Nevertheless, the FTP failed to become the national theater that Flanagan wanted. In 29 states the FTP had no sponsors or projects, and in most of the others its presence was small. Half of all FTP personnel were based in New York, and nearly all the major productions were performed in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Much more ominous than the FTP’s urban myopia, however, was the sound of the knives being sharpened in Washington.

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By 1938 Roosevelt’s New Deal was faltering. The president had attempted but failed to purge conservative Democrats from the party, and Republicans had made considerable gains in the Congressional elections. The WPA’s opponents were attacking it for its alleged waste, and a powerful body in Congress began looking into’subversive’ activities. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had been formed in May 1938 to investigate subversion by fascists and communists, although it focused almost entirely on the latter. As expected, HUAC chairman Martin Dies, who was especially wary of labor unions and New Deal agencies, eventually began looking into the FTP. Federal investigators traveled to the FTP’s ‘big three’ cities in April 1939, and Congressional hearings began soon after. Committee investigators dutifully reported on the ‘propaganda’ content of the plays, the sponsorship of ‘radical’ organizations, and the unmistakable ‘Communist’ influence. One witness summed it up this way: the entire Federal Theatre Project was a ‘clever fence to sow the seeds of Communism.’ Coming in for special opprobrium was an FTP children’s theater production called Revolt of the Beavers. This fable, which related how good ‘working beavers’ staged a revolution against a cruel ‘Boss Chief,’ might have been embraced by the government in Moscow, but Flanagan was naïve to believe that such transparent agitprop would pass muster in Washington. Even the FTP-friendly theater critic of the New York Times, Brooks Atkinson, called it ‘Marxism à la Mother Goose.’

Congress finally cut the FTP’s funding, making it the first of the WPA’s arts projects to get the axe, and it died on June 30, 1939. Nearly everything it had produced was innocuous, but a few excessive and headstrong productions made the headlines. Flanagan and the other directors of the FTP probably should have known better than to try so eagerly to fashion their undertaking into a vehicle for social change. But then again, it’s probably too much to ask that artists be politicians too.

Years later John Houseman remembered the experience fondly. ‘To those of us who were fortunate enough to be part of the Federal Theatre from the beginning, it was a unique and thrilling experience. Added to the satisfaction of accomplishing an urgent and essential social task in a time of national crisis, we enjoyed the excitement that is generated on those rare and blessed occasions when the theatre is suddenly swept into the historical mainstream of its time.’

This article was written by Joseph Gustaitis and originally published in the February 2000 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

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