Posted 8:42 AM by Gene

Now that the press's latest perfidy is out in the open we think of Marc Blitzstein's musical diatribe The Cradle Will Rock. The lecture centers on a big evil caricature named Mr. Mister (!), who runs everything in Steeltown USA. (!!) Facing a union organizing drive and a revolt of the people he buys out the local paper, which is news to Editor Daily (!!!), who is at first rather dubious, but when he finds out from Mr. Mister, well, anything to oblige. At about this time Mr. Mister's kids Junior Mister and Sister Mister (!!!) are at the age where they might make a fuss -- the thirties equivalent of the Woodstock gang. So Editor Daily (with the kind help of Mr. Mister) proposes to make one of them a "journalist" in Honolulu. As absurd as this all sounds hacks had dealt in fraud long before Blitzstein staged his tantrum*, and they have shafted the public long after.

*Keep in mind that nobody would remember Blitzstein's foot stomping but that the Feds, who helped bankroll the original New York production and were suddenly afraid of Communist influence (!), locked the cast and crew out of their theater before the premiere, forcing its co-producers Orson Welles and John Houseman into one of those genius self-promoting acts for which Welles was always famous, performing the show at another theater from the audience (union rules were to blame). Doubly unfortunate that Blitzstein is remembered almost solely for this ploy (and his translation of The Threepenny Opera) because he was a brilliant and erudite musician, but one who saw the world through red-tinted glasses. (And the dreadful irony is that he was murdered on vacation in Martinique by working-class thugs.)