> 00:33:02,397 he took his famous photos. 624 00:33:02,397 --> 00:33:04,565 Riis hoped they would make clear to the well-off 625 00:33:04,565 --> 00:33:08,319 just how necessary progressive reform was. 626 00:33:09,153 --> 00:33:13,241 Reform was also the goal of Lewis Hine's photographs. 627 00:33:13,241 --> 00:33:16,786 Taking pictures of Ellis Island before the First World War, 628 00:33:16,786 --> 00:33:18,997 Hines found ways of arranging people 629 00:33:18,997 --> 00:33:23,835 and things to give him striking documentary images. 630 00:33:23,835 --> 00:33:26,254 ♪ (soft music) 631 00:33:26,254 --> 00:33:29,173 He asked people to look directly at the camera, 632 00:33:29,173 --> 00:33:31,342 something portrait photographers and 633 00:33:31,342 --> 00:33:34,929 studios had deliberately tried to avoid. 634 00:33:34,929 --> 00:33:42,353 ♪ (soft music) 635 00:33:42,353 --> 00:33:46,024 The social documentary, both photographic and written, 636 00:33:46,024 --> 00:33:51,070 was at once a historical record, and a tool to change society. 637 00:33:51,070 --> 00:33:53,865 ♪ (soft music) 638 00:33:53,865 --> 00:33:57,535 It was rediscovered in the '30s as the most characteristic way 639 00:33:57,535 --> 00:34:00,580 to express the American vision. 640 00:34:00,580 --> 00:34:04,083 ♪ (soft guitar music) 641 00:34:04,083 --> 00:34:07,045 The social documentary, with its emphasis on 642 00:34:07,045 --> 00:34:11,299 significant detail, became the form most widely practiced 643 00:34:11,299 --> 00:34:15,970 by the more than 10,000 members of the Federal Writers' Project. 644 00:34:15,970 --> 00:34:21,267 Between 1935 and 1940, they produced over 3,000 publications, 645 00:34:21,267 --> 00:34:24,395 most of them dealing with local history. 646 00:34:24,395 --> 00:34:27,774 The major work was a series of 50 travel guide books 647 00:34:27,774 --> 00:34:29,525 to the United States. 648 00:34:29,525 --> 00:34:31,944 Each volume contains a social history 649 00:34:31,944 --> 00:34:33,988 of the state it covers. 650 00:34:33,988 --> 00:34:36,991 In charge of the travel guide series was the national editor 651 00:34:36,991 --> 00:34:39,911 of the Writers' Project, Jerre Mangione. 652 00:34:39,911 --> 00:34:42,580 - Robert Cantwell, who strikes me as one 653 00:34:42,580 --> 00:34:46,417 of the most discerning of the critics of the '30s. . 654 00:34:46,417 --> 00:34:48,920 thought that the books were extremely valuable 655 00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:53,424 because they presented America in a way that no one 656 00:34:53,424 --> 00:34:56,636 had ever seen America before. 657 00:34:57,470 --> 00:35:01,265 Far from being the very thrifty, 658 00:35:01,265 --> 00:35:05,561 sober kind of people that Americans had been considered, 659 00:35:05,561 --> 00:35:10,191 he found in these volumes much evidence 660 00:35:10,191 --> 00:35:14,362 that they were ingenuous and naive, 661 00:35:14,362 --> 00:35:19,951 and that they were gamblers, and. . for example, they would. . 662 00:35:19,951 --> 00:35:25,331 they would toss a coin to see where a boundary line should be. 663 00:35:25,331 --> 00:35:28,501 Or they would. . they were. . 664 00:35:29,127 --> 00:35:33,005 sort of childish in some respects. They were. . 665 00:35:33,005 --> 00:35:36,008 You've heard of spite fences, where a person would put 666 00:35:36,008 --> 00:35:39,512 up a fence just be hostile to his neighbors. 667 00:35:39,512 --> 00:35:45,309 There were also spite hotels, and spite railroads, 668 00:35:45,309 --> 00:35:48,479 just to get even with some competitor. 669 00:35:48,479 --> 00:35:50,189 ♪ 670 00:35:50,189 --> 00:35:52,733 - [Orson Welles] The depression hit worst in the very region 671 00:35:52,733 --> 00:35:56,821 which most attracted the populist-minded artists, 672 00:35:56,821 --> 00:36:00,491 writers and photographers of the time: the Midwest. 673 00:36:00,491 --> 00:36:02,660 They felt the attitudes they found 674 00:36:02,660 --> 00:36:08,166 among farmers and miners would help to build a new society. 675 00:36:08,166 --> 00:36:10,334 These ideas are most clearly expressed 676 00:36:10,334 --> 00:36:12,670 by a labor journalist, feminist, 677 00:36:12,670 --> 00:36:15,339 poet and novelist who was the driving force 678 00:36:15,339 --> 00:36:19,844 behind the Minnesota Writers' Project. . Meridel Lesueur. 679 00:36:19,844 --> 00:36:22,180 - And all those struggles. . 680 00:36:22,180 --> 00:36:25,308 I think the first taking over of a grocery store was 681 00:36:25,308 --> 00:36:29,520 in Minneapolis, where everybody just leaned against the glass 682 00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,357 and it broke and then we all went in and took groceries. 683 00:36:33,357 --> 00:36:35,109 The best ham I ever had 684 00:36:35,109 --> 00:36:37,236 I took out of that grocery store. 685 00:36:37,236 --> 00:36:39,363 (chuckles) 686 00:36:39,989 --> 00:36:41,490 The Midwest. . 687 00:36:41,490 --> 00:36:47,955 it has a deep democratic populist history, because. . 688 00:36:47,955 --> 00:36:51,375 it was settled really by the Homestead Act, 689 00:36:51,375 --> 00:36:54,045 where an amazing thing happened and it never happened 690 00:36:54,045 --> 00:36:59,759 in the world before, where you got 160 acres of land 691 00:36:59,759 --> 00:37:03,095 for simply developing it. 692 00:37:03,095 --> 00:37:05,890 What is little known is that in North Dakota, 693 00:37:05,890 --> 00:37:08,226 the people actually took over the state, 694 00:37:08,226 --> 00:37:11,896 actually voted in what was called the Nonpartisan League. 695 00:37:11,896 --> 00:37:14,774 It was really for one year in 1918, 696 00:37:14,774 --> 00:37:18,236 a socialist state in the middle of the United States, 697 00:37:18,236 --> 00:37:22,281 and then it was smashed down in the First World War. 698 00:37:22,281 --> 00:37:25,910 I think that a lot of the pressure on the Roosevelt regime 699 00:37:25,910 --> 00:37:29,080 for relief, and for. . 700 00:37:29,997 --> 00:37:35,461 the projects, and the WPA projects, and the CCC it was called, 701 00:37:35,461 --> 00:37:36,796 came from the Middle West. 702 00:37:36,796 --> 00:37:41,968 In fact, many of the laws like social security 703 00:37:41,968 --> 00:37:45,054 and unemployment insurance were created in North Dakota 704 00:37:45,054 --> 00:37:46,597 in the Nonpartisan League days. 705 00:37:46,597 --> 00:37:49,225 ♪ (banjo plays) 706 00:37:49,225 --> 00:37:51,560 - [Orson Welles] Thus, it was the Midwestern countryside 707 00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,188 with its small towns that became the setting 708 00:37:54,188 --> 00:37:57,316 for the most influential novel of working class life. 709 00:37:57,316 --> 00:38:01,445 "The Disinherited" by Jack Conroy. 710 00:38:01,445 --> 00:38:04,490 Conroy, a miner's son, grew up in Moberly, 711 00:38:04,490 --> 00:38:06,784 a small mining town in central Missouri 712 00:38:06,784 --> 00:38:09,120 and spent most of his life there. 713 00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,706 - This used to be the Wabash Railroad Station 714 00:38:11,706 --> 00:38:15,334 in the days when Moberly was a great railroad center. 715 00:38:15,334 --> 00:38:19,005 Eight trains daily came in here, from all directions. 716 00:38:19,005 --> 00:38:21,799 Now there are no passenger trains at all. 717 00:38:21,799 --> 00:38:25,303 You can see the station is boarded up. 718 00:38:25,303 --> 00:38:29,473 The freight trains come through, but no passenger trains at all. 719 00:38:29,473 --> 00:38:31,017 When I think of coming back to Moberly, 720 00:38:31,017 --> 00:38:33,352 I think of Vachel Lindsay's lines 721 00:38:33,352 --> 00:38:35,980 about Springfield, Illinois. 722 00:38:35,980 --> 00:38:38,774 People going into Springfield see nothing 723 00:38:38,774 --> 00:38:41,360 but a dingy little mining town. . 724 00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:46,699 but I think of Vachel's lines about Springfield, Illinois. 725 00:38:46,699 --> 00:38:50,202 He said "Let not our town be large, remembering 726 00:38:50,202 --> 00:38:52,955 that little Athens was the Muses' home, 727 00:38:52,955 --> 00:38:56,167 that Oxford ruleth the heart of London still, 728 00:38:56,167 --> 00:38:58,669 and Florence brought the Renaissance to Rome. " 729 00:38:58,669 --> 00:38:59,754 ♪ (banjo music) 730 00:38:59,754 --> 00:39:02,340 - [Orson Welles] Writers thought that only from such small towns 731 00:39:02,340 --> 00:39:05,176 as Florence, Athens or Moberly, 732 00:39:05,176 --> 00:39:08,346 a genuine civilization could originate. 733 00:39:08,346 --> 00:39:10,723 Some anthropologists of the 1930s looked 734 00:39:10,723 --> 00:39:14,143 for enduring culture in primitive tribes. 735 00:39:14,143 --> 00:39:16,520 Conroy looked for it in Moberly. 736 00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:20,024 This insistence that the American small town 737 00:39:20,024 --> 00:39:23,778 had world importance was expressed by Conroy's publication 738 00:39:23,778 --> 00:39:25,905 in Moberly of two magazines: 739 00:39:25,905 --> 00:39:30,326 "The Anvil," which later merged with "Partisan Review," 740 00:39:30,326 --> 00:39:33,037 and "The Rebel Poet. " 741 00:39:33,037 --> 00:39:34,413 ♪ (banjo music) 742 00:39:34,413 --> 00:39:37,333 "The Rebel Poet's" manifesto outlined the mood 743 00:39:37,333 --> 00:39:39,752 and outlook of the writers of the period. 744 00:39:39,752 --> 00:39:42,713 - "We champion the calls of the weak and defenseless. 745 00:39:42,713 --> 00:39:45,883 We combat the greed of industrial barons, 746 00:39:45,883 --> 00:39:47,718 who are converting American laborers 747 00:39:47,718 --> 00:39:49,553 into abject serfs. 748 00:39:49,553 --> 00:39:55,643 We ridicule the musty echoes of the Fin de siècle slogan, 749 00:39:55,643 --> 00:39:56,894 "Art for art's sake," 750 00:39:56,894 --> 00:40:00,272 and inscribe on our banner, "Art for humanity's sake. " 751 00:40:00,272 --> 00:40:03,984 - ♪ [singer] When you're asked about living 752 00:40:03,984 --> 00:40:06,237 ♪ This is what you say 753 00:40:06,237 --> 00:40:12,410 ♪ We're so darn poor and ragged we can never get away 754 00:40:12,410 --> 00:40:18,958 ♪ And it's hard times, and old coalmans and mines 755 00:40:18,958 --> 00:40:24,505 ♪ A hard time, poor boy. . 756 00:40:24,505 --> 00:40:28,092 - I come back. . 757 00:40:28,092 --> 00:40:31,595 to Moberly here, from Toledo. . 758 00:40:31,595 --> 00:40:33,013 you know? 759 00:40:33,013 --> 00:40:34,306 Scrambling around as best I could, 760 00:40:34,306 --> 00:40:36,475 selling some stories to the American Merkley, 761 00:40:36,475 --> 00:40:38,185 that kept me alive. 762 00:40:38,185 --> 00:40:40,980 My wife's wages working at a shoe factory, 763 00:40:40,980 --> 00:40:43,774 for about $6 a week. . 764 00:40:43,774 --> 00:40:48,696 and some book reviews for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. . 765 00:40:48,696 --> 00:40:51,657 and in the meantime, I'd been communicating with Nelson Algren, 766 00:40:51,657 --> 00:40:54,326 an old friend who had contributed to "The Anvil" 767 00:40:54,326 --> 00:40:55,619 and all that. 768 00:40:55,619 --> 00:40:56,954 So he got me to come up there 769 00:40:56,954 --> 00:40:58,956 and I stayed at his pad until I finally got 770 00:40:58,956 --> 00:41:00,541 on the Chicago Project. 771 00:41:00,541 --> 00:41:05,713 - I was just knocking around the country from 1931 to 1935. . 772 00:41:05,713 --> 00:41:08,799 and so I was very pleased when I found I could go up 773 00:41:08,799 --> 00:41:11,594 to his office and get a regular check, 774 00:41:11,594 --> 00:41:14,054 which was about $85 a month to begin with, 775 00:41:14,054 --> 00:41:17,391 but I rose very rapidly to $125 a month 776 00:41:17,391 --> 00:41:19,977 within about four years' time. . 777 00:41:19,977 --> 00:41:21,979 but it gave me leisure, 778 00:41:21,979 --> 00:41:24,231 that is, I could go up there at 10 in the morning 779 00:41:24,231 --> 00:41:27,485 and sign out at noon, and say you were going to the library 780 00:41:27,485 --> 00:41:29,987 and go to the racetrack. 781 00:41:29,987 --> 00:41:34,033 - The singer and dancer named Katherine Dunham. . 782 00:41:34,658 --> 00:41:39,330 you know, is also a specialist in West Indian folklore, 783 00:41:39,330 --> 00:41:40,414 and folk dancing, and all that. 784 00:41:40,414 --> 00:41:44,919 So she was our supervisor, and she quit. . 785 00:41:44,919 --> 00:41:49,048 and they put Arna Bontemps and I on the job. 786 00:41:49,048 --> 00:41:50,799 Arna and I worked together out there, 787 00:41:50,799 --> 00:41:52,843 and we were doing a study 788 00:41:52,843 --> 00:41:54,762 called the "The Negro in Illinois. " 789 00:41:54,762 --> 00:41:56,305 ♪ 790 00:41:56,305 --> 00:41:58,015 - [Orson Welles] "The Negro in Illinois," 791 00:41:58,015 --> 00:42:00,142 later published under the title 792 00:42:00,142 --> 00:42:02,019 "They Seek a City," 793 00:42:02,019 --> 00:42:04,355 was only one in a large number of studies 794 00:42:04,355 --> 00:42:07,525 in black history the Federal Writers' Project produced. 795 00:42:07,525 --> 00:42:11,195 The most important were the "Ex-Slave Narratives," 796 00:42:11,195 --> 00:42:14,156 interviews with several hundred former slaves 797 00:42:14,156 --> 00:42:18,077 of whom over 10,000 were still alive in the '30s. 798 00:42:18,077 --> 00:42:27,795 ♪ (soft upbeat banjo music) 799 00:42:27,795 --> 00:42:31,882 This concern to document local and regional history 800 00:42:31,882 --> 00:42:34,343 was accompanied by an equally strong interest 801 00:42:34,343 --> 00:42:38,430 in the great themes of American and Western civilization. 802 00:42:38,430 --> 00:42:46,230 ♪ (soft guitar music) 803 00:42:46,814 --> 00:42:49,108 One of the more successful attempts could be seen 804 00:42:49,108 --> 00:42:51,735 in the Bronx Post Office in New York City, 805 00:42:51,735 --> 00:42:53,821 the mural competition for which was won 806 00:42:53,821 --> 00:42:56,907 by the late Ben Shahn, and his wife, 807 00:42:56,907 --> 00:42:58,576 Bernarda Bryson Shahn. 808 00:42:58,576 --> 00:43:00,953 - Probably well over a hundred artists 809 00:43:00,953 --> 00:43:03,038 entered that competition, 810 00:43:03,038 --> 00:43:05,583 and it was certainly a great day for Ben 811 00:43:05,583 --> 00:43:09,086 when the telegram came that he had won it, 812 00:43:09,086 --> 00:43:13,716 and he was terribly happy. 813 00:43:13,716 --> 00:43:16,260 I had submitted some sketches, too. . 814 00:43:16,260 --> 00:43:18,637 and they accepted me as an assistant. 815 00:43:19,930 --> 00:43:22,433 If one is involved with people, 816 00:43:22,433 --> 00:43:25,978 and with politics, and with ideas, 817 00:43:25,978 --> 00:43:30,107 certainly he could never find a readier audience 818 00:43:30,107 --> 00:43:33,819 than he could in a big post office like that. 819 00:43:35,279 --> 00:43:39,950 And Ben chose for his theme Walt Whitman's poem, 820 00:43:39,950 --> 00:43:41,785 "I See America Working. " 821 00:43:42,870 --> 00:43:48,792 And so he had all of the kinds of working in the mural, 822 00:43:48,792 --> 00:43:52,921 and then on the end wall that he had Whitman 823 00:43:52,921 --> 00:43:55,924 and the words of the poem, 824 00:43:55,924 --> 00:44:00,804 and so that was the key to the whole thing. 825 00:44:00,804 --> 00:44:06,477 Whitman's total song of his "Song of Myself" 826 00:44:06,477 --> 00:44:09,146 was not really a song of myself, 827 00:44:09,146 --> 00:44:12,441 it was a song of myself as everybody, 828 00:44:12,441 --> 00:44:15,861 and I would say that that would correspond 829 00:44:15,861 --> 00:44:20,324 to Ben's view 100% that Ben felt his identification 830 00:44:20,324 --> 00:44:22,576 with people, just totally. 831 00:44:22,576 --> 00:44:24,495 - [Orson Welles] Shahn had learned mural painting 832 00:44:24,495 --> 00:44:27,206 from Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican artist who came 833 00:44:27,206 --> 00:44:28,999 to the United States in the '30s. 834 00:44:28,999 --> 00:44:32,670 One of Rivera's famous murals was a dramatic rendering 835 00:44:32,670 --> 00:44:35,506 of the Ford assembly plant in Detroit, commissioned 836 00:44:35,506 --> 00:44:37,466 by Henry and Edsel Ford. 837 00:44:37,466 --> 00:44:51,021 ♪ (upbeat banjo music) 838 00:44:51,021 --> 00:44:53,899 New Deal artists emulated Rivera's realism. 839 00:44:53,899 --> 00:44:55,442 They wanted to apply his methods 840 00:44:55,442 --> 00:44:58,404 to early American themes and traditions. 841 00:44:58,404 --> 00:45:12,876 ♪ (upbeat banjo music) 842 00:45:13,293 --> 00:45:16,380 One painter who admired Rivera was George Biddle, 843 00:45:16,380 --> 00:45:19,049 the brother of Roosevelt's first attorney general. 844 00:45:19,049 --> 00:45:22,344 The huge mural of Biddle's commands the staircase 845 00:45:22,344 --> 00:45:25,806 of the Justice Department in Washington. 846 00:45:25,806 --> 00:45:30,144 The painting quotes Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: 847 00:45:30,144 --> 00:45:31,770 "If we would guide by the light 848 00:45:31,770 --> 00:45:35,399 of reason, we must let our minds be bold. " 849 00:45:35,399 --> 00:45:55,002 ♪ (soft flute music) 850 00:45:55,002 --> 00:45:58,922 The mural vividly illuminates the reformed vision of the New Deal. 851 00:45:58,922 --> 00:46:01,800 It shows the path of the immigrant leading 852 00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:04,261 from hard work and dirty sweat shops 853 00:46:04,261 --> 00:46:07,431 to the richly set table of the New Deal. 854 00:46:07,431 --> 00:46:09,141 Biddle portrayed several members 855 00:46:09,141 --> 00:46:13,604 of Roosevelt's first cabinet seated at the table. 856 00:46:13,604 --> 00:46:15,647 ♪ (soft flute music) 857 00:46:15,647 --> 00:46:18,650 (footsteps) 858 00:46:18,650 --> 00:46:23,572 The treasury employed artists and paid them a modest salary. 859 00:46:23,572 --> 00:46:28,160 It wasn't until 1935 under the WPA that a program was set 860 00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:32,122 up specifically for the unemployed artist. 861 00:46:32,122 --> 00:46:36,502 ♪ (guitar music) 862 00:46:36,502 --> 00:46:38,462 The museum curator, Holger Cahill, 863 00:46:38,462 --> 00:46:41,840 was appointed head of the Federal Arts Project. 864 00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,760 Cahill had made a name for himself pioneering exhibitions 865 00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,221 of American folk art. 866 00:46:47,221 --> 00:46:49,556 He was considered a compromised candidate 867 00:46:49,556 --> 00:46:51,308 who could satisfy both the radical 868 00:46:51,308 --> 00:46:54,645 and the more academic artists of the time. 869 00:46:55,187 --> 00:46:57,648 Treasury Department artists worked exclusively 870 00:46:57,648 --> 00:47:00,234 on murals and sculptures for federal buildings, 871 00:47:00,234 --> 00:47:02,194 often with patriotic themes. 872 00:47:02,194 --> 00:47:04,321 The Art Project artists, 873 00:47:04,321 --> 00:47:06,949 thematically much less restricted, 874 00:47:06,949 --> 00:47:09,618 worked in many other areas. 875 00:47:09,618 --> 00:47:10,536 There were print shops 876 00:47:10,536 --> 00:47:13,539 where they prepared posters urging examinations 877 00:47:13,539 --> 00:47:14,832 for the eyes, the teeth, 878 00:47:14,832 --> 00:47:17,709 and for venereal diseases. 879 00:47:17,709 --> 00:47:21,505 ♪ (guitar music) 880 00:47:21,505 --> 00:47:24,007 Berenice Abbott photographed New York City 881 00:47:24,007 --> 00:47:26,385 for The Arts Project. 882 00:47:26,844 --> 00:47:30,973 Fashion designers worked in WPA workshops. 883 00:47:30,973 --> 00:47:36,353 WPA artists designed postage stamps and even the nickel. 884 00:47:36,353 --> 00:47:39,773 ♪ (soft guitar music) 885 00:47:39,773 --> 00:47:41,859 And they created a unique inventory 886 00:47:41,859 --> 00:47:44,778 of American popular arts and design. 887 00:47:44,778 --> 00:47:50,742 ♪ (soft guitar music) 888 00:47:50,742 --> 00:47:52,744 Weather vanes, ship figureheads, 889 00:47:52,744 --> 00:47:55,163 silverware, doorknobs. . 890 00:47:55,163 --> 00:48:00,085 This index was the pet project of folklorist, Holger Cahill. 891 00:48:00,085 --> 00:48:02,629 These meticulous drawings allowed hundreds 892 00:48:02,629 --> 00:48:04,715 of artists to practice their craft, 893 00:48:04,715 --> 00:48:08,218 and to prepare for later careers in the applied arts. 894 00:48:08,218 --> 00:48:09,553 More than any other achievement, 895 00:48:09,553 --> 00:48:12,055 the index fulfilled the two major goals 896 00:48:12,055 --> 00:48:14,057 of The Arts Projects: 897 00:48:14,057 --> 00:48:19,438 to develop skills, and to provide relief for the unemployed. 898 00:48:20,397 --> 00:48:24,318 - A New Deal did provide jobs. 899 00:48:24,318 --> 00:48:27,362 Many such programs that have been, of course, 900 00:48:27,362 --> 00:48:31,074 maligned by those who hated the New Deal, here in Chicago 901 00:48:31,074 --> 00:48:32,951 and the "Chicago Tribune," 902 00:48:32,951 --> 00:48:37,998 when the leading opponents had front page cartoons 903 00:48:37,998 --> 00:48:41,919 all the time, damning the New Deal. 904 00:48:44,254 --> 00:48:49,760 And the usual clown was the guy with the glasses, 905 00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:51,929 the radical professor. . 906 00:48:51,929 --> 00:48:56,141 and generally the man leaning on the shovel was the attack 907 00:48:56,141 --> 00:48:59,770 on the Works Projects Administration, the WPA, 908 00:48:59,770 --> 00:49:02,314 and so "These guys are getting money for nothin' " 909 00:49:02,314 --> 00:49:06,485 - [Orson Welles] "Reds in charge of Federal Writers' Project. " 910 00:49:06,485 --> 00:49:09,529 The attacks on the WPA Arts Projects soon 911 00:49:09,529 --> 00:49:11,657 became politically charged. 912 00:49:11,657 --> 00:49:13,617 It was in this atmosphere of suspicion 913 00:49:13,617 --> 00:49:14,660 that the man who was later 914 00:49:14,660 --> 00:49:17,412 to become Henry Wallace's campaign manager 915 00:49:17,412 --> 00:49:19,331 was made state supervisor 916 00:49:19,331 --> 00:49:22,376 of the Illinois Writers' Project, Curtis MacDougal. 917 00:49:22,376 --> 00:49:25,045 - Well, it was a part of an entire anti-New Deal, 918 00:49:25,045 --> 00:49:26,672 anti-Franklin Roosevelt. 919 00:49:26,672 --> 00:49:29,383 The camp there was easily reactionary, 920 00:49:29,383 --> 00:49:32,803 the economic royalists, he called them. 921 00:49:32,803 --> 00:49:36,723 We've called them fascists and worse since, 922 00:49:36,723 --> 00:49:38,850 and they deserve all they were called. 923 00:49:38,850 --> 00:49:41,311 They did everything they could to throw obstacles in the way. 924 00:49:41,311 --> 00:49:45,190 - [Orson Welles] Martin Dies, a congressman from Texas, began 925 00:49:45,190 --> 00:49:48,986 to make a political career out of anti-New Deal sentiment. 926 00:49:48,986 --> 00:49:51,029 In 1938, Dies set up a committee 927 00:49:51,029 --> 00:49:53,991 to investigate un-American activities. 928 00:49:53,991 --> 00:49:56,493 Among the first called before Dies' committee 929 00:49:56,493 --> 00:49:58,495 were the directors of the Federal Theatre 930 00:49:58,495 --> 00:50:00,205 and the Federal Writers' Project. 931 00:50:00,205 --> 00:50:03,542 - It was obvious to all of us that Mr. Dies 932 00:50:03,542 --> 00:50:06,586 and his committee were using the arts projects, 933 00:50:06,586 --> 00:50:09,965 especially the Writers' Project and the Theatre Project, 934 00:50:09,965 --> 00:50:14,845 as a whipping boy, as a way of attacking the New Deal. 935 00:50:14,845 --> 00:50:16,805 It's very easy to attack artists, 936 00:50:16,805 --> 00:50:18,140 much easier than, say, 937 00:50:18,140 --> 00:50:23,186 to attack the larger groups of WPA 938 00:50:23,186 --> 00:50:27,482 workers, such as construction workers and so on. 939 00:50:27,482 --> 00:50:29,317 So, the writers 940 00:50:29,317 --> 00:50:32,320 and the theatre people were constantly under attack. 941 00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:34,072 - Well during the three years, 942 00:50:34,072 --> 00:50:36,950 more than three years that I was the state supervisor, 943 00:50:36,950 --> 00:50:39,453 probably 1000-person. . the Art Project in Illinois 944 00:50:39,453 --> 00:50:41,663 was by far the largest in the country. 945 00:50:41,663 --> 00:50:44,624 New York, which gets so much of the publicity, and the 946 00:50:44,624 --> 00:50:49,713 books and articles had only 10% of the total population. . 947 00:50:49,713 --> 00:50:56,053 and we had about. . probably 500 at a time. . 948 00:50:56,053 --> 00:50:58,055 and of those are so many 949 00:50:58,055 --> 00:51:02,100 that have become very prominent since, 950 00:51:02,100 --> 00:51:04,728 very successful, and who if they hadn't 951 00:51:04,728 --> 00:51:08,231 had been kept alive during those horrible days, 952 00:51:08,231 --> 00:51:10,817 never would have come where they are. 953 00:51:10,817 --> 00:51:13,278 - [Orson Welles] Saul Bellow, the Nobel prize winner, 954 00:51:13,278 --> 00:51:15,113 was involved with the project. 955 00:51:15,113 --> 00:51:16,990 So it was Ralph Ellison, 956 00:51:16,990 --> 00:51:20,243 the author of the "Invisible Man. " 957 00:51:21,078 --> 00:51:24,081 Studs Terkel became famous for his collections 958 00:51:24,081 --> 00:51:25,832 of oral history. 959 00:51:25,832 --> 00:51:29,419 The poet, Conrad Aiken, was involved, 960 00:51:29,419 --> 00:51:31,671 as was Maxwell Bodenheim, 961 00:51:31,671 --> 00:51:34,508 already a well-known successful writer. 962 00:51:34,508 --> 00:51:37,427 Richard Wright was supported when he wrote his novel 963 00:51:37,427 --> 00:51:40,180 "Native Son," probably the most important book 964 00:51:40,180 --> 00:51:43,683 which owes its existence to the Federal Writers' Project. 965 00:51:43,683 --> 00:51:47,979 - All of those people were these lazy bums that worked 966 00:51:47,979 --> 00:51:50,607 for me on the Writers' Project, 967 00:51:50,607 --> 00:51:52,776 people that were looked down upon 968 00:51:52,776 --> 00:51:57,155 and condemned by the old guard taxpayers 969 00:51:57,155 --> 00:52:00,784 who resented the whole New Deal Project. 970 00:52:00,784 --> 00:52:03,120 - [Orson Welles] All of the projects put to work skills 971 00:52:03,120 --> 00:52:06,790 and talents, which might've stayed undeveloped. 972 00:52:06,790 --> 00:52:10,377 The record of The Arts Project is the most staggering. 973 00:52:10,377 --> 00:52:12,212 Practically without exception, 974 00:52:12,212 --> 00:52:14,548 every American artist born between 1900 975 00:52:14,548 --> 00:52:20,345 and 1915 spent his formative years in The Arts Project. 976 00:52:20,345 --> 00:52:23,807 Most of their work from this time has been lost, 977 00:52:23,807 --> 00:52:25,559 and today we have to rely on black 978 00:52:25,559 --> 00:52:28,645 and white archive photographs. 979 00:52:28,645 --> 00:52:32,482 Willem de Kooning painted this ship's figurehead. 980 00:52:32,482 --> 00:52:36,820 ♪ (guitar music) 981 00:52:36,820 --> 00:52:41,992 Jackson Pollock did these harvest and factory scenes. 982 00:52:41,992 --> 00:52:44,244 ♪ (guitar music) 983 00:52:44,244 --> 00:52:48,248 Mark Rothko painted this landscape. 984 00:52:48,999 --> 00:52:52,377 Stuart Davis did this abstract painting. 985 00:52:52,377 --> 00:52:55,380 Arshile Gorky did this mural. 986 00:52:55,380 --> 00:52:58,842 Joseph Stella painted this silo. 987 00:52:59,342 --> 00:53:01,887 - They were different types of people, the artists were, 988 00:53:01,887 --> 00:53:05,182 but at the same time they were in warm sympathy 989 00:53:05,182 --> 00:53:11,438 with the efforts of people who were in trouble, and people. . 990 00:53:11,438 --> 00:53:14,774 various people to organize. 991 00:53:14,774 --> 00:53:17,652 - [Orson Welles] Most New Deal art was quite unpolitical. 992 00:53:17,652 --> 00:53:20,697 However, some artists felt that the political message 993 00:53:20,697 --> 00:53:22,365 was what counted. 994 00:53:22,365 --> 00:53:25,243 Artists like William Gropper at the time tried 995 00:53:25,243 --> 00:53:28,038 to make a hero out of the industrial worker. 996 00:53:28,038 --> 00:53:31,750 Unlike the FSA photographers who showed a genuine concern 997 00:53:31,750 --> 00:53:34,586 for the individual, Gropper's workers seemed 998 00:53:34,586 --> 00:53:37,214 to have no individual identity at all. 999 00:53:38,548 --> 00:53:39,883 There's a vast difference 1000 00:53:39,883 --> 00:53:44,095 between the social documentaries of the FSA photographers, 1001 00:53:44,095 --> 00:53:48,433 and the proletarian realism of some WPA painting. 1002 00:53:48,433 --> 00:53:54,397 ♪ (upbeat banjo music) 1003 00:53:54,397 --> 00:53:57,400 Social and political commitment did not necessarily 1004 00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:59,653 mean superhuman workers. 1005 00:53:59,653 --> 00:54:02,155 Much more subtle is Ben Shahn's portrayal 1006 00:54:02,155 --> 00:54:05,158 of textile workers in a large mural painted 1007 00:54:05,158 --> 00:54:08,954 for a town now called Roosevelt, New Jersey. 1008 00:54:08,954 --> 00:54:15,543 ♪ (upbeat banjo music) 1009 00:54:15,543 --> 00:54:18,421 The town built in the 1930s was a New Deal experiment 1010 00:54:18,421 --> 00:54:20,966 in urban planning, with workplace 1011 00:54:20,966 --> 00:54:22,759 and housing located together. 1012 00:54:22,759 --> 00:54:24,427 Shahn's mural is an argument 1013 00:54:24,427 --> 00:54:27,264 for the ideal printed on the poster. 1014 00:54:27,264 --> 00:54:29,683 The principle of American labor, 1015 00:54:29,683 --> 00:54:33,436 the right of every man and woman to work. 1016 00:54:33,436 --> 00:54:36,314 ♪ 1017 00:54:36,314 --> 00:54:38,483 - And many theorists were communist. 1018 00:54:38,483 --> 00:54:41,444 I was a communist at that point. . 1019 00:54:41,945 --> 00:54:44,447 and the central committee 1020 00:54:44,447 --> 00:54:47,909 of the Communist Party was breaking its neck 1021 00:54:47,909 --> 00:54:50,412 to dominate what was going on, 1022 00:54:50,412 --> 00:54:53,623 and they were giving out orders which were happily ignored 1023 00:54:53,623 --> 00:54:55,417 because artists don't take orders. 1024 00:54:55,417 --> 00:54:56,960 ♪ 1025 00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,296 - [Orson Welles] Bernada Bryson Shahn was an editor 1026 00:54:59,296 --> 00:55:01,423 of "Art Front" magazine. 1027 00:55:01,423 --> 00:55:04,634 It acted as a forum for the radical artists of the time. 1028 00:55:04,634 --> 00:55:07,137 In spite of quarrels with the Communist Party, 1029 00:55:07,137 --> 00:55:11,308 many artists remained either members or close sympathizers. 1030 00:55:11,308 --> 00:55:13,768 Outside their work, they submitted to the frequent shifts 1031 00:55:13,768 --> 00:55:17,314 of the Moscow Party Line, and supported the party's campaigns 1032 00:55:17,314 --> 00:55:20,150 against more independent artists like Diego Rivera. 1033 00:55:20,150 --> 00:55:26,072 - The tragedy of Rivera was that he wanted to be accepted. 1034 00:55:26,072 --> 00:55:28,533 The dream of his life was to be thoroughly accepted 1035 00:55:28,533 --> 00:55:30,285 by the Communist Party, 1036 00:55:30,285 --> 00:55:33,163 but he was natively intransigent. 1037 00:55:33,163 --> 00:55:37,083 He couldn't be controlled, and they hated him. . 1038 00:55:37,083 --> 00:55:40,503 and so anybody who worked with him, 1039 00:55:40,503 --> 00:55:46,384 including Ben, became a target for their disapproval, and. . 1040 00:55:46,384 --> 00:55:51,181 they constantly excoriated poor Rivera, 1041 00:55:51,181 --> 00:55:54,184 who constantly sought to be accepted by them. 1042 00:55:54,184 --> 00:55:59,606 - I attended that famed meeting in a thronged hall, 1043 00:55:59,606 --> 00:56:04,110 where Diego Rivera began. . 1044 00:56:04,110 --> 00:56:07,405 his speech, which was 1045 00:56:07,405 --> 00:56:10,075 translated by Luis Lazarich, 1046 00:56:10,075 --> 00:56:13,078 a well-known lithographer. . 1047 00:56:13,078 --> 00:56:18,625 and his translation continued for about 15 or 20 minutes 1048 00:56:18,625 --> 00:56:21,378 and then he threw his hands up in disgust 1049 00:56:21,378 --> 00:56:24,422 and an unwillingness to continue 1050 00:56:24,422 --> 00:56:28,134 with what he called the bourgeois notions 1051 00:56:28,134 --> 00:56:32,222 that Diego Rivera was introducing 1052 00:56:32,222 --> 00:56:35,642 to the radical New York audience, 1053 00:56:35,642 --> 00:56:39,896 which were members of the John Reed Club, 1054 00:56:39,896 --> 00:56:43,983 and people began shouting and pushing and shoving, 1055 00:56:43,983 --> 00:56:47,070 and there were characters who I got to know later, 1056 00:56:47,070 --> 00:56:50,824 such as Jacob Burck who was a cartoonist for the Sun Times, 1057 00:56:50,824 --> 00:56:54,828 who stood up in a corner and denounced Diego Rivera 1058 00:56:54,828 --> 00:56:57,789 for every utterance he made, 1059 00:56:57,789 --> 00:56:59,833 and principally it was based, 1060 00:56:59,833 --> 00:57:02,168 it seemed to be, on the fact that he chose to speak 1061 00:57:02,168 --> 00:57:06,923 in French, bourgeois French, instead of proletarian Spanish. 1062 00:57:06,923 --> 00:57:12,929 It was just before the 1936 insurrection in Spain, 1063 00:57:12,929 --> 00:57:17,434 of course, and that kind of fired up tempers. 1064 00:57:17,434 --> 00:57:20,437 - [Orson Welles] It was not so much doctrinaire party communism 1065 00:57:20,437 --> 00:57:23,273 but an emotional solidarity with the oppressed 1066 00:57:23,273 --> 00:57:26,109 that moved people to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade 1067 00:57:26,109 --> 00:57:27,402 and fight in Spain. 1068 00:57:27,402 --> 00:57:30,196 "Communism is 20th Century Americanism. " 1069 00:57:30,196 --> 00:57:32,615 This inscription graced the halls 1070 00:57:32,615 --> 00:57:34,868 of the American Communist Party headquarters. 1071 00:57:34,868 --> 00:57:39,289 - The Communist Party was a respectable party at the time. . 1072 00:57:39,289 --> 00:57:42,292 and it's a difficult question now. 1073 00:57:42,292 --> 00:57:43,960 You say, "Were you a communist?" 1074 00:57:43,960 --> 00:57:48,131 Of course, everybody who had any grain of knowledge 1075 00:57:48,131 --> 00:57:50,467 of what was going on was a communist. 1076 00:57:50,467 --> 00:57:52,969 The only trouble is. . 1077 00:57:53,386 --> 00:57:57,432 the climate of the word, the connotation of the word 1078 00:57:57,432 --> 00:57:59,809 was something quite different now. 1079 00:57:59,809 --> 00:58:03,313 - There was a law. . 1080 00:58:03,855 --> 00:58:07,650 it was mandatory that when people were hired 1081 00:58:07,650 --> 00:58:13,740 on these projects, there was to be no questioning 1082 00:58:13,740 --> 00:58:17,327 of their political affiliation. 1083 00:58:17,327 --> 00:58:21,039 The republicans insisted on that provision 1084 00:58:21,039 --> 00:58:23,541 because they were afraid that they would be left out. 1085 00:58:23,541 --> 00:58:25,793 - [Orson Welles] Paradoxically, there were many on the left 1086 00:58:25,793 --> 00:58:28,963 who had moral difficulties with joining projects sponsored 1087 00:58:28,963 --> 00:58:31,132 by the government and designed, perhaps, 1088 00:58:31,132 --> 00:58:34,010 to co-opt radicals into the reformist camp. 1089 00:58:34,010 --> 00:58:37,555 One such critic was the Writers' Project nature editor, 1090 00:58:37,555 --> 00:58:39,307 the poet Kenneth Rexroth. 1091 00:58:39,307 --> 00:58:41,184 - Taking money, I mean, 1092 00:58:41,184 --> 00:58:46,189 for the left to take money from the bourgeois state, 1093 00:58:46,189 --> 00:58:49,108 St. Paul has a phrase for this. 1094 00:58:49,108 --> 00:58:53,029 It's called, "Making friends out of the mammon of iniquity. " 1095 00:58:53,029 --> 00:58:57,242 - Pigeons like men are easily tamed by food. 1096 00:58:57,242 --> 00:58:59,577 If you give a hungry man a job like that, 1097 00:58:59,577 --> 00:59:02,372 he's going to be less discontent. . 1098 00:59:02,372 --> 00:59:04,749 and it wasn't exactly an evil sort of thing, 1099 00:59:04,749 --> 00:59:06,960 but a humanitarian sort of thing. 1100 00:59:08,378 --> 00:59:11,464 - [Orson Welles] While conservative criticism mounted, 1101 00:59:11,464 --> 00:59:14,050 artists and writers demonstrated for the right 1102 00:59:14,050 --> 00:59:18,221 to continue to produce politically partisan art. 1103 00:59:18,221 --> 00:59:19,931 These pressures from inside 1104 00:59:19,931 --> 00:59:22,392 and outside presented great difficulties 1105 00:59:22,392 --> 00:59:25,645 for the project administrators. 1106 00:59:26,312 --> 00:59:28,648 A diplomatic wizard of sorts maneuvering 1107 00:59:28,648 --> 00:59:31,609 on two fronts was Henry Alsberg, 1108 00:59:31,609 --> 00:59:34,862 the director of the Writers' Project. 1109 00:59:34,862 --> 00:59:38,575 - The head of it was the man who got Emma Goldman 1110 00:59:38,575 --> 00:59:40,952 and Alexander Berkman out of Russia, 1111 00:59:40,952 --> 00:59:44,998 Henry Alsberg, who was 1112 00:59:44,998 --> 00:59:50,336 old time Pre-War I. . liberal anarchist. 1113 00:59:50,336 --> 00:59:52,589 So that in this period 1114 00:59:52,589 --> 00:59:55,758 of the attempted Bolshevization of America, 1115 00:59:55,758 --> 00:59:58,011 he was a kind of anomaly. 1116 00:59:58,011 --> 00:59:59,137 - [Orson Welles] In order to get his writers 1117 00:59:59,137 --> 01:00:03,141 to abandon fashionable proletarian realist styles, 1118 01:00:03,141 --> 01:00:06,644 Alsberg prescribed exposure to reality. 1119 01:00:06,644 --> 01:00:08,438 One writer who was sent from Manhattan 1120 01:00:08,438 --> 01:00:10,940 to explore Staten Island for the Writers' Project 1121 01:00:10,940 --> 01:00:13,276 was the poet, Harry Roskolenko. 1122 01:00:13,276 --> 01:00:17,322 - When I worked for the Writers' Project of the WPA, 1123 01:00:17,322 --> 01:00:20,950 I spent about three months traveling all over the place 1124 01:00:20,950 --> 01:00:22,619 just to get some data, 1125 01:00:22,619 --> 01:00:25,246 some background for the guide book, 1126 01:00:25,246 --> 01:00:27,624 the New York State Guidebook. 1127 01:00:27,624 --> 01:00:29,584 - [Orson Welles] Roskolenko was a political activist 1128 01:00:29,584 --> 01:00:30,627 at the time. 1129 01:00:30,627 --> 01:00:32,337 Like many others, he was convinced 1130 01:00:32,337 --> 01:00:35,798 that a revolution was just around the corner. 1131 01:00:35,798 --> 01:00:37,300 - I think I was sailing from Hamburg 1132 01:00:37,300 --> 01:00:40,637 to New York then, 1926. . 1133 01:00:40,637 --> 01:00:43,181 and we got wireless reports about the Paterson Strike, 1134 01:00:43,181 --> 01:00:44,807 and the amount of violence there. 1135 01:00:44,807 --> 01:00:46,267 Of course, like all sailors, 1136 01:00:46,267 --> 01:00:49,312 you're always thinking of revolution, 1137 01:00:49,312 --> 01:00:51,648 revolutionary terms, uprising. 1138 01:00:51,648 --> 01:00:54,692 We were very radicalized. . and we thought there 1139 01:00:54,692 --> 01:00:58,071 would be a revolution in the southeast, 1140 01:00:58,071 --> 01:01:00,698 starting in New Jersey and just swinging right through the East. 1141 01:01:00,698 --> 01:01:02,867 - [Orson Welles] Little of this revolutionary fervor 1142 01:01:02,867 --> 01:01:05,161 found its way into the fact-filled report 1143 01:01:05,161 --> 01:01:07,830 on a home for old sailors Roskolenko prepared. 1144 01:01:07,830 --> 01:01:09,415 - Now, these are actually the notes 1145 01:01:09,415 --> 01:01:13,836 that I sent in. . in 1936. 1146 01:01:15,046 --> 01:01:18,174 Sailors' Snug Harbor, Richmond Terrace between Tyson Street 1147 01:01:18,174 --> 01:01:22,011 and Kissell Avenue. . a home for retired seamen. 1148 01:01:22,011 --> 01:01:25,640 "Here the mariners spend their declining days provided 1149 01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:29,769 with everything from food and shelter to tobacco and movies. 1150 01:01:29,769 --> 01:01:32,480 To be admitted, a mariner must be 65, 1151 01:01:32,480 --> 01:01:35,733 an American citizen, and prove that he has been at sea 1152 01:01:35,733 --> 01:01:37,527 for at least five years. 1153 01:01:37,527 --> 01:01:39,445 - [Orson Welles] But equally, often the radical writers 1154 01:01:39,445 --> 01:01:42,407 did sneak their political persuasions into the guidebooks, 1155 01:01:42,407 --> 01:01:45,451 and for the project administrator, that led to trouble. 1156 01:01:45,451 --> 01:01:48,246 - You know about what happened in Massachusetts; 1157 01:01:48,246 --> 01:01:52,750 there was a great to-do there when. . 1158 01:01:53,710 --> 01:01:59,215 a reporter discovered that many more lines were devoted 1159 01:01:59,215 --> 01:02:01,467 to the Sacco and Vanzetti case than were devoted 1160 01:02:01,467 --> 01:02:03,469 to the Boston Tea Party, 1161 01:02:03,469 --> 01:02:05,221 twice as many lines. . 1162 01:02:05,221 --> 01:02:08,266 and as a result of that, 1163 01:02:08,266 --> 01:02:11,519 the governor of the state, Hurley, 1164 01:02:11,519 --> 01:02:13,896 who had written a letter saying how happy he was 1165 01:02:13,896 --> 01:02:18,276 that this book was being published about Massachusetts. . 1166 01:02:18,276 --> 01:02:21,279 changed his mind and began to attack the book, 1167 01:02:21,279 --> 01:02:25,658 and attack the project, and demanding an investigation, 1168 01:02:25,658 --> 01:02:28,327 a congressional investigation and whatnot. 1169 01:02:28,327 --> 01:02:30,496 And a former governor suggested 1170 01:02:30,496 --> 01:02:33,416 that all the Massachusetts guidebooks be placed 1171 01:02:33,416 --> 01:02:36,711 in the common and burned. . 1172 01:02:36,711 --> 01:02:41,466 and certain libraries refused to carry the book 1173 01:02:41,466 --> 01:02:45,845 and there was a great noise made about it. 1174 01:02:45,845 --> 01:02:47,930 ♪ (upbeat piano music) 1175 01:02:47,930 --> 01:02:50,308 - [Orson Welles] It was the unabashed political tendency 1176 01:02:50,308 --> 01:02:52,602 in the seemingly most innocent work 1177 01:02:52,602 --> 01:02:55,271 that most annoyed conservatives. 1178 01:02:55,271 --> 01:02:57,273 The children's theatre is a good case in point. 1179 01:02:57,273 --> 01:02:59,150 Traveling all over the country, 1180 01:02:59,150 --> 01:03:02,278 groups of actors brought theatre to millions of young people, 1181 01:03:02,278 --> 01:03:05,948 most of whom didn't even know what a stage show was. 1182 01:03:05,948 --> 01:03:10,161 - We had trucks where the side came down 1183 01:03:10,161 --> 01:03:11,954 and became a platform. 1184 01:03:11,954 --> 01:03:16,834 The top canvas rolled down and became dressing rooms 1185 01:03:16,834 --> 01:03:18,127 on either side. 1186 01:03:18,127 --> 01:03:20,296 You carried your own generator, and you would play 1187 01:03:20,296 --> 01:03:23,299 for 25,000 people in different parts, 1188 01:03:23,299 --> 01:03:26,803 so it was a wonderful going-to-the-people theatre. 1189 01:03:26,803 --> 01:03:28,429 ♪ (upbeat piano music) 1190 01:03:28,429 --> 01:03:31,724 - [Orson Welles] Although children had to be and were entertained, 1191 01:03:31,724 --> 01:03:33,726 to the actors and directors, children 1192 01:03:33,726 --> 01:03:36,145 were the revolutionaries of the future. 1193 01:03:36,145 --> 01:03:38,147 The "Revolt of the Beavers. . " 1194 01:03:38,147 --> 01:03:40,441 a delightful play and the most successful production 1195 01:03:40,441 --> 01:03:41,651 of the Children's Theatre, 1196 01:03:41,651 --> 01:03:44,570 illustrates this attitude. 1197 01:03:44,570 --> 01:03:48,866 The play showed class structures in beaver society, 1198 01:03:48,866 --> 01:03:54,205 with its robber-barren beavers protected by police beavers. 1199 01:03:54,205 --> 01:03:58,459 - I played the Gestapo kind of beaver. 1200 01:03:58,459 --> 01:04:00,127 I was tough. 1201 01:04:00,127 --> 01:04:02,588 We had a team called "Rough, Tough and Gruff. " 1202 01:04:02,588 --> 01:04:04,757 We were all made up like beavers, and. . 1203 01:04:04,757 --> 01:04:06,843 and it was very exciting. I mean, that's the kind 1204 01:04:06,843 --> 01:04:09,011 of acting that I would love to do today. 1205 01:04:09,011 --> 01:04:11,973 ♪ (upbeat piano music) 1206 01:04:11,973 --> 01:04:13,850 - [Orson Welles] The poor exploited worker beavers 1207 01:04:13,850 --> 01:04:16,853 are busy planning a revolution to overthrow a government 1208 01:04:16,853 --> 01:04:19,188 which only represents rich beavers. 1209 01:04:19,188 --> 01:04:22,108 Of course, the revolution succeeds. 1210 01:04:22,108 --> 01:04:26,696 ♪ (upbeat piano music) 1211 01:04:26,696 --> 01:04:30,324 - We were accused of being communists. . 1212 01:04:30,324 --> 01:04:32,702 a communist play, because the beavers 1213 01:04:32,702 --> 01:04:36,372 were stripping the bark off the trees. 1214 01:04:36,372 --> 01:04:41,878 And the Boy Scout troop 248 from the Bronx. . 1215 01:04:41,878 --> 01:04:44,797 were supposed to protest this terrible thing 1216 01:04:44,797 --> 01:04:47,341 that was going on, and the kids loved the play. 1217 01:04:47,341 --> 01:04:49,510 - [Orson Welles] More serious political repercussions came 1218 01:04:49,510 --> 01:04:52,138 with the last black production of the Federal Theatre: 1219 01:04:52,138 --> 01:04:55,141 a play called "Haiti," directed by Maurice Clark. 1220 01:04:55,141 --> 01:04:59,312 - This play was about the struggle. . 1221 01:04:59,312 --> 01:05:04,901 of a Negro people in Haiti, against an invasion. . 1222 01:05:04,901 --> 01:05:06,777 of Napoleon's army. 1223 01:05:06,777 --> 01:05:10,364 The original script called for a French drawing room, 1224 01:05:10,364 --> 01:05:13,951 and I changed all that to a big central section 1225 01:05:13,951 --> 01:05:16,454 of one of these old plantation homes, 1226 01:05:16,454 --> 01:05:18,748 with a winding staircase. 1227 01:05:18,748 --> 01:05:24,795 I got some drummers from the Congo, and finally we cast it 1228 01:05:24,795 --> 01:05:28,049 with some of the leading black actors, 1229 01:05:28,049 --> 01:05:31,260 like Canada Lee, 1230 01:05:31,260 --> 01:05:33,262 and Rex Ingram, and some 1231 01:05:33,262 --> 01:05:37,600 of the prominent people in the Negro Theatre. 1232 01:05:38,100 --> 01:05:40,561 It was about equally divided, 1233 01:05:40,561 --> 01:05:43,814 the white cast and the black cast. . 1234 01:05:44,398 --> 01:05:47,109 and this is as exciting and important 1235 01:05:47,109 --> 01:05:48,653 to me as the play itself, 1236 01:05:48,653 --> 01:05:52,281 the whole production itself was what happened to these actors. 1237 01:05:53,157 --> 01:05:55,451 - [Orson Welles] "Haiti" marked one of the first times 1238 01:05:55,451 --> 01:05:58,287 in the history of the American professional theatre 1239 01:05:58,287 --> 01:06:00,414 that black and white actors worked together 1240 01:06:00,414 --> 01:06:02,458 on the same stage. 1241 01:06:02,458 --> 01:06:05,962 - A whole kind of different relationship started developing. 1242 01:06:05,962 --> 01:06:08,798 They were laughing together, playing a piano. . 1243 01:06:08,798 --> 01:06:10,967 and instead of just a work relationship, 1244 01:06:10,967 --> 01:06:12,969 a social relationship developed. 1245 01:06:12,969 --> 01:06:16,472 - [Orson Welles] "WPA Theatre upheld Negro dating here. 1246 01:06:16,472 --> 01:06:20,476 Project heads encourage race mixing as part of communism. " 1247 01:06:20,476 --> 01:06:23,312 These headlines played on racist sentiments 1248 01:06:23,312 --> 01:06:27,066 and used them as a basis for political attack. 1249 01:06:27,775 --> 01:06:29,568 The one division of the Federal Theatre 1250 01:06:29,568 --> 01:06:32,113 which, more than any other, attracted left wing actors 1251 01:06:32,113 --> 01:06:35,408 and directors was the next to come under fire: 1252 01:06:35,408 --> 01:06:37,535 The Living Newspaper. 1253 01:06:37,535 --> 01:06:42,915 - The great innovation was The Living Newspaper. 1254 01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:47,503 We were full of tricks and wheezes, 1255 01:06:47,503 --> 01:06:49,380 but in fact, nothing that we did 1256 01:06:49,380 --> 01:06:55,386 was theatrically particularly revolutionary in its essence. 1257 01:06:55,386 --> 01:06:58,681 The Living Newspaper was a whole new idea. 1258 01:06:58,681 --> 01:07:03,352 It was the notion of using the news of the day. 1259 01:07:03,352 --> 01:07:07,606 It was sort of a magazine technique for telling a story. 1260 01:07:07,606 --> 01:07:12,194 The first one they did was Ethiopia. 1261 01:07:12,194 --> 01:07:15,364 That ended badly. There were protests, 1262 01:07:15,364 --> 01:07:20,411 and the state department actually demanded certain changes be made. 1263 01:07:20,411 --> 01:07:24,582 - There was undoubtedly congressional pressure against 1264 01:07:24,582 --> 01:07:28,044 what was seen as extreme left-wing influence 1265 01:07:28,044 --> 01:07:29,837 in the Federal Theatre, 1266 01:07:29,837 --> 01:07:33,716 or at least in some of the Federal Theatre, but. . 1267 01:07:33,716 --> 01:07:37,053 particularly perhaps in The Living Newspaper. 1268 01:07:37,053 --> 01:07:38,888 - [Orson Welles] After the first show was cancelled, 1269 01:07:38,888 --> 01:07:41,974 Joseph Losey, together with two others, took over. 1270 01:07:41,974 --> 01:07:43,893 In a new show, they refused to compromise 1271 01:07:43,893 --> 01:07:47,354 The Living Newspaper's stark radicalism. 1272 01:07:47,354 --> 01:07:50,191 After a political showdown with Federal Theatre director 1273 01:07:50,191 --> 01:07:53,652 Hallie Flanagan, Losey opened a great success on Broadway. 1274 01:07:53,652 --> 01:07:56,447 The play was "Triple A Plowed Under. " 1275 01:07:56,447 --> 01:07:58,407 ♪ (drum music) 1276 01:07:58,407 --> 01:08:02,119 It dramatized the problems of the farmers and workers. 1277 01:08:02,119 --> 01:08:04,872 The farmer gets a few pennies for his milk, 1278 01:08:04,872 --> 01:08:06,749 while the worker pays a high price for it. 1279 01:08:06,749 --> 01:08:09,460 The middleman gets rich. 1280 01:08:10,628 --> 01:08:14,215 Norman Lloyd, now a well-known television actor and director, 1281 01:08:14,215 --> 01:08:18,010 regularly acted in The Living Newspaper. 1282 01:08:18,010 --> 01:08:21,263 - The second play was "Injunction Granted. " 1283 01:08:21,263 --> 01:08:23,516 It's interesting. Losey directed that, 1284 01:08:23,516 --> 01:08:27,561 and Nicholas Ray, who became a film director, 1285 01:08:27,561 --> 01:08:29,438 was the stage manager. . 1286 01:08:29,438 --> 01:08:31,982 and Virgil Thompson did the music. 1287 01:08:31,982 --> 01:08:33,234 And this was a story 1288 01:08:33,234 --> 01:08:35,444 of the history of labor in the courts. 1289 01:08:35,444 --> 01:08:39,448 - I was developing a form which was towards circus, 1290 01:08:39,448 --> 01:08:43,619 toward vaudeville, using ballet as well as actors, music, 1291 01:08:43,619 --> 01:08:46,372 mime and film, 1292 01:08:46,372 --> 01:08:49,834 influenced I suppose to some extent by (mumbles), 1293 01:08:49,834 --> 01:08:53,796 and to some extent by Brecht, and to some extent 1294 01:08:53,796 --> 01:08:57,174 by the Political Cabaret, which I had already done. 1295 01:08:57,174 --> 01:08:59,802 - I played a clown in that. It was all in pantomime, 1296 01:08:59,802 --> 01:09:02,138 commenting on the stories that went along 1297 01:09:02,138 --> 01:09:05,599 with the various cases which were acted out 1298 01:09:05,599 --> 01:09:08,310 in rather black and white terms, 1299 01:09:08,310 --> 01:09:11,647 but always with the clown commenting. . 1300 01:09:11,647 --> 01:09:14,650 both to illuminate things for the audience, 1301 01:09:14,650 --> 01:09:19,363 and hopefully for humor, and so on. 1302 01:09:19,363 --> 01:09:22,867 - Again, the opening was postponed, 1303 01:09:22,867 --> 01:09:24,910 postponed, never quite banned, 1304 01:09:24,910 --> 01:09:28,080 and finally, again it came to a showdown, 1305 01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:31,667 and again we won, and again it opened. 1306 01:09:31,667 --> 01:09:36,255 But, it didn't have much chance and the spirit was gone, 1307 01:09:36,255 --> 01:09:40,009 and. . it didn't do as well as the other, 1308 01:09:40,009 --> 01:09:44,054 although it was more interesting, I think, by far. 1309 01:09:44,054 --> 01:09:47,474 And, it closed. 1310 01:09:47,474 --> 01:09:51,228 Then, I presented various other projects, 1311 01:09:51,228 --> 01:09:53,647 all of them were turned down, so I resigned. 1312 01:09:53,647 --> 01:09:55,357 It was as simple as that. 1313 01:09:55,357 --> 01:09:56,525 ♪ (upbeat guitar music) 1314 01:09:56,525 --> 01:09:58,277 - [Orson Welles] The closing of The Living Newspaper 1315 01:09:58,277 --> 01:10:00,362 was the beginning of the end. 1316 01:10:00,362 --> 01:10:02,865 Soon John Houseman and myself came under attack. 1317 01:10:02,865 --> 01:10:04,533 We'd moved from Harlem to Broadway 1318 01:10:04,533 --> 01:10:07,870 and had formed a new group called Project 891. 1319 01:10:07,870 --> 01:10:12,041 - The actors we were given were in one sense, 1320 01:10:12,041 --> 01:10:13,584 sort of the dregs of the project. 1321 01:10:13,584 --> 01:10:15,920 All the other serious projects had already 1322 01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:18,380 snatched up all the. . 1323 01:10:19,381 --> 01:10:24,386 apparently, and snatched up all the conventionally good actors. 1324 01:10:24,386 --> 01:10:28,807 But, Orson had a passion for low comedians 1325 01:10:28,807 --> 01:10:32,061 and eccentric characters. So in the end, what we got 1326 01:10:32,061 --> 01:10:35,231 was a very interesting collection of actors, 1327 01:10:35,231 --> 01:10:37,900 and the first show we did was "Horse Eats Hat. " 1328 01:10:37,900 --> 01:10:41,153 ♪ (nursery music) 1329 01:10:41,153 --> 01:10:45,157 - [Orson Welles] This project produced much controversy. . 1330 01:10:45,157 --> 01:10:47,701 and spelled perhaps the end 1331 01:10:47,701 --> 01:10:49,328 of what could've been a national theatre 1332 01:10:49,328 --> 01:10:51,330 in the United States. 1333 01:10:51,330 --> 01:10:57,920 ♪ (nursery music) 1334 01:10:57,920 --> 01:11:03,092 - Our next venture was, again, not a classical venture at all, 1335 01:11:03,092 --> 01:11:05,636 but something that had been brought to us 1336 01:11:05,636 --> 01:11:10,432 and we'd heard it, and fallen in love with it, 1337 01:11:10,432 --> 01:11:11,976 and decided we wanted to do it, 1338 01:11:11,976 --> 01:11:16,105 and that was a labor opera or whatever you want to call it, 1339 01:11:16,105 --> 01:11:19,692 by Marc Blitzstein called "The Cradle Will Rock. " 1340 01:11:19,692 --> 01:11:22,695 - [Orson] Marc Blitzstein, an admirer of Brecht, 1341 01:11:22,695 --> 01:11:26,365 wrote words and music for this unique piece. 1342 01:11:26,365 --> 01:11:29,493 The play was cast with Will Geer and Howard Da Silva. 1343 01:11:29,493 --> 01:11:31,537 - Larry is the organizer, 1344 01:11:31,537 --> 01:11:34,623 the labor organizer, who's been pulled in 1345 01:11:34,623 --> 01:11:38,210 with the prostitutes and with street people and so on 1346 01:11:38,210 --> 01:11:40,462 in a cleanup of the town, 1347 01:11:40,462 --> 01:11:43,465 along with the powers that be, 1348 01:11:43,465 --> 01:11:45,968 Mr. Mister and the rest. . 1349 01:11:45,968 --> 01:11:48,971 and who, when the Moll, the whore, 1350 01:11:48,971 --> 01:11:50,472 asks him what he's doing here, he says, 1351 01:11:50,472 --> 01:11:51,932 "Who, me?" 1352 01:11:51,932 --> 01:11:53,309 While he was pulled in he says, 1353 01:11:53,309 --> 01:11:55,644 "Who, me? Making a speech and passing out leaflets. 1354 01:11:55,644 --> 01:11:57,813 The formal charges are inciting to riot. 1355 01:11:57,813 --> 01:11:59,064 Ain't you ever seen my act? 1356 01:11:59,064 --> 01:12:00,524 While I'm creeping along in the dark, 1357 01:12:00,524 --> 01:12:03,569 my eyes is crafty, my pockets is bulging, I'm loaded, 1358 01:12:03,569 --> 01:12:07,114 armed to the teeth! . with leaflets. 1359 01:12:07,114 --> 01:12:10,075 And am I quick on the draw! I come up to you very slow, 1360 01:12:10,075 --> 01:12:14,580 very snaky, and with one fell gesture. . 1361 01:12:14,997 --> 01:12:16,415 I tug a leaf in your hand. 1362 01:12:16,415 --> 01:12:19,001 And one, two, three, there's a riot. 1363 01:12:19,001 --> 01:12:21,211 I'm the riot. I incited you. " 1364 01:12:21,211 --> 01:12:22,671 - I went to play the original, 1365 01:12:22,671 --> 01:12:25,007 my old part, which I had rehearsed 1366 01:12:25,007 --> 01:12:26,842 with our repertoire company at Mr. Mister, 1367 01:12:26,842 --> 01:12:30,387 which is John D. Rockefeller, 1368 01:12:30,387 --> 01:12:34,099 sort of combined with some head of Republic Steel. 1369 01:12:34,099 --> 01:12:36,352 He is the owner of this town, in which all 1370 01:12:36,352 --> 01:12:38,270 of the people are prostitutes to him; 1371 01:12:38,270 --> 01:12:41,273 the owner of the paper, the doctors and the lawyers, 1372 01:12:41,273 --> 01:12:43,442 and they are all prostitutes, just as this little girl 1373 01:12:43,442 --> 01:12:44,860 on the street corner is. 1374 01:12:44,860 --> 01:12:47,696 The play is very exciting, and has wonderful music, really. 1375 01:12:47,696 --> 01:12:49,406 Best music Marc Blitzstein wrote. 1376 01:12:49,406 --> 01:12:52,034 - [actor] Cora, we're artists! 1377 01:12:52,034 --> 01:12:56,205 - ♪ (singing) And we love 1378 01:12:56,205 --> 01:12:57,873 ♪ Art for art's sake 1379 01:12:57,873 --> 01:12:59,541 ♪ It's smart, for art's sake 1380 01:12:59,541 --> 01:13:00,876 ♪ To part, for art's sake 1381 01:13:00,876 --> 01:13:02,461 ♪ With your heart, for art's sake 1382 01:13:02,461 --> 01:13:04,296 ♪ And your mind, for art's sake 1383 01:13:04,296 --> 01:13:05,923 ♪ Be blind for art's sake 1384 01:13:05,923 --> 01:13:07,549 ♪ And deaf for art's sake 1385 01:13:07,549 --> 01:13:09,134 ♪ And dumb for art's sake 1386 01:13:09,134 --> 01:13:10,719 ♪ Until for art's sake 1387 01:13:10,719 --> 01:13:12,179 ♪ They kill for art's sake 1388 01:13:12,179 --> 01:13:14,056 ♪ All the art for art's sake! 1389 01:13:14,056 --> 01:13:17,101 - It rehearsed beautifully and we were all madly 1390 01:13:17,101 --> 01:13:19,144 in love with what we were doing. . 1391 01:13:19,144 --> 01:13:23,816 Then, suddenly, there were a great many steel strikes 1392 01:13:23,816 --> 01:13:26,235 all over the country, where some of which ended 1393 01:13:26,235 --> 01:13:27,569 in considerable violence. 1394 01:13:27,569 --> 01:13:29,822 There were other strikes, but this happened to be 1395 01:13:29,822 --> 01:13:33,075 about steel, so that this was particularly dangerous, 1396 01:13:33,075 --> 01:13:35,786 and the federal government, 1397 01:13:35,786 --> 01:13:39,915 or rather, the WPA Administration, 1398 01:13:39,915 --> 01:13:42,418 who had to go back to Congress 1399 01:13:42,418 --> 01:13:45,963 that summer and get new appropriations, 1400 01:13:45,963 --> 01:13:49,216 because originally they'd only had it for two years, 1401 01:13:49,216 --> 01:13:51,301 and those two years were nearly up. 1402 01:13:51,301 --> 01:13:53,470 So, since they had to go to Congress, 1403 01:13:53,470 --> 01:13:56,932 they were very frightened of producing anything 1404 01:13:56,932 --> 01:13:59,476 that would create any kind of scandal 1405 01:13:59,476 --> 01:14:01,603 or any kind of backlash. 1406 01:14:01,603 --> 01:14:03,647 - The government clamped down on it, 1407 01:14:03,647 --> 01:14:05,941 and refused to have it open, 1408 01:14:05,941 --> 01:14:08,068 and Howard Da Silva and Hiram Sherman 1409 01:14:08,068 --> 01:14:09,945 and the rest of us had our wigs 1410 01:14:09,945 --> 01:14:11,572 and costumes snatched away from us. 1411 01:14:11,572 --> 01:14:12,865 The sets were removed, 1412 01:14:12,865 --> 01:14:15,284 the theatre was padlocked and the audience itself, 1413 01:14:15,284 --> 01:14:18,120 who was there for a preview, was thrown out into the streets 1414 01:14:18,120 --> 01:14:19,580 and began milling around. 1415 01:14:19,580 --> 01:14:21,999 John Houseman and some very enterprising people, 1416 01:14:21,999 --> 01:14:25,878 like Archibald MacLeish, went out to get a theatre, 1417 01:14:25,878 --> 01:14:27,379 and we went out in front, 1418 01:14:27,379 --> 01:14:30,299 and entertained the audience with little snatches of songs, 1419 01:14:30,299 --> 01:14:33,218 and everything I ever knew from Walt Whitman on through, 1420 01:14:33,218 --> 01:14:36,972 until they came by in a fire truck, and Marc Blitzstein 1421 01:14:36,972 --> 01:14:39,683 had a piano, and the fire people were helping 1422 01:14:39,683 --> 01:14:43,312 and they announced they had a theatre 20 blocks away, 1423 01:14:43,312 --> 01:14:46,982 up by the Central Park. . 1424 01:14:46,982 --> 01:14:49,401 and we moved, and asked the audience to move with us. 1425 01:14:49,401 --> 01:14:54,656 They walked with us from 38th Street to 57th Street. 1426 01:14:54,656 --> 01:14:58,035 - I think the audacity of the whole company of Will 1427 01:14:58,035 --> 01:15:00,996 and I having led the whole company with all of us up 1428 01:15:00,996 --> 01:15:03,373 the 6th Avenue and having produced it, despite the fact 1429 01:15:03,373 --> 01:15:06,376 that the Federal Theatre and Congress had locked us out 1430 01:15:06,376 --> 01:15:07,961 and closed down the theater, 1431 01:15:07,961 --> 01:15:09,755 was in itself such an audacious thing. 1432 01:15:09,755 --> 01:15:11,673 We probably pulled enough of an audience 1433 01:15:11,673 --> 01:15:13,926 with us along 6th Avenue who were wondering 1434 01:15:13,926 --> 01:15:16,220 where the hell this audience was walking to Uptown? 1435 01:15:16,220 --> 01:15:19,515 - ♪ (singer) Oh the press, the press, the freedom of the press 1436 01:15:19,515 --> 01:15:22,601 ♪ They'll never take away the freedom of the press 1437 01:15:22,601 --> 01:15:26,396 ♪ We must be free to say whatever's on our chest 1438 01:15:26,396 --> 01:15:29,691 ♪ With a hey-diddle-dee and a ho-nonney-no 1439 01:15:29,691 --> 01:15:33,737 ♪ Or whichever side will pay the best 1440 01:15:33,737 --> 01:15:36,823 - And on the stage Orson Welles gave a speech, 1441 01:15:36,823 --> 01:15:38,700 Archibald MacLeish made a nice speech, 1442 01:15:38,700 --> 01:15:40,994 our poet that's still living today, 1443 01:15:40,994 --> 01:15:44,373 and John Houseman talked. . 1444 01:15:44,373 --> 01:15:47,251 And Marc came out, they wheeled the piano out with the firemen, 1445 01:15:47,251 --> 01:15:49,294 and he sat down at the piano and began to play it 1446 01:15:49,294 --> 01:15:51,296 as he did at auditions. 1447 01:15:51,296 --> 01:15:52,965 And as he got to this first song, 1448 01:15:52,965 --> 01:15:54,633 the little girl, a Catholic girl, 1449 01:15:54,633 --> 01:15:57,302 and quite reactionary on most subjects, 1450 01:15:57,302 --> 01:15:59,972 got up suddenly in the box and began to sing. 1451 01:15:59,972 --> 01:16:05,227 - ♪ (girl singing) Maybe you wonder what it is 1452 01:16:05,227 --> 01:16:10,148 ♪ Makes people good or bad 1453 01:16:10,148 --> 01:16:12,734 ♪ Why some guy 1454 01:16:12,734 --> 01:16:17,322 ♪ An ace without a doubt 1455 01:16:17,322 --> 01:16:22,077 ♪ Turns out to be a bastard 1456 01:16:22,077 --> 01:16:29,084 ♪ And the other way about 1457 01:16:29,084 --> 01:16:33,171 ♪ I'll tell you what I feel 1458 01:16:33,171 --> 01:16:41,096 ♪ It's just the nickel under the heel 1459 01:16:41,096 --> 01:16:43,181 - And as we came to each one of the parts, 1460 01:16:43,181 --> 01:16:45,100 the lawyers and the doctors, 1461 01:16:45,100 --> 01:16:47,519 Mr. Mister, Mrs. Mister, 1462 01:16:47,519 --> 01:16:49,396 Junior Mister, and all of them, 1463 01:16:49,396 --> 01:16:50,772 we all stood up in whatever part 1464 01:16:50,772 --> 01:16:51,857 of the auditorium we were, 1465 01:16:51,857 --> 01:16:55,235 we followed the lead of this little girl and sang our songs. 1466 01:16:55,235 --> 01:16:58,697 And it was a tremendous success! A smash. 1467 01:16:58,697 --> 01:17:00,991 Everybody got up, stood and cheered, 1468 01:17:00,991 --> 01:17:04,119 and so before the evening was over, we'd raised enough money 1469 01:17:04,119 --> 01:17:06,121 to put it on in a regular theatre. 1470 01:17:06,121 --> 01:17:10,792 We moved down the street to The Playhouse on 48th Street, 1471 01:17:10,792 --> 01:17:13,712 and it went on for a long run, with actors simply sitting 1472 01:17:13,712 --> 01:17:15,797 on the chairs, without any scenery, 1473 01:17:15,797 --> 01:17:17,424 without any real costumes, 1474 01:17:17,424 --> 01:17:20,177 and singing along with Marc Blitzstein on the piano. 1475 01:17:20,177 --> 01:17:23,513 - ♪ (singing) That's thunder, that's lightning 1476 01:17:23,513 --> 01:17:25,766 ♪ And it's going to surround you 1477 01:17:25,766 --> 01:17:28,644 - [Orson Welles] The success of "The Cradle Will Rock," 1478 01:17:28,644 --> 01:17:33,357 despite the official ban, brought down the Federal Theatre. 1479 01:17:33,357 --> 01:17:35,400 Before the actors and directors could even register 1480 01:17:35,400 --> 01:17:38,987 their protest, conservatives mounted such a heavy attack 1481 01:17:38,987 --> 01:17:42,324 on Washington that Roosevelt was forced to appease them 1482 01:17:42,324 --> 01:17:43,700 with drastic measures. 1483 01:17:43,700 --> 01:17:45,994 - ♪ (singing) The cradle will rock! 1484 01:17:45,994 --> 01:17:51,333 - What Roosevelt had done was to decide that in order 1485 01:17:51,333 --> 01:17:54,002 to stop this red-baiting attack against him, 1486 01:17:54,002 --> 01:17:58,715 he would allow the Federal Theatre to be dissolved. 1487 01:17:58,715 --> 01:18:00,801 Of course, it gained nothing because they went right 1488 01:18:00,801 --> 01:18:03,512 on to dissolve everything else. 1489 01:18:03,512 --> 01:18:06,306 This was the beginning of a whole new history 1490 01:18:06,306 --> 01:18:07,933 in the United States. 1491 01:18:10,352 --> 01:18:12,187 - Well, you can answer that can't you? 1492 01:18:12,187 --> 01:18:13,897 - [Orson Welles] Writers, actors and artists alike 1493 01:18:13,897 --> 01:18:16,858 had poked fun at Martin Dies and his committee. 1494 01:18:16,858 --> 01:18:18,944 Now his hour had come. 1495 01:18:18,944 --> 01:18:21,697 In hearings, broadcast nationwide, 1496 01:18:21,697 --> 01:18:25,158 Dies' House on Un-American Activities Committee 1497 01:18:25,158 --> 01:18:28,203 investigated hundreds of artists and intellectuals, 1498 01:18:28,203 --> 01:18:31,289 branding them subversive and Un-American. 1499 01:18:31,289 --> 01:18:36,378 - The only way that we can defeat their aims and purposes is 1500 01:18:36,378 --> 01:18:38,797 to expose them before they strike. 1501 01:18:38,797 --> 01:18:44,386 - And in one stroke of the pen, this whole thing was destroyed. 1502 01:18:45,387 --> 01:18:48,890 I went down to my office, which was. . 1503 01:18:48,890 --> 01:18:51,435 down in the 20s, 1504 01:18:51,435 --> 01:18:55,063 about 20th and Broadway, down in that area. 1505 01:18:55,063 --> 01:18:59,776 We had two floors of offices there for the Federal Theatre. 1506 01:18:59,776 --> 01:19:03,905 I went to go up to my office, and they. . 1507 01:19:03,905 --> 01:19:10,245 they had sent in workmen, with hammers, to destroy our offices, 1508 01:19:10,245 --> 01:19:11,997 which were partitions built 1509 01:19:11,997 --> 01:19:15,959 in this large loft-type building. 1510 01:19:16,918 --> 01:19:18,086 And believe it or not, 1511 01:19:18,086 --> 01:19:21,590 these men were taking joy in what they were doing. 1512 01:19:21,590 --> 01:19:23,592 They were swinging their axes and hammers 1513 01:19:23,592 --> 01:19:26,428 and they were not only breaking up these partitions, 1514 01:19:26,428 --> 01:19:28,847 they were splintering them. . 1515 01:19:28,847 --> 01:19:33,310 and I found my desk under a whole pile of broken boards, 1516 01:19:33,310 --> 01:19:37,773 and dug in there to get out what records I could salvage. 1517 01:19:37,773 --> 01:19:39,816 And that's how the Federal Theatre went. 1518 01:19:39,816 --> 01:19:42,319 - [Orson Welles] Attacks on the project mounted daily. 1519 01:19:42,319 --> 01:19:44,863 The next concession hit the Writers' Project. 1520 01:19:44,863 --> 01:19:46,239 Control was transferred 1521 01:19:46,239 --> 01:19:49,117 to the individual states, while responsibility 1522 01:19:49,117 --> 01:19:51,453 for publications remained in Washington. 1523 01:19:51,453 --> 01:19:53,955 The doors were open for censorship. 1524 01:19:53,955 --> 01:19:59,628 - We had. . one of our. . best books was censored. 1525 01:19:59,628 --> 01:20:02,047 The Washington office absolutely refused to publish it. 1526 01:20:02,047 --> 01:20:04,591 That was the history of civil liberties 1527 01:20:04,591 --> 01:20:06,301 in the state of Illinois. 1528 01:20:06,301 --> 01:20:09,763 It was done under the supervision of Marion Knoblauch 1529 01:20:09,763 --> 01:20:11,932 who's since then been a leader 1530 01:20:11,932 --> 01:20:16,228 in the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, 1531 01:20:16,228 --> 01:20:21,566 and finally it was published by the Civil Liberties 1532 01:20:21,566 --> 01:20:26,404 Union with no mention whatever of the Writers' Project, 1533 01:20:26,404 --> 01:20:28,990 all the work that was done over a period of several years. 1534 01:20:28,990 --> 01:20:33,662 - All right, there's a chapter on censorship. . 1535 01:20:35,664 --> 01:20:38,458 There's a chapter on rights of aliens, 1536 01:20:38,458 --> 01:20:43,255 and that was a very sad chapter during World War I and Illinois. 1537 01:20:43,255 --> 01:20:48,593 There's a chapter called "Rights of Political Minorities. . " 1538 01:20:48,593 --> 01:20:52,514 and "The Rights of Labor," and so forth. 1539 01:20:52,514 --> 01:20:55,183 "Rights of the Unemployed," or did I mention that before? 1540 01:20:55,183 --> 01:20:59,062 "Unconstitutional Police Methods," you see, these were all. . 1541 01:20:59,062 --> 01:21:01,523 and "Anti-semitism. " 1542 01:21:01,523 --> 01:21:05,902 - And it's a very factual account! Nothing controversial. 1543 01:21:05,902 --> 01:21:09,406 They were just afraid that their congressional 1544 01:21:09,406 --> 01:21:12,450 and journalistic critics would descend on them, 1545 01:21:12,450 --> 01:21:13,869 and so they weren't going to take a chance, 1546 01:21:13,869 --> 01:21:16,204 and they just said, "No, you're not going to publish it. " 1547 01:21:16,204 --> 01:21:19,791 - So they sent two people out from Washington, 1548 01:21:19,791 --> 01:21:24,212 investigators, and they came to the project, 1549 01:21:24,212 --> 01:21:27,299 they interviewed almost everybody but me, 1550 01:21:27,299 --> 01:21:29,134 and. . 1551 01:21:29,134 --> 01:21:34,306 then they did tell me that it was a good book, 1552 01:21:34,306 --> 01:21:36,224 and they wanted it to be published, 1553 01:21:36,224 --> 01:21:38,310 only there were a few little places that needed 1554 01:21:38,310 --> 01:21:40,228 to be toned down. 1555 01:21:40,228 --> 01:21:43,523 ♪ (upbeat banjo music) 1556 01:21:43,523 --> 01:21:45,150 - [Orson Welles] In the Federal Arts Project, 1557 01:21:45,150 --> 01:21:47,402 the most violent attacks were those provoked 1558 01:21:47,402 --> 01:21:49,154 by these paintings in Coit Tower 1559 01:21:49,154 --> 01:21:51,406 on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, 1560 01:21:51,406 --> 01:21:55,327 especially Bernard Zakheim's mural, "Library. " 1561 01:21:55,327 --> 01:21:58,288 It shows a worker taking a volume of Karl Marx down 1562 01:21:58,288 --> 01:22:00,582 from a bookshelf. 1563 01:22:00,582 --> 01:22:01,666 ♪ 1564 01:22:01,666 --> 01:22:04,669 But still, the artist felt ready to fight. 1565 01:22:04,669 --> 01:22:06,713 In some of the newspaper headlines he painted, 1566 01:22:06,713 --> 01:22:10,258 Zakheim commented on the attacks leveled against his work. 1567 01:22:10,258 --> 01:22:15,472 ♪ (upbeat banjo music) 1568 01:22:15,472 --> 01:22:17,724 Later, when the rumors spread 1569 01:22:17,724 --> 01:22:20,393 that the whole Arts Project was to be axed, 1570 01:22:20,393 --> 01:22:23,229 intellectuals and artists mounted protests, 1571 01:22:23,229 --> 01:22:26,191 but often in terms which only gave more ammunition 1572 01:22:26,191 --> 01:22:28,526 to their conservative enemies. 1573 01:22:28,526 --> 01:22:31,154 - "As this issue of The New Anvil goes to press, 1574 01:22:31,154 --> 01:22:32,447 the Federal Arts Project, 1575 01:22:32,447 --> 01:22:36,117 which has rendered invaluable service in bringing culture 1576 01:22:36,117 --> 01:22:39,329 to the people are threatened by the onslaught of Torries, 1577 01:22:39,329 --> 01:22:41,873 who would either abolish these projects altogether 1578 01:22:41,873 --> 01:22:44,668 or seriously hamper their effectiveness 1579 01:22:44,668 --> 01:22:48,421 by drastic curtailments and strangling restrictions. 1580 01:22:48,421 --> 01:22:50,882 No section of the Works Progress Administration 1581 01:22:50,882 --> 01:22:55,845 has justified its existence more than the Cultural Projects. 1582 01:22:55,845 --> 01:22:59,057 The efforts to destroy them remind one forcibly of the words 1583 01:22:59,057 --> 01:23:02,227 of a Nazi arbiter of public taste: 1584 01:23:02,227 --> 01:23:05,355 When I'd hear the word culture, I'd cock my rifle. " 1585 01:23:05,355 --> 01:23:07,816 ♪ (upbeat guitar music) 1586 01:23:07,816 --> 01:23:10,193 - [Orson Welles] But it wasn't only the political statements 1587 01:23:10,193 --> 01:23:14,155 by theater people, artists and painters that antagonized conservatives, 1588 01:23:14,155 --> 01:23:20,120 it was also the appeal to reform of the FSA photographs. 1589 01:23:20,120 --> 01:23:29,004 ♪ (upbeat guitar music) 1590 01:23:29,004 --> 01:23:33,717 - It just came in that there were concerted efforts to try 1591 01:23:33,717 --> 01:23:37,929 to get rid of this organization. 1592 01:23:37,929 --> 01:23:42,142 And it was called. . 1593 01:23:42,142 --> 01:23:45,103 and, I don't think it was ever called "Communistic," 1594 01:23:45,103 --> 01:23:48,857 but it was not considered by some people 1595 01:23:48,857 --> 01:23:50,358 as being too desirable. 1596 01:23:50,358 --> 01:23:53,695 - At first we weren't noticed much, 1597 01:23:53,695 --> 01:23:57,198 but. . congressmen, 1598 01:23:57,198 --> 01:24:00,535 being politicians, always look for something 1599 01:24:00,535 --> 01:24:03,538 to criticize if they can, 1600 01:24:03,538 --> 01:24:07,667 and I happened to become a controversial figure 1601 01:24:07,667 --> 01:24:10,545 for other reasons by that time, 1602 01:24:10,545 --> 01:24:15,550 and so we were pretty liberally attacked by the politicians. 1603 01:24:15,550 --> 01:24:18,261 - [Orson Welles] For a while, the FSA photographers managed 1604 01:24:18,261 --> 01:24:22,140 to stave off their critics by making some pretty pictures. . 1605 01:24:22,140 --> 01:24:24,768 but it was of little use in the long run. 1606 01:24:24,768 --> 01:24:26,519 Soon, the FSA photographers 1607 01:24:26,519 --> 01:24:30,398 were no longer documenting daily life in America. Instead, 1608 01:24:30,398 --> 01:24:33,818 they would record the life in the armed forces. 1609 01:24:33,818 --> 01:24:37,572 In 1940, the FSA photography section was transferred 1610 01:24:37,572 --> 01:24:41,034 to OWI, the Office of War Information. 1611 01:24:41,034 --> 01:24:43,787 All their pictures, over 300,000, 1612 01:24:43,787 --> 01:24:46,498 are preserved in the Library of Congress. 1613 01:24:46,498 --> 01:24:48,917 A whole decade of American history is stored 1614 01:24:48,917 --> 01:24:51,252 and cataloged here. 1615 01:24:51,961 --> 01:24:53,254 It is the best organized 1616 01:24:53,254 --> 01:24:58,426 and publicly accessible visual record of the 1930s. 1617 01:24:58,968 --> 01:25:01,387 Unfortunately, there were no archives for the work 1618 01:25:01,387 --> 01:25:02,847 of painters and designers. 1619 01:25:02,847 --> 01:25:03,932 In the '30s, 1620 01:25:03,932 --> 01:25:07,602 James Brooks, now a well-known abstract expressionist, 1621 01:25:07,602 --> 01:25:10,772 painted a mural for New York's LaGuardia Airport. 1622 01:25:10,772 --> 01:25:12,440 - I heard from a friend, 1623 01:25:12,440 --> 01:25:14,442 he was the director of the Boston Museum, 1624 01:25:14,442 --> 01:25:15,944 when he was down visiting a friend, 1625 01:25:15,944 --> 01:25:19,114 that he had come through the terminal on the way down, 1626 01:25:19,114 --> 01:25:21,366 and there was nothing on the walls anymore. 1627 01:25:21,366 --> 01:25:24,452 And he wondered what happened. I didn't know. 1628 01:25:24,452 --> 01:25:27,622 So I asked and I heard that it had just been painted out, 1629 01:25:27,622 --> 01:25:28,915 without asking anyone, 1630 01:25:28,915 --> 01:25:31,376 by the port authority who had recently 1631 01:25:31,376 --> 01:25:32,836 taken over the building. 1632 01:25:32,836 --> 01:25:35,380 The Marine Terminal was the building 1633 01:25:35,380 --> 01:25:37,423 that I did a circular mural in 1634 01:25:37,423 --> 01:25:41,970 that circumscribed the lobby, 10 feet up from the floor, 1635 01:25:41,970 --> 01:25:44,514 10 and a 1/2 feet up from the floor. 1636 01:25:44,514 --> 01:25:47,350 The height of the mural actually was 12 feet, 1637 01:25:47,350 --> 01:25:50,436 3 inches by 235 feet. 1638 01:25:50,436 --> 01:25:53,857 It was a quite a complex job. 1639 01:25:55,525 --> 01:25:57,360 It's about the idea of flight. 1640 01:25:57,360 --> 01:26:01,990 It starts with man's thoughts about flight. . 1641 01:26:01,990 --> 01:26:06,828 And this is early man being oppressed by nature 1642 01:26:06,828 --> 01:26:08,329 and wondering what it's all about 1643 01:26:08,329 --> 01:26:10,874 and where the lightning comes from. 1644 01:26:10,874 --> 01:26:14,377 Then here's a modern man and a woman walking 1645 01:26:14,377 --> 01:26:17,088 under a plane with the shadow of a plane coming across her, 1646 01:26:17,088 --> 01:26:20,425 and the compass there. 1647 01:26:20,425 --> 01:26:22,218 ♪ (soft music) 1648 01:26:22,218 --> 01:26:24,179 - [Orson Welles] Today, no trace is left 1649 01:26:24,179 --> 01:26:27,015 of Brooks' gigantic mural. 1650 01:26:27,015 --> 01:26:30,643 It is painted over in institutional green. 1651 01:26:30,643 --> 01:26:34,355 The fear and suspicion of the post-war years left no place 1652 01:26:34,355 --> 01:26:38,484 for muralists' social criticism and political art. 1653 01:26:38,484 --> 01:26:41,029 Hundreds of murals and thousands of easel paintings 1654 01:26:41,029 --> 01:26:44,616 and posters were simply lost, or destroyed. 1655 01:26:44,616 --> 01:26:50,288 ♪ (soft music) 1656 01:26:50,288 --> 01:26:52,916 - How The Arts Project died, of course, 1657 01:26:52,916 --> 01:26:55,084 is part of history few know about. 1658 01:26:55,084 --> 01:26:56,461 The primitives took over. 1659 01:26:56,461 --> 01:26:58,713 The Neanderthals took over, it's simple as that. 1660 01:26:58,713 --> 01:27:01,341 By the way, we say right one or beat left, 1661 01:27:01,341 --> 01:27:05,303 that doesn't mean anything. I think the idea that a Neanderthalism took over, 1662 01:27:05,303 --> 01:27:06,679 not just anti-intellectual, 1663 01:27:06,679 --> 01:27:09,057 it's contempt for working people too. 1664 01:27:09,057 --> 01:27:12,727 - Our committee is the only agency of government 1665 01:27:12,727 --> 01:27:15,313 that has the power of exposure. 1666 01:27:15,313 --> 01:27:19,400 Therefore, this investigation must go on, 1667 01:27:19,400 --> 01:27:21,736 without fear or favor, 1668 01:27:21,736 --> 01:27:23,863 and our slogan must be: 1669 01:27:23,863 --> 01:27:27,408 "No quarter to the enemies of our country. " 1670 01:27:27,408 --> 01:27:30,620 - The the ending of the Federal Arts Project, 1671 01:27:30,620 --> 01:27:33,331 or WPA itself, was also a diminishing 1672 01:27:33,331 --> 01:27:36,167 of the vision of possibilities. . 1673 01:27:36,167 --> 01:27:37,961 and I think this is one of the horrors, 1674 01:27:37,961 --> 01:27:40,755 aside from making the young ignorant of history, 1675 01:27:40,755 --> 01:27:42,257 particularly of labor, 1676 01:27:42,257 --> 01:27:46,552 but also making us zombies in a sense. 1677 01:27:46,552 --> 01:27:49,597 And of course, it's not accidental that. . when the war, 1678 01:27:49,597 --> 01:27:52,100 of course, happened, a mobilization occurred, 1679 01:27:52,100 --> 01:27:57,272 but. . within the hot war itself against fascism, 1680 01:27:57,272 --> 01:27:59,315 the seeds of the cold war being sewn. 1681 01:27:59,315 --> 01:28:04,612 - I used to run under different names like everybody did. 1682 01:28:04,612 --> 01:28:07,532 "True Confessions," Boston's "True Confessions" 1683 01:28:07,532 --> 01:28:09,450 started here in Minneapolis. 1684 01:28:09,450 --> 01:28:11,703 So you used to try and write a true confession 1685 01:28:11,703 --> 01:28:14,330 under a different name. . 1686 01:28:14,330 --> 01:28:15,540 and. . 1687 01:28:15,540 --> 01:28:17,875 I wrote for women's magazines under a different name. 1688 01:28:17,875 --> 01:28:20,128 I had about four or five names. 1689 01:28:20,128 --> 01:28:21,462 I'd. . 1690 01:28:21,462 --> 01:28:25,883 get a job waiting on tables, and in a week the boss 1691 01:28:25,883 --> 01:28:29,887 would come and say, "I'm sorry. . the FBI has been here. " 1692 01:28:30,555 --> 01:28:33,057 - [Orson Welles] Ironically and sadly after the war, 1693 01:28:33,057 --> 01:28:36,352 many people were punished for their involvement. 1694 01:28:36,352 --> 01:28:37,478 They were investigated 1695 01:28:37,478 --> 01:28:39,522 by the Un-American Activities Committee 1696 01:28:39,522 --> 01:28:43,026 by Senator McCarthy . and the FBI. 1697 01:28:43,026 --> 01:28:45,278 Not only their work was destroyed, 1698 01:28:45,278 --> 01:28:49,240 but the very memory they stood for was obliterated. 1699 01:28:49,240 --> 01:28:52,785 The WPA and its Arts Projects blossomed 1700 01:28:52,785 --> 01:28:56,164 for a merely three or four years. . 1701 01:28:56,164 --> 01:28:59,042 then they fell victim to powerful forces: 1702 01:28:59,042 --> 01:29:01,085 conservatism, the war, 1703 01:29:01,085 --> 01:29:04,255 the prosperity of the post-war years. . 1704 01:29:04,255 --> 01:29:07,592 but despite their sudden and tragic demise, 1705 01:29:07,592 --> 01:29:12,555 these projects left us an important cultural legacy. 1706 01:29:12,555 --> 01:29:17,393 The New Deal left us a belief in ordinary people, 1707 01:29:17,393 --> 01:29:20,521 in older American values, 1708 01:29:20,521 --> 01:29:23,524 in a truly popular American culture. 1709 01:29:23,524 --> 01:29:26,027 The artists of the '30s gave a shape, 1710 01:29:26,027 --> 01:29:28,696 a vision, a form to the period. 1711 01:29:28,696 --> 01:29:32,617 They bestowed on us the gift of memory of our people, 1712 01:29:32,617 --> 01:29:35,870 our places, and ourselves. 1713 01:29:37,663 --> 01:29:41,250 - ♪ (singing) I saw an honest farmer 1714 01:29:41,250 --> 01:29:45,129 ♪ His back was bending low 1715 01:29:45,129 --> 01:29:47,882 ♪ Picking out his cotton 1716 01:29:47,882 --> 01:29:50,968 ♪ He couldn't hardly go 1717 01:29:50,968 --> 01:29:53,971 ♪ He piled it up in the rail pen 1718 01:29:53,971 --> 01:29:57,475 ♪ Until the merchant come 1719 01:29:57,475 --> 01:30:00,103 ♪ That he might take his cotton 1720 01:30:00,103 --> 01:30:03,731 ♪ That he might give them some 1721 01:30:03,731 --> 01:30:06,734 ♪ Goodbye, boll weevil 1722 01:30:06,734 --> 01:30:09,862 ♪ For you know you've ruined my home 1723 01:30:09,862 --> 01:30:13,074 ♪ You know you've got my cotton 1724 01:30:13,074 --> 01:30:16,077 ♪ And the merchant's got my corn 1725 01:30:16,077 --> 01:30:18,996 ♪ I saw him in the summer 1726 01:30:18,996 --> 01:30:22,250 ♪ 'Twas hot as it could be 1727 01:30:22,250 --> 01:30:25,461 ♪ Strolling through the harvest field 1728 01:30:25,461 --> 01:30:28,089 ♪ The sweat was running free