So. First, a little background. In spite of the fact that this play is set in the early fifties, those post-World War II Cold War times, the roots of what’s going on date back well into the 1930s. During the Great Depression, in 1935, the Federal Works Progress tried to put actors, directors and theatrical people back to work through subsidized projects and established the Federal Theatre Project, headed by Hallie Flanagan. The FTP, it was hoped, would also entertain and culturally lift up poor people never before exposed to theatre. The New Dealer, Harry Hopkins, gave Flanagan the commission to create and produce plays that were “free, adult, and uncensored.” Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

To create a national program, Flanagan launched the “Living Newspapers” plays, a sort of pre-television “ripped from the headlines” format that quickly became extremely popular. As the program produced hot-button topics with progressive themes, the plays came under increasing criticism by Congress. A play by Elmer Rice criticizing Benito Mussolini’s incursions into Ethiopia was actively censored. In 1937, in a legendary and infamous episode, Marc Blitzstein’s musical about corporate corruption and efforts to unionize workers, The Cradle Will Rock (directed by Orson Welles and produced by John Housman) was shut down. The company found another theatre and, forbidden by the Actors’ Union to perform onstage, the actors sang their parts from the audience, accompanied by the playwright on a piano. In 1938, the FTP was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities Committee and Hallie Flanagan was summoned to testify on communism in the organization. By 1939, the FTP was out of business.

The House of Representatives had set up this Special Committee on Un-American Activities in 1934 to discover “information on how foreign propaganda entered the U.S. and the organizations that were spreading it.” And, how is propaganda spread, after all? Through the media. Who were the media in the 1930s? The newspapers, the radio, and those out-of-control theatre people. (I found it interesting that this committee got its start investigating the Ku Klux Klan and decided that they were too “American” an institution to bother with.)

By the late forties, HUAC had become a standing committee. This was the era of the second great “Red Scare,” the nuclear arms race, the Truman Loyalty Oath, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Blockade, the Chinese Civil War, and, finally, the Korean War, all accompanied by the rise of McCarthyism in the Senate and ongoing investigations by HUAC. In 1947, with “the Hollywood Ten” refusing to testify before HUAC, being cited for contempt and sentenced to prison, the Hollywood blacklist began to grow until it numbered in the hundreds of names. In 1951, at the time that Red Scare on Sunset is set, HUAC was in the midst of a second major round of investigations of Hollywood and Communism.

Charles Busch sets his zany, brilliantly observed send-up of a Hollywood movie at this moment when the principals are not only threatened by politics but by other serious changes in the theatre and entertainment industry. Busch rings his satiric numbers on these fears. Radio personality Pat Pilford worries about her relevance in an age of television. Mary Dale is a glamour star from the old studio system that is about to collapse. Frank Taggart is lured into the Party by the hope of becoming a serious Method-trained actor and having a renewed career. Marta Towers is seductive only through reciting a laundry list of modern, intellectual films and plays. The entire cast—Mary excepted—mouths the words of political commitment, but it’s all surface. They act it out, like actors onscreen. Yet, in fact, no one has any true convictions at all. Pat Pilford uses Red baiting to boost her public image. Marta promotes herself as a serious intellectual to try for stardom. Poor, sweet Malcolm only wants to achieve his dreams as a cosmetologist without gender fears. Ethel Goldman wants to overthrow a system in which she’s a failure and replace it with one in which she has power.

Everyone is simply out for themselves and the result is a very funny, kitschy, arch orgy of self-promoting back-stabbing that leads to real stabbing, attempted blackmail, attempted murder, delirium, way over-the-top revelations, and a twisted catastrophe that’s a real surprise.

Mary Dale is the key to all this, glamorous, charismatic, apolitical, kind, sincere, and laughably naive. Immersed in her upcoming role as Lady Godiva, her acting philosophy is simply, “Learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” Busch wrote her—and the play around her—so that he himself could portray the gorgeous, radiant kind of star that he so admires. Mary Dale is the drag persona of Charles Busch, more woman than any of the other femmes in the comedy and the one, ultimately, with the will to survive. Although the comedy works without the drag element, it’s clear where the moral center of the play resides. Mary, pretty and passive, awakens (literally) to the realities around her and finds the courage to act—not as in “act” onscreen or onstage, but act in the world with real consequences, something neither her husband nor her friends are capable of doing. How she chooses to enact her decisions, however, is lifted right out of the Godiva legend where she strips off all deception and assumes that truth and transparency will save Tinseltown and those she cares about.

A perfect B-movie ending that could leave us queasy.

© 2008 by Eileen Warburton

Further reading:
Faulk, John Henry, Fear on Trial. Austin: U. Texas Press, 1963.
Buhle, Paul and David Wagner. Blacklisted: The Film Lover’s Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist. NY: Macmillan, 2003.


DISCUSSION SUNDAY at 2ND STORY THEATRE:
Discussion Sunday puts on your thinking cap.
First Sunday of each production.
Pre-show: 2pm and post-show: 5pm.

Ed Shea, Artistic Director, and Eileen Warburton, PhD, Humanities Scholar-in-Residence, take a look at the humanity themes roused by the plays. Essays written by Dr. Warburton are available online and at the performance. Humanities discussions are free and open to the public.

RHODE ISLAND COUNCIL FOR THE HUMANITIES

Discussion Sunday at 2nd Story Theatre is made possible through major funding support from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, an independent state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Discussion Sunday do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.