THE CRADLE WILL ROCK

At the end of the screening of THE CRADLE WILL ROCK, a man and a woman in the theater were screaming at each other, debating the merits and demerits of the movie. If he is told, this debate should make filmmaker Tim Robins very happy because in the movie he proclaims clearly the Marxist shibboleth that “art is supposed to provoke.” As the famous cultural Marxist Herbert Marcuse told his students, “language is a weapon,” and Tim Robbins wields that weapon with reckless abandon.

Except for a few 1960s New York Critics, the rule of good writing precludes inserting the writer’s persona, the big “I,” into the review. However, in the case of CRADLE WILL ROCK, some biographical information background is pertinent. My father, Theodore Baehr, stage name Robert (Bob ‘Tex’) Allen, was involved in the entertainment industry from 1929 to 1998. He belonged to all the major guilds, and, at one time or another, he served on the boards of the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Actors Equity. After starring in 41 movies in Hollywood, he starred as the juvenile lead in SHOWBOAT in 1946 and in lead/starring roles in AUNTIE MAME, TIME FOR ELIZABETH, I KILLED THE COUNT, WHOOPIE, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS, and many other productions on Broadway.

Thus, I grew up in the Broadway theater industry and need to point out from experience that Tim Robbins’ portrayal of the Broadway theater industry misses the mark by a mile. Although he gives it the look of extreme accuracy, CRADLE WILL ROCK is revisionist history. In fact, it is Marxist revisionist history, which is so blatant that any commentary on it will be accused of being intolerant. Therefore, expecting the show trials to begin at any moment, here is an insight into this powerful piece of propaganda.

It should be noted that in Communist Russia, the so-called intellectuals who served as the lap dogs of the party were called the “nomenclatura.” When Stalin opposed Hitler, the nomenclatura were anti-Hitler. When Stalin made a peace treaty with Hitler, the nomenclatura were pro-Hitler. And, of course, when Stalin split with Hitler, the nomenclatura were anti-Hitler again. They were not the true intellectuals. They were not the truly great thinkers and writers who were sent to the Gulag prisons.

CRADLE WILLL ROCK focuses on the 1930s American nomenclatura. The one real genius portrayed in the movie, Orson Welles, is caricatured as an arrogant, argumentative buffoon because in real life Welles put his art first and refused to support the Party, although he sympathized with many of its goals.

The movie starts off by reminding viewers of the work of the depression era Works Progress Administration (WPA). Economists have argued about whether or not the WPA helped or hurt the recovering American economy. Whatever the merits of that argument, the fact of the matter of is that the WPA instituted a form of national socialism in the United States which had not been there before. The WPA established the Federal Theater Project, which staged theatrical productions throughout the United States. The CRADLE WILL ROCK clearly portrays the Federal Theater Project management as leftist and portrays anyone who questions the decisions of the Federal Theater Project as right-wing Fascists (although Fascists are also national socialists).

As the movie opens, a young homeless woman, Olive Stanton (Emily Watson), is sleeping in the back of a theater. After she is kicked out, she stands in line at the Federal Theater Project to get a job in one of their productions. With no acting experience, she lands a job as a stagehand in a production that Orson Welles (Angus MacFadyen) and his homosexual producer, John Houseman (Cary Elwes), are mounting. The pro-union musical is the work of an alienated homosexual, Marc Blitzstein (Hank Azaria).

Opposed to these “courageous” artists are William Randolph Hearst (John Carpenter), Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack), and steel magnate Grey Mathers (Philip Baker Hall), whose socially conscious wife, Countess LaGrange (Vanessa Redgrave), supports the Federal Theater Project. In one scene, these evil industrialists literally sit around counting their money. The connection between these evil capitalists and Fascism is made quite clear. Susan Sarandon plays a turncoat Jewish woman, named Margherita Sarfatti, who is in the employ of Fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini to procure industrial supplies from America for the Fascist cause.

As things develop, the evil government of the U.S. starts investigating the Federal Theater Project. The director of the Federal Theater Project, Hallie Flanagan (Cherry Jones), tries to stand up to the red-baiting congressmen, but the Federal productions are shut down. (The parallels to the debates over the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts are all too obvious in this all too obvious movie.) The cast and crew of the play march up Broadway to an abandoned theater, where they courageously mount, for one glorious evening, this feeble tone deaf musical.

The reason the two people were yelling at each other during this screening, is that this movie is clearly a call to join the cultural Marxist revolution. The poor man who was being berated in the screening audience recognized that this movie was historical revisionism. After all, these so-called artists were on the side of Stalin, a mass murderer whose crimes even exceeded Adolph Hitler. The young woman yelling at him could have been on the streets of Seattle kicking out the windows at the World Trade Organization, longing for a way to overthrow these old fogies, whose wisdom she didn’t appreciate.

This complex story with too many characters constantly loses its way. It doesn’t bore, however, only because it is always in your face. Regrettably, Robbins fails to explore the other side of the political debate with some semblance of an open mind or examine the irony of the musical being sabotaged as much by the entertainers’ unions as by the government.

THE CRADLE WILL ROCK attacks the bourgeois values that Marx hated so much. Since Marx believed that prostitution was better than being married, the movie extols free love and homosexuality.

Just as Communism did in Russia, the movie betrays itself. Get rid of big business and what do you have: big government. And, power corrupts big government just as it can corrupt big business. So, here big government shuts down the arts.

Hitler and Stalin both advocated the Big Lie. This movie pushes the cultural Marxist revisionist lie even further. The only question is, how many people will fall for it?