The Cradle Will Rock
Shows · The Cradle Will Rock
The story of this “Play in Music” is little more than an animated left-wing political cartoon. In Steeltown, USA, the noble union organizer Larry Foreman (Howard DaSilva) does battle against the powerful and corrupt Mr. Mister (Will Geer), who owns everything and everyone in town, and eventually leads the workers to victory.
- Opened
- 1938
- Performances
- 108
- Type
- Musical
- Era
- Early
Productions2 on Broadway
| 1938 | Windsor Theatre Original. January 3, 1938 · Orson Welles | 108 performances |
| 1947 | Mansfield Theatre Revival. December 26, 1947 · Howard Da Silva | 34 performances |
Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. West End runs are not yet held.
Recordings 3 albums held
Licensing not confirmed
| Rights | Not confirmed We have not been able to confirm the publisher. |
Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.
42 passages naming The Cradle Will Rock, found by keyword across 178 books. It's where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.
One of the most controversial stage productions of the decade, Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock was initially a project of the WPA’s Federal Theatre, with John Houseman as producer and Orson Welles as director. book:broadway-musicals-show-by-show-seventh-edition-stanley-green-cary-ginell#p106
The Biltmore enjoyed a momentary return to glory in 1999 when its marquee, lesteemed with 1930s-era posters, was used as a backdrop for the Oscar-nominated film The Cradle Will Rock. book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p238
The Cradle Will Rock.The, 191, 220, 224 book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p361
With the opening canceled, the company was doubly intent on presenting the show. Actors’ Equity, always distrustful of the WPA, had ruled that its members could not perform onstage in a Federal Theatre Project play. The musicians’ union also disliked the project and forbade its members from playing in the show, despite… book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p184
In 1938 a set of songs recorded by original cast members of Mare Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock was issued on the Musicraft Records label. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p97
Howard Da Silva, a brilliant character actor whose presence in a few landmark shows made him an important figure, first sang in the historic The Cradle Will Rock in 1938. book:broadway-musicals-the-101-greatest-shows-of-all-time-bloom-ken-1949-vlastnik-fra#p292
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