Some Much Needed Theatrical Distraction

 

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Waking up this morning a bit disoriented, it wasn’t until I looked at my phone that I realized what day of the week it is. Routine morning workweek rituals such as shaving, showering, wolfing down breakfast, and bicycling to work having broken down, I could appreciate how unemployed persons during the Great Depression could fall into psychological malaise as one day blurred into the next.

This past Monday evening marked the second time my Florida International University America & Movies: The Great Depression and New Deal Era in Film and History class convened remotely in the wake of the corona pandemic. Instead of meeting in person, discussing the class topics and assigned class readings, and screening and analyzing the films together as a group, we have been talking, chatting, and presenting oral reports via Zoom. Fortunately, the film we were preparing to discuss, Stand Up and Cheer (1934) was available in its entirety online via YouTube. Following our discussions, the students and I watched it “together” as a YouTube Party before reconvening to deconstruct, analyze, and historically contextualize the film via a second Zoom appointment. In the movie, Broadway’s premiere director, Laurence Cromwell, is asked by the president to head a new cabinet position. As the director of a new Department of Amusement, he has been enlisted to help lift Americans’ spirits and literally laugh away the Great Depression. It seemed especially relevant today given the social distancing and isolation associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

https://youtu.be/hfoV71tCsAo

 

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The film foreshadowed the creation of the Federal Theatre Project and some of the problems that program would face from critics among the political opposition, some of whom would ridicule government-funded public entertainment as a frivolous waste of taxpayer money while others would demonized it as political propaganda. The film’s central theme of keeping culture and morale alive in tough economic times seemed to resonate with some of the challenges posed by the Covid 19 epidemic as Broadway’s theatres have shut down temporarily, with some productions being made available for home viewing via the internet.

Photo courtesy of the New York Post

In the “roaring twenties,” Broadway musicals and theatrical productions had continued to thrive even as live entertainment in general was reeling from the competition provided by an emerging cinema industry.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

After the Crash and the onset of the Great Depression, however, theatre companies struggled to survive the economic crisis. As unemployment soared, those Americans lucky enough to be working tightened their belts and saved their money for necessities. Such parsimony, however, threatened to relegate the country to social and cultural as well as economic stagnation. Only Hollywood appeared to be somewhat immune from the financial crisis as children and adult audiences could lay down “two bits” to watch a double-feature and find temporary escape from their present cares and woes. Stand Up and Cheer is typical of a genre of films borrowing and combining elements of the Broadway musical and dance spectacular with vaudeville humor,  romance, and melodrama.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Live theatre had a difficult time competing with cinema during the Depression. Given the costs of having to pay live actors, singers, dancers, and musicians for each performance, as well as the directors, set and costume designers, stagehands, and other essential (and unionized) technicians working behind the scenes, commercial theatre generally charged between four to eight times the price of a movie ticket. Unsurprisingly, many theatrical production companies went bankrupt, with many large venues going dark and closing their doors. Consequently, many theatrical performers and support staff were pushed into the ever-growing ranks of the unemployed. In the late 1920s, Broadway alone had employed 25,000 theatre workers; by 1933, only 4,000 remained employed in the profession. Into that void stepped Harry Hopkins, director of the Works Progress Administration, and the woman he chose to head the Federal Theatre Project, Hallie Flanagan. In May 1935, Hopkins wryly confessed to her that: “I don’t know why I still hang on to the idea that unemployed actors get just as hungry as anybody else.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Within a year of its creation, the Federal Theatre Project was employing approximately 13,000 persons.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Christopher DeNoon

By the end of its four year existence, the FTP had been responsible for staging 1,200 live theatrical productions which played for free or at minimal cost to an audience of 30,000,000. The productions had been staged in more than 200 rented theaters nationwide, as well as performed in parks, school auditoriums, hospitals, churches, orphanages, and even the CCC camps scattered across the countryside. All of the actors, singers, dancers, and stagehands had been paid and all of these productions realized with a budget of $46 million dollars.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loan

Much like the Broadway producer featured in Stand Up and Cheer, Hallie Flanagan proved to be an energetic organizer of the projects that consumed nearly her entire waking day. As head of the FTP, Flanagan tirelessly oversaw a wide variety of live theatre, ranging from circuses to marionette puppet shows, from serious tragedies to hilarious comedies, from Shakespearean drama to informative contemporary “living newspaper” productions.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gifts of Christopher DeNoon

Whereas the Director of the Department of Amusements in the film was attacked by oligarchs profiting from depression conditions and their political lackeys, his real life counterpart’s first obstacles were members of the theatrical community itself. Theatrical unions were understandably concerned about the lower wages paid by the government relief program, though given that there were nearly 2,000 unemployed stagehands in New York City alone, pragmatism prevailed. Hallie was also able to placate and win over some of the theater owners; some had feared that their own productions would be undercut by taxpayer-funded projects; others that the FTP bureaucracy might bring the entire theatrical industry in disrepute by producing amateurish entertainment employing second-rate actors on relief. But Flanagan’s goal of staging “free, adult, and uncensored” theatre would be put to the test almost immediately with the FTP’s very first New York City production.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Flanagan was working with the famous playwright, Elmer Rice on a living newspaper production drawn straight from the headlines of the dailies. She decided they should tackle the growing international crisis as Italian Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, sparred with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and prepared to invade the last independent state in Africa. In 1926, Flanagan had received a Guggenheim fellowship grant that allowed her to travel to England, Europe, and the Soviet Union to “acquire firsthand knowledge of the theatres of the world.” Her three-months in Russia proved to be most influential as she attended Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Theatre and imbibed the revolutionary spirit of the new workers’ theatres “as a place where author, actor and spectator are magically fused.” She had been most impressed by the living newspaper concept she had seen in Germany and Russia, a cabaret-style presentation of current events used by the Communists as an educational/propaganda vehicle. As Director of the FTP, Flanagan had encouraged Rice to adopt the form to inform the public about the developing Ethiopian crisis. When word of the subject matter of this federally sponsored production reached the ears of certain bureaucrats in the State Department, however, the director was told to cease and desist production of Ethiopia the day before its scheduled opening. As a protest against censorship, Rice tendered his resignation, but not before inviting the press to see the last dress rehearsal; the aborted production generally garnered favorable critical mention.

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If Ethiopia tested the bounds of censorship and lost, the living newspaper concept lived on and was deployed to deal with a number of contemporary domestic issues. Typical of Flanagan’s approach, no contemporary topic or issue was taboo or off-limits, whether dealing with syphilis or slums.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loan

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Bettijune Kruse

If by concentrating on domestic issues, Flanagan’s living newspaper productions placated concerned State Department bureaucrats, the plays continued to fire the ire of the political opponents of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, who charged that they constituted tax-payer funded, Democratic propaganda. Another living newspaper production titled, Power, delved into the controversial topic of the Tennessee Valley Authority and public versus private ownership of hydroelectric utilities. After seeing the production, Harry Hopkins congratulated Hallie, telling her:

…you will take a lot of criticism on this play. People will say it’s propaganda. Well, I say what of it? It’s propaganda to educate the consumer who’s paying for power. It’s about time someone had some propaganda for him. The big power companies have spent millions on propaganda for the utilities. It’s about time the consumer had a mouthpiece. I say more plays like Power and more power on you.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Marc Dessauce

If the Federal Theatre Project’s living newspaper productions irritated some Republican critics of the New Deal in Congress, the director’s enlightened racial policies absolutely incensed conservative “Dixiecrats” within the Democratic Party causing some to defect and join the opposition. Given that 50% of the 350,000 African Americans living in New York City had been thrown out of work, Hallie Flanagan established a Negro unit within the FTP, becoming within a few weeks the largest single employer in Harlem. Harnessing the talents of producer John Houseman and director Orson Welles, the Negro Theatre of New York staged an innovative adaption of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in Haiti during its tumultuous revolution.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loan

The aptly nicknamed Voodoo Macbeth production featured costumes designed by Nat Karson and executed in the Federal Theatre Project’s own workshop, here rendered for lithography by Albert Carman.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Christopher DeNoon

https://youtu.be/9wmWBki06yc

As the project’s national director, Hallie Flanagan insisted that black performers be paid the same rate as white performers and mandated that all audiences for the federally funded shows be integrated. When some theaters refused to seat blacks and whites together, she cancelled performances; when a few racist white project managers acted in a prejudicial manner, they were fired or removed from their positions. Such progressive action on her part ensured that her Federal Theatre Project was the first New Deal program targeted, aggressively attacked, and defunded in Congress.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

In closing, I would like to wish all of my readers good health and good humor. If any of you decide to watch Stand Up & Cheer, be forewarned that while entertaining and very funny at times, it is also very much a product of its times, and would doubtlessly have failed to meet Hallie Flanagan’s high standards in its patronizing attitudes towards women and its demeaning depictions of African Americans. 

Federal One: Depression Relief through An Art Attack

Earlier this semester, twenty-one students enrolled in my America & Movies: The Great Depression and New Deal in Film and History course came to The Wolfsonian–Florida International University museum for a Saturday afternoon class meeting. There, the students had the opportunity to see relevant historical artifacts included in Radicals and Reactionaries: Extremism in America, a library installation curated by four FIU undergraduate students from the previous semester.

Because The Wolfsonian holds one of the strongest collections of New Deal Era mural studies, art, books, and political pamphlets, the students also had the chance to peruse a presentation of primary source materials related to the Depression. The items from the rare book and special collection library included artifacts expressing popular discontent with President Hoover’s handling of the economic crisis and the hope inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup” New Deal remedies. After the guided tour and presentation of ephemera—many of which dealt with the infamous Scottsboro, Alabama race trial—the students watched the classic film, To Kill A Mockingbird, likely inspired by that and other racially-charged events in 1930s Alabama.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Purchase

Several of the students stayed on after the class to participate in another curatorial project: selecting and curating an exhibition of artifacts documenting the New Deal effort to keep culture alive and artists from starving with WPA-funded art projects. Their efforts will result in an exhibition of Federal Art, Music, Theatre, and Writers’ Project items in an installation that will be displayed at the Green Library at Florida International University.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The self-made millionaire and man once lauded as the “boy wonder,” the “Great Engineer,” and the “Great Humanitarian,” Herbert Hoover had once publicly boasted that “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” Those words and quotes of a similar nature made before the Stock Market Crash of 1929 would come back to haunt the president whose nicknames would be used ironically during the Great Depression.  

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Purchase

Three-years into the economic crisis, even as he began an unwinnable campaign for re-election, the president’s name became inextricably linked to the “Hooverville” shanties and homeless squatters’ camps sprouting up across the nation.

Illustration by Lynd Ward

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Not only were Communist critics and Democratic opponents ridiculing Hoover’s “hands off” approach to the economic crisis, but even progressive members of his own Republican Party, including Harold Ickes and Senator George Norris, defected and threw their support behind the Democratic frontrunner.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

While Hoover addressed the nation to defend his policies in the leadup to the 1932 presidential elections, the incumbent proved to be a less-than dynamic speaker and no match for the oratory of his Democratic challenger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

If Hoover’s “apologia” reelection campaign failed to excite a depression-weary public, the President’s (mis)handling of the “Bonus Army” crisis created a public relations nightmare that ultimately turned the entire nation against him. Tens of thousands of desperate veterans—some traveling with their families in tow—had marched, hitchhiked, and hopped trains to Washington, D.C. to lobby their congressmen to pass a veterans’ compensation bill. After the Bonus Bill was voted down in the Senate, President Hoover authorized General Douglas MacArthur to quell and evict the demonstrators deploying tanks, cavalry, and soldiers armed with bayonets and gas. Exceeding his orders, MacArthur’s soldiers afterwards crossed the river to the Anastasia Flats where they burned down the veterans’ squatter camp before most had returned to retrieve their meager belongings.

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While Hoover initially claimed without any evidence that “red” infiltrators had provoked the rioting and forced the Administration to call out the army, veteran’s groups and the public castigated the president for his actions and his hollow justification. Given President Hoover’s unpopularity, even some of the pro-Republican campaign literature chose to focus on the Party’s “mascot” rather than Hoover’s name or likeness in the 1932 elections.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Not surprisingly, the Democratic challenger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt soundly defeated the incumbent Republican president in a landslide, winning in all but six of the forty-eight states. During his inaugural address made on March 4, 1933, the new president recognized that his “greatest primary task is to put people to work” and promised the American public that he would “act and act quickly.” Within the first hundred days of taking office, his Administration closed down and reorganized the entire banking system under the Emergency Banking Act; created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) to provide immediate assistance to the poor; inaugurated the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and immediately enrolled 250,000 unemployed rural and urban youths in his “Tree Army”; established the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); and oversaw the creation of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the National Recovery Administration (NRA), and the Public Works Administration (PWA). Editorial cartoons expressed the concerns and fears that some conservatives had that these new government projects would forever alter and expand the federal government’s power and influence.

Illustrated by Will H. Chandler and Alden Turner

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Some labor leaders and critics on the left feared that the Civilian Conservation Corps (popularly known as Roosevelt’s “Tree Army”) might establish a low minimum wage standard, or else be perverted into European-style fascist labor camps preparing young men for war.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

To reassure organized labor and the general public, Roosevelt appointed the respected labor leader Robert Fechner as Director of Emergency Conservation Work in charge of the CCC program, who was also vocal in his opposition to military training and drill in the camps. Ultimately the CCC proved to be particularly popular with the American public as millions of destitute and homeless youths were taken off the city streets and out of hobo camps and enrolled in his “Tree Army.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Promised Gift

Roosevelt had been a great supporter of the Boy Scouts, and that organization inspired his Civilian Conservation Corps. Enrollees were relocated to camps situated in state and national parks and forests where the CCC boys were fed, housed, and clothed in khaki uniforms at government expense.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The enrollees were provided with physical labor and work in the great outdoors designed to restore malnourished bodies, and with paychecks to build their self-esteem as they found themselves able to help support their families back home. Between 1933 and 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps boys planted billions of trees; fought forest fires, pests, and soil erosion; and cleared paths, built roads and bridges, and otherwise improved park facilities across the nation.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was placed under the direction of Republican Senator George Norris, who oversaw an ambitious project that put tens of thousands of engineers and construction workers back to work building a series of large hydroelectric dams.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Christopher DeNoon Collection for the Study of New Deal Culture

The dams were designed to end the frequent and disastrous flooding of the Tennessee River and its tributaries, combat soil erosion, create new recreational lakes and reservoirs, and generate electricity for neighboring rural communities.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

Another Republican, Harold Ickes, was placed in charge of FDR’s Public Works Administration.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Promised Gift

Ickes was both a progressive and a champion of civil rights, though he also had a reputation of being a careful and cautious spender in a way that limited the re-employment potential of his public works projects.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Christopher DeNoon Collection for the Study of New Deal Culture

By far the two most controversial programs of the early New Deal were the two considered most important to the goal of helping to revivify the fortunes of industry and Agriculture. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was placed under the oversight of General Hugh Johnson, an energetic, but cantankerous managerial wizard who publicly voiced admiration for dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist reorganization of the Italian economy. Johnson’s former business partner, George Peek, also having the reputation of being a combative individual, was put in charge of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) under Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Christopher DeNoon Collection for the Study of New Deal Culture

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The NRA attempted to jumpstart business by imposing voluntary regulatory codes over all of the major industries to protect the employer, consumer, and worker.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Johnson used the carrot and the stick to push for compliance: those industries following NRA rules would be allowed to display the blue thunderbird NRA logo on labels and in display cards placed in shop windows, while unwilling or recalcitrant businesses might find themselves subject to boycotts or strikes.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Detractors of the NRA, and there were many on both the left and right, attacked the program often parodying the “blue eagle” logo and motto in the process.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, (or Triple-A), aimed to help farmers fend off foreclosure.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Towards that end, the federal government began paying subsidies that encouraged large-scale farmers to leave their fields fallow, thus conserving the soil and preventing future overproduction of food and cotton crops.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

As incredible as it seems in an era when many Americans were going hungry and reduced to wearing rags, the AAA also recommended slaughtering millions of swine and piglets and plowing under existing cotton crops to prop up agricultural prices. Critics on the left attacked the program as a crazy and unconscionable policy that benefitted large commercial farmers at the expense of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and consumers.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Ultimately the conservative justices on the Supreme Court weighed in and pronounced both the AAA and the NRA as unconstitutional overreaches. The Roosevelt Administration scrambled to rework Triple-A rules and regulations to bring it into compliance, and decided to scrap the NRA entirely.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

With the death of the NRA, President Roosevelt reluctantly threw his support behind Senator Robert F. Wagner’s National Labor Relations Act as a means of salvaging some of the NRA’s most important provisions. These included recognizing labor’s right to organize unions, to engage in collectively bargaining, and to take collective action including strikes.

As the 1936 presidential elections approached, President Roosevelt was compelled to inaugurate a second New Deal to stave off challenges from ambitious political rivals and detractors. Louisiana governor and presidential hopeful Huey Long proposed a “share the wealth” program, even as leftists claimed that conditions in his home state amounted to robbery of the poor to benefit the wealthy.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Another Roosevelt critic, Dr. Francis Townsend, argued in favor of a providing retirees with a government pension, while his own critics claimed the Townsend Old Age Pension resembled a chain letter pyramid scheme.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

FDR’s response was to create the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide jobs for millions more Americans, and the Social Security Administration to provide unemployment compensation and pensions for handicapped and retired persons.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Like the Public Works Administration, the WPA was designed to put people back to work on infrastructure projects that would benefit the nation.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

FDR placed Harry Hopkins, his former FERA administrator in charge of the WPA and provided him with substantially more funding and a mandate to spend fast and furious to absorb the unemployed. While much of the work was on infrastructure projects, Hopkins made sure that federal fund were also deployed to support the arts through the Federal Arts Project (FAP), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loan

This semester’s student curators will be focusing on these four Federal Arts Projects as they grapple with the New Deal’s attempt to keep morale up and culture alive during hard times. Painters, graphic artists, poster designers, sculptors, and art teachers were employed by the FAP.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The FMP provided work for musicians, choral groups, and orchestras, while subsidizing free or inexpensive public concerts, and producing sound recording that could be aired on radio stations.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Live theatre, which had suffered greatly during the Depression, was given a boost by the FTP, which provided paychecks for ushers, actors, stagehands, and set and costume designers, and produced free theatrical performances.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) provided work for thousands of unemployed authors researching, compiling statistics, and writing government pamphlets and booklets on a host of Depression problems alleviated by New Deal solutions. They also published pamphlets preserving folklore and children’s educational books on a wide variety of subjects.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The project director also devised a guidebook series to describe the history and culture of all forty-eight states of the union and to stimulate domestic tourism.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Ironically, even though the Federal Arts Project made up the smallest portion of the WPA budget, it was the first program to come under attack in Congress. Artists rallied to the defense of the projects, but the Federal Theatre Project was the first WPA project to be defunded.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Stay tuned to hear more about the students’ installation on the Federal Arts Project.

Havana, Cuba: America’s Former Premier Tourist Destination

Earlier this month and week, the Wolfsonian museum was visited by two groups making a stop-over in Miami on route to Havana, Cuba. The first was a handful of university students led by Tim Hossler, former Wolfsonian art director and present-day assistant professor in the School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas.

The second were members of the Art Deco Society of New York led by Roberta Nusim.

Although the current administration in Washington has been making holiday travel by Americans to the island nation ever more difficult, exceptions are still made for educational and cultural activities. Both group leaders were interested in visiting our museum before crossing over to Cuba to experience a guided tour of our Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer and Caricaturas installations, and to peruse some items from our library collection related to architecture, tourism, hotels, casinos, nightlife and attractions, and Hollywood depictions of Cuba during the golden age of tourism.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

I guided both groups through the fifth floor galleries to the installation celebrating a recent gift by Vicki Gold Levi of a host of materials documenting the caricatures, artwork, and influence of Conrado Walter Massaguer, Cuba’s premier publisher and tastemaker in the era of the Republic.

Long before other Cubans championed the idea of enticing wealthy Americans to visit and vacation in Havana, Conrado was providing cover artwork for El Figaro caricaturing American tourists.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

Soon after, he and his brother Oscar launched their own set of Cuban magazines, including the short-lived Grafico, Pulgarcito, before hitting a responsive chord with the highly influential Social (1916–1933, 1935–1937) and Carteles (1919–1960). As its name suggests, Social was published for an elite audience, and contained articles on the arts, culture and high society events, provided caricatures of politicos and socialites in its “Ellos” [Them] section, and promoted modernist artists and aesthetics in Cuba.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loans

Conrado also served as the art director of Carteles and frequently contributed his own and his protégés’ artwork to the covers of this more popular magazine.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

Conrado Massaguer became an early, active, and tireless promotor of his island homeland as a tourist destination for Americans immediately after the First World War and up until relations soured soon after the Castro-led revolutionaries took power in 1959. Towards that end, Massaguer printed advertisements and even published an English-language magazine for American visitors printed exclusively during the winter season of the 1920s.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

Loan, Emilio Cueto, private collection

Even as the Great Depression and internal political unrest on the island in 1933 choked off tourism considerably, the ever optimistic Massaguer continued to provide posters and other promotional artwork for the Cuban Tourist Commission, and even created a brochure for distribution and a short-lived mural at the Cuban pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. After assuming power by coup, President Fulgencio Batista decided to diversify the economy and to encourage tourism by promoting Havana as the Monte Carlo of the Western Hemisphere. Conrado Massaguer was named director of public relations for the Cuban Institute of Tourism and served as a goodwill ambassador, greeting and making instantaneous caricatures of VIP celebrities and Hollywood stars visiting the island, even as he continued to contribute artwork for promotional materials.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

Although Massaguer published the first book of sympathetic caricatures of the bearded revolutionaries after Batista fled the country and Castro’s forces assumed power, Conrado’s influence soon waned.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

As relations between Castro and the U.S. government grew strained, the American tourist industry Massaguer had done so much to promote dried up and by 1960 even his most popular publication, distribution of Carteles ceased.

Following the guided tour of Cuban Caricature and Culture, the groups were taken to see the complementary Caricaturas library installation to view some more of Massaguer’s work, as well as the satirical artwork of some of his contemporaries. Cuban politicos were notoriously thin-skinned, and all of the caricaturists who dared lampoon political figures found themselves arrested, jailed, or forced into temporary exile at one point or other during their careers. After penning both signed and anonymous caricatures of President Gerardo Machado, Massaguer had to flee the island, spending months in Europe before living in New York City for several years in the 1930s as a political refugee.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

Similarly, the political lampoons of another Cuban caricaturist, Arroyito (Ramon Arroyo Cisernos) earned him the displeasure and ire of both Cuban Army Commander and President Fugencio Batista and the Castro-led revolutionaries who overthrew him.

Loan, DiazCasas Collection, New York City

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

Finally, both groups entered the main reading room of our library to see a display of materials drawn primarily from the Vicki Gold Levi Collection covering the themes they had expressed interest in. The first significant surge of American tourists to Cuba arrived in the period between 1919 and 1933. In the aftermath of the devastation wrought by the Great War, wealthy Americans accustomed to taking a grand European tour needed to look elsewhere for vacation venues. At the same time, the Cuban government desperately needed to diversify their economy as sugar prices fell precipitously after the war’s end, and passed a tourist bill designed to entice well-to-do Americans to the island by promoting gambling and reminding their Northern neighbors that while the United States had passed Prohibition, rum would always flow like water in the island republic.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

There were relatively few hotels ready to accommodate the earliest tourists to the island, though in anticipation of Prohibition’s effects on the profitability of the Biltmore Hotel chain, John McEntee Bowman and Charles Francis Flynn purchased the Moorish-revival Sevilla Hotel on Calle Trocadero on the Paseo del Prado. The New York architects Schultz & Weaver were hired to renovate the new Sevilla-Biltmore, adding a ten-story tower addition complete with a rooftop ballroom in 1924.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The massive Hotel Nacional de Cuba, designed by another New York firm, McKim, Mead and White, was built to accommodate the growing number of American tourists visiting the island, opening to the public in the winter season of 1930. So many Americans stayed at this hotel that it earned the nickname “la embajada americana” (the American embassy).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

Ironically, just three years after opening, the Hotel Nacional de Cuba served as the focal point of the political strife gripping the island nation that choked off the first wave of tourism. In the aftermath of the overthrow of President Gerardo Machado by officers of the Cuban Army, Sergeant-stenographer Fulgencio Batista led a coup of non-commissioned soldiers against the transitional government in September 1933. When the high-ranking officers took refuge in the hotel, Batista’s forces first laid siege to, and then shelled and attacked them, causing extensive damage to the building.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Coupled with the repeal of Prohibition and the worsening of the Great Depression in the United States, the news of revolution in Cuba reduced American tourism to the island to a trickle. Ironically enough, the tourist trade was revived decades later by Fulgencio Batista after he took the presidency by coup in 1952. Looking to promote Havana as the premier American vacation destination again, Batista offered his friend Meyer Lansky and other gangsters an offer they couldn’t refuse—gambling concessions for anyone spending a million or more in new hotel construction or renovation. Batista’s strategy bore fruit with such iconic glamorous hotels as the Comodoro (1955), the Riviera (1957), the Capri (1957), and the Habana Hilton (1958).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gifts

Hollywood movies and musicals set in Havana and featuring Cuban musicians and performers lured American honeymooners and tourists back to Cuba, as did highly publicized visits to the island by celebrities and stars.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner Honeymoon in Havana

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

Cuba’s capital city became a mecca for American tourists and honeymooners—a place where they could let loose and dance to popular Cuban rhythm and percussion, beat the heat drinking frozen daiquiris, and try their luck at the slot machines, roulette wheels, and card tables in the casinos, and catch a spectacular cabaret show.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gifts

Few imagined that the Castro-led revolution in 1959 would bring a dramatic end to Havana’s famous nightlife. Two movies filmed in Havana in the immediate aftermath of the revolution and foreshadow the fate of the tourist trade. Our Man in Havana, was a major British production starring Alec Guinness as a comedic vacuum-cleaner salesman-turned-spy and includes scenes in some of Havana’s quintessential tourist haunts, including the Tropicana nightclub’s Arcos de Cristal.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Francis X. Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

A low budget, gritty film noir, Pier 5 Havana, was set in Havana and starred Cameron Mitchell as an American determined to find his friend who had gone missing and ends up thwarting a sinister plot by Batista counterrevolutionaries to overthrow the “newly-freed Cuba!”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

As relations between the United States and Cuba quickly disintegrated, this movie, with its pro-Castro regime plot line, was consigned to the shelves to collect dust for nearly fifty years. It suffered the same fate as Massaguer’s book of caricatures in Cuba since images of the “bearded” revolutionaries hawking American products like Coca-cola made it taboo after diplomatic ties and trade between the countries were severed.

From Birthday Bash to Art Basel

These last two months of 2019 have been busy at The Wolfsonian–FIU, with an exhibition opening and other events set to mark our founder’s 80^th birthday, followed by an open house party for VIP visitors here in Miami Beach for Art Basel. Museum founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. arrived in town in mid-November in time for the opening of A Universe of Things: Micky Wolfson Collects, an exhibition celebrating his decades-long obsession with collecting the rare books, paintings, posters, printed ephemera, furniture, stained glass, sculpture, and decorative art objects that form the basis of the museum’s holdings.

Organized by Micky’s long-time collections development person, Lea Nickless, and curator Shoshana Resnikoff, A Universe of Things was designed to highlight the founder’s life-long quest to find and preserve objects and artifacts that tell us something about the times and people who made, used, and were influenced by them.

To heighten public awareness, images of some of the objects selected for the exhibition were printed on vinyl and adhered to the vertical architectural elements of our historic building’s façade.

In order to convey a sense of the depth and breadth of the museum’s collection and to accommodate a large selection of objects in the galleries, Wolfsonian exhibition designer, Richard Miltner included wall-sized photographic images of our annex storage facility and also specially built casework reminiscent of the original shelving used in our historic building in its former incarnation as the old Washington Storage Company. The exhibit also includes a digital component designed to permit patrons to learn more about the objects on display and their historical timeline.

On the evening of the exhibition opening, VIPs and the public had the opportunity to tour the exhibits before participating in a block party tribute to the founder. Festivities included food truck concessions, music by FIU’s marching band and the Nu Deco Ensemble, lighting displays by Lutron Electronics, Inc. in an air-stream trailer and the museum’s bridge tender’s house, and speeches by city officials, FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg, and, of course, Micky himself.

Art Basel followed quickly on the heels of Micky’s birthday celebrations, and The Wolfsonian Library created a display in our cases celebrating some of the recent acquisitions to our holdings, including a number of items gifted in honor of Micky’s 80^th birthday.

Some of the items showcased included materials donated by Jean S. Sharf from the private library of her late husband and long-time Wolfsonian supporter, Fred. While some pieces highlighted the rise of the Japanese Empire in the early twentieth century, others documented the twilight of the British Empire in the wake of the two world wars.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection

Recent gifts made by Leonard Finger and Lou Miano added to and complemented our holdings related to U.S.-Cuba travel and tourism. In addition to many rare photographs and ephemera donated by Mr. Finger over the years, the Art Basel VIPs had the opportunity to see two rare printed items from his gifts: a 1920s-era guidebook with a cover illustration of the Malecon in Havana, and a bound copy of the Havana Chronicle for the fateful years 1958-1959.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Leonard Finger

Originally published in the Cuban capital, the magazine devoted to leisure travel to the island nation was moved to Miami in the wake of the Castro-led revolution, but continued to promote the tourist trade until relations between the countries further deteriorated.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Leonard Finger

Lou Miano added to our Cuba theme two souvenirs he collected in his travels: one, a program from the Follies Bergere, a burlesque theatre, and the other, a souvenir viewbook from the Tropicana, the most famous nightclub venue in Havana in the 1950s.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Louis Miano

Also on display was a Miami yearbook published for members of the 36^th Street Army Air Base in Miami, Florida gifted by Judith Berson-Levinson. This book, documenting the transition of Miami and Miami Beach from a seasonal vacation destination to an Army Air Forces training center and base during the Second World War, is one of more than a dozen items added to our “Sand In Their Boots” archive given to us year’s ago by that same donor.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Judith Berson-Levinson

Another entire display case was devoted solely to exhibiting some stunning illustrated books and periodicals dating from the Harlem Renaissance.

The case included books of poetry of Countee Cullen illustrated with dust jacket designs and decorations by Charles Cullen.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Historical Design

The cover designs and illustrations of Aaron Douglas were also available for visitors to see.

The display also featured some dust jacket designs by Miguel Covarrubias, the Mexican ethnographer, muralist, illustrator, and caricaturist whose artwork captured the spirit and provided portraits of important African American figures associated with the movement.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Historical Design

These items were part of the most substantial gift made this year to our library by Daniel Morris of Historical Design gallery in New York City. Our librarians are just now finishing up the process of accessioning and starting to catalog the thousands of rare books from this donation.

The final case on display for our Basel visitors included gifts made to The Wolfsonian Library in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s 80^th birthday. These items included a rare invitation gifted by Roger Arvid Anderson to a preview of the buildings and grounds being erected and landscaped in Chicago in anticipation of the opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Roger Arvid Anderson

From our former curator, Marianne Lamonaca, who presently serves as the chief curator and associate director of the Gallery at the Bard Graduate Center in New York, we received and displayed a playful handbook titled: Kritters of the Kitchen Kingdom and How to Make Them, open to a page of a militant suffragette made from an ear of corn!

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Marianne Lamonaca

Another close friend of the founder, Saville Ryan, donated a book to our library in honor of Micky’s birthday, titled Manhattan Oases: New York’s 1932 Speak-Easies.

Always on the hunt for materials about the era (error?) of Prohibition, this book features by caricatures by Al Hirschfeld of the bars, barmen, and patrons of the Big Apple’s secret drinking establishments published a year before the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Saville Ryan

Another Micky friend, Jame Garmey, gifted several rare issues of Stroitel’stvo Moskvy to The Wolfsonian Library in honor of Micky’s birthday as well, helping us to fill in gaps in our run of this important Soviet architectural periodical.

Lastly, there were a few gifts in the case made in honor of Micky’s birthday that highlight the artwork of American illustrators, such as Hugo Gellert, his wife, Livia Cinquegrana, and Rockwell Kent, who put their talents to use in the service of their leftist political causes.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Many of the items on display for Art Basel have been loaded into our digital catalog where they are made globally accessible to those unable to visit our museum library in person.

France’s Overseas Empire on Display

This past Saturday, eighteen French conversation and grammar students from Florida International University arrived at The Wolfsonian for a guided tour of the galleries and a special presentation of French-language materials in the library. The group of Francophiles, organized by Professor Maria Antonieta Garcia, was led by Gaby Ibanez and Saniya Pradhan, the presidents of the FIU French Club and the French Honor Society.

Once the group gathered, we first deconstructed, critically analyzed, and historicized some artifacts representing French colonialism in the fifth and seventh floor galleries. These works of art included a painted plaster maquette for a sculpture created by Arthur Dupagne to adorn the Belgian Congo Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques held in Paris in 1937. The scale model, La barre à mine (Mining bar) depicts an African wearing only a loincloth as he is using a primitive iron bar to break rock. While the mock up celebrates the musculature and physical strength of the native miner (whose hands and feet were deliberately enlarged to emphasize his role as manual laborer), the artist shrunk the head of his subject ever so slightly so as to imply that while the colonial peoples supplied the brawn, the colonizers would need to supply the brain power.

A painting from the same fair hangs on the wall behind this figure depicting colonial pavilions built along the Seine to represent France’s overseas empire. These modern architectural interpretations drew upon the vernacular vocabulary of the indigenous colonial peoples to demonstrate and celebrate France’s super-national dominions. Hundreds of thousands of visitors to the fair would have been exposed to these and other artifacts of colonial propaganda created to justify European colonialism and cloak their political and economic designs under the guise of humanitarian “civilizing” missions.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

A painting from another gallery also generated lots of excitement and discussion, as the students examined a Parisian portrait painted by Anja Decker in 1934. Many colonial troops from Africa were brought to Europe to fight alongside the French in the First World War, and some of them—along with a number of African-Americans remained in France after the war. The student visitors pondered the significance of the title and the depiction of the Strange Couple, and debated whether the artist was sympathetic towards the interracial pair, or was implying something more ambivalent or sinister about the power dynamics of their relationship.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The group made a quick foray into the Art Deco exhibition on our seventh floor gallery to look at a poster designed for the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris that represented a beautiful nude indigenous woman lifting a curtain to reveal herself and the backdrop of a North African city.

After discussing the colonial and gender implications of this poster, the students regrouped in our rare book and special collections library to view a display and presentation of rare materials related to France’s overseas possessions and colonies. Thanks to the generosity of our founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., who resides in Paris for much of the year, the Wolfsonian Library possesses an extraordinarily rich collection of rare books, periodicals, portfolios, pamphlets, postcards, and other printed materials. Many of them document France’s 19^th and 20^th colonial adventures or relate to the representation of their colonies at various world’s fairs.

The library, for example, holds a bound edition of supplements published by Petit Journal during the Exposition universelle celebrations in Paris in 1900. Many of the issues have color chromolithographic illustrations depicting some of the indigenous peoples who were transported to the fair. These natives populated “human zoo” exhibits designed to educate Parisians and other fair-goers of the races, cultural traditions, handicrafts, and natural products brought under France’s global sphere of influence.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The collection holds some important items from the Exposition coloniale de Marseille in 1922, including this poster picturing indigenous women from across the globe intended to represent France’s far-flung colonial empire.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The vast majority of our French colonial collections, however, were published and printed to document the 1931 Exposition coloniale internationale de Paris. The library holds numerous books, portfolios, postcards, pamphlets, souvenir viewbooks, and even a children’s coloring book describing the fair and the importance to the metropole of her far-flung colonies.

Several of the portfolios provided images of a pavilion designed by architects Albert Laprade and Jaussely, and decorated with bas relief designs by Alfred Janniot.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loan

Details of the bas relief sculpture on the side of the building presented the millions of visitors to the fair with images of the flora, fauna, and natural resources of French colonies around the world, as well as exoticized and eroticized images of the native inhabitants.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Loan

The Musée Permanent des Colonies still remains, though it has since been rechristened, Palais de la Porte Dorée. Other buildings representing the indigenous architecture of French colonies were built and positioned in the fairgrounds to reinforce the contrast between native “primitivism” and metropole “modernism.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The temporary and ephemeral examples of native buildings were always intended to give way to the more durable “sophisticated” structures of the Parisians.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

 Perhaps the most interesting image published in a portfolio for the 1931 colonial exposition is a photographic image of a group of indigenous women, presumably brought to the fair to show off their native dress and customs to the visitors. A photographer captured an image of three such women wearing an innovative and beautiful blend of African and Parisian haute culture perhaps as they prepared to leave the fairgrounds for a night on the town.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

We hope our virtual visitors enjoyed their tour as much as our FIU francophile visitors did.

Radicals and Reactionaries: Extremism in America

Earlier this month, twenty-four students enrolled in my America & Movies course focusing on radicalism in America came to The Wolfsonian–Florida International University museum for a presentation of primary source materials about some of the extremists we have been learning about in class. This particular class session was focused on left- and right- wing extremist groups and individuals in the early decades of the 20^th century. The Wolfsonian Library holds an important collection of materials produced by and about the Communist Party U.S.A., the Ku Klux Klan and its splinter group, the Black Legion, as well as works celebrating figures, such as African-American poet, Langston Hughes, or lampooning others, such as publishing magnate, William Randolph Hearst and the “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin.

Four of the students, (Nathalie Mattas, David Santos, Javier Penarredonda, and Marlow Marimon), had elected to participate in a curatorial project on the topic. They had the opportunity to talk to their fellow classmates about how they had formulated their ideas for the installation and made their selection of materials to be exhibited.

In focusing on the ideological battles waged between the left and the right, the students looked at how extremist groups used politically loaded imagery and caricature to recruit new members, to demonize their enemies, and to promote their “cause.” The library holds several books and pamphlets produced by the Ku Klux Klan attacking minorities, immigrants, and Catholics, even as they presented themselves as chivalrous white-robe knights and “guardians of liberty.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Long-term Loan

While Ku Klux Klan membership peaked in the 1920s and was in serious decline in the 1930s, a splinter group known as the Black Legion emerged in the Midwest to carry on the WASPish struggle against immigrants until the secret society’s political corruption and criminal activities came to light. Actor Humphrey Bogart’s Hollywood exposé, Black Legion helped topple the sinister organization.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The class also examined some materials that provided evidence of the Communist Party’s strategies for indoctrinating youth and courting African Americans in their membership drives. In focusing their propaganda efforts on the young, the CPUSA were heeding the advice of their late comrade and leader of the failed Spartacus uprising in Germany in 1919, Karl Liebknecht, who wrote: “He who has the youth has the future.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

The American Communist Party leadership published pamphlets, books, and periodicals aimed at children and young adults with stories they could relate to and also encouraged socially-conscious parents to send them to “young pioneer” summer camps.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s Eightieth Birthday

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

The CPUSA also worked hard to recruit African Americans to the cause during the 1930s. Between 1910 and 1930, two million African Americans had migrated North in search of a better life, but in the wake of the 1929 Stock Market Crash and onset of the Great Depression, racist attitudes had flared up so that Blacks tended to be the “first fired and last rehired.” By 1932, half of the African American population was unemployed, and in New York City many of the achievements of the “Harlem Renaissance” had been erased and property gains by the black middle class had been lost. To demonstrate their sincerity and solidarity with the African American community, the Communists organized the “Upper Harlem Council of the Unemployed” and staged integrated demonstrations and marches aimed at stopping evictions. They were also actively involved in fighting “Jim Crowism,” promoting “Negro” civil rights, and championing Federal anti-lynching legislation; and highlighting the exploitation and plight of poor sharecroppers and tenant farmers facing Ku Klux Klan terror and their own push for “Negro self-determination” in the South.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of the August Mecklem Estate

The Party was also the first to nominate an African-American Vice Presidential candidate, James W. Ford.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s Eightieth Birthday

Attacking the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) leadership as both elitist and subservient to white interests, the CPUSA competed with them for the hearts and minds of the Black intelligentsia as well as the oppressed African American “underclass” of the “Blackbelt.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s Eightieth Birthday

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

Prominent Black intellectuals such as W. E. B. DuBois and the poet Langston Hughes were recruited to the cause. In a collection of works by Hughes published by the Party in 1933, the editor made much of the fact that even as a famous bard and promoter of American poetry was reciting several of Hughes’ poems at a gathering of political elites in the dining room of the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. in 1925, the distinguished poet was in the room, not as a celebrant in that segregated venue, but invisibly clearing tables as a busboy.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s Eightieth Birthday

In an attempt to court conservative Blacks to the cause in the South, the International Labor Defense, the legal arm of the Party, took up the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American youths being “railroaded” in the Alabama courts. In their quest for work, the nine boys had hopped a freight train, only to be hauled off in Scottsboro, Alabama in March 1931, after having gotten into a scuffle with some white hobos. To avoid being charged with vagrancy, two white girls also discovered on the train concocted a story that they had been gang raped by the “brutes.” After narrowly avoiding a lynching, the boys, whose legal defense was a real estate lawyer who encouraged them to plead guilty, were convicted by an all-white jury and all but the youngest sentenced to death. The ILD secured the permission of the parents of the defendants to represent the boys and to demand a retrial, and the Party also organized demonstrations in cities across the globe in support of their clients. As part of their propaganda media campaign, the Party also prepared for publication a lino-block book providing the historical context for the trial lampooning KKK justice in the South.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Great Depression decade became the Party’s “We told you so” moment for their argument that capitalism was on its last legs and Socialism on the ascendancy. It was also a period of unprecedented popularity for the Party and its Popular Front organizations.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca in honor of Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.’s Eightieth Birthday

The unforeseen rise of Fascist and Nazi totalitarian regimes presented the CPUSA with a new challenge and opportunity. Organizing Communist Front organizations like the American League Against War and Fascsim, the Party presented themselves as the most progressive organization in America arrayed against the forces of “social fascism” at home, and fascist dictatorship and military aggression abroad.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of the August Mecklem Estate

William Randolph Hearst, whose media empire controlled a third of the nation’s news outlets, became a target of the labor groups and the left.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchase

Hearst was particularly despised for visiting Adolf Hitler soon after his seizure of power, at which meeting he negotiated a lucrative deal in which he agreed to print Nazi propaganda in his newspapers and help rehabilitate the dictator’s reputation in America. The CPUSA artist Hugo Gellert produced several scathing caricatures of the media mogul.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Other leftist pamphlets attacked Hearst as a Nazi sympathizer, variously depicting him hiding behind the flag and his 100 percent Americanism slogans, as a Nazi rat enemy of labor, and as a vampire bat in league with Hitler.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, purchases

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The American League Against War and Fascism even organized a mock trial of Hearst before a packed house at the Hippodrome in New York City in October 1936.

Other targets of the left included Father Charles Coughlin, the “Radio Priest” who used his national broadcast to 30,000,000 listeners to rake in $50,000 a week during the depression as he attacked the Godless Communists, preached Anti-Semitism, and lauded the fascist regimes of Europe. Gellert published several caricatures of the priest.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

These are but a few examples of the holdings of extremist materials in The Wolfsonian Library and a small sampling of some of the items that will go on display in our next library installation which will open on January 30, 2020.

Cuba Mania Month

Over the period of the last thirty days, Havana, Cuba has been foremost on my mind, as I finished up the final edits of the latest Wolfsonian Library installation, Caricaturas;

…sat for an interview and gave a guided tour of Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer and Caricaturas for Public Television’s Art Loft crew;

…provided a VIP tour of the installations for Emilio Cueto, a leading collector of Cuba ephemera and lender to the Massaguer exhibition;

…promoted the publication of Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction with a talk at Books & Books in Coral Gables;

…provided a public tour of the two installations and a display of Cuban film related posters, lobby cards, and other movie memorabilia in the library, before attending a director-introduced, packed screening of Errol Flynn’s Ghost across the street at O Cinema;

…hosted The Wolf on Wax event for Miami’s Vinyl Social Club and other audiophiles and vintage vinyl enthusiasts, featuring a display of portable record players, vintage record jackets, sheet music covers, photographs, and other ephemera documenting the Cuban music craze from the 1920s through the 1950s;

…and provided a visiting scholar from Italy with access to the Vicki Gold Levi Cuba Collection for her book project focused on Art Deco architecture and design in Havana.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

The latest library installation, Caricaturas, was designed to complement the exhibition in the galleries of the work of Cuban publisher, art director, and world-renowned caricaturist, Conrado Walter Massaguer.

While Caricaturas includes some additional works by Massaguer, it especially celebrates several of his contemporaries in Cuba and Mexico, featuring cartoons by David, Arroyito, Hercar, Xavier Cugat, Covarrubias, and Arias Bernal.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The confluence of so many Cuba-related events caused me to reflect on the connections between Hollywood film, the promotion of Havana as a tourist destination, and the cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba that so influenced the direction of American music and dance culture during the first half of the twentieth century, the subject of today’s post.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

While one should not forget the important influence played by the transmission of African American jazz to the island of Cuba, this post will begin by tracing the movement of Cuban music and dance culture in the opposite direction. While a few intrepid American investors traveled to the island in the aftermath of Cuban independence, (humorously captured in a caricature illustration by Massaguer for the 1909 cover of El Figaro), the first major wave of tourists arrived after the end of the First World War.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The first wave of tourists were attracted to the island by policies at home and by a tourist promotion bill passed by Cuban legislators. Americans with money and leisure time who regularly traveled to Europe were looking for new vacation destinations in the wake of the destruction wrought by the First World War. At the same time, concerns over the precipitous decline in sugar prices caused Cuban politicians to seek to diversify the economy by promoting the development of gambling casinos and concessions as a means of attracting wealthy American tourists to the island. The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provided an added impetus, as the prohibition of the production, transport, and sale of alcoholic beverages encouraged American barmen (and their thirsty customers) to relocate to Cuba.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Numerous sheet music cover illustrations and popular song lyrics from 1919 and 1920 encouraged thirsty Americans to travel to the island where the rum still flowed like water.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

By the mid-1920s, travel writers noted the proliferation of bars, saloons, bodeguitas (corner grocery stores setting up stools and selling drinks), and restaurants serving frozen daiquiris, with one travel writer estimating a staggering 7,000 drinking establishments operating in Havana!

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Hollywood filmmakers documented (and helped promote) the seasonal swell of American socialites heading to Cuba for the winter season. If anyone is curious to know just how much of an incentive that the free flow of alcohol had in encouraging the floodtide of tourists, I would encourage them to see the hilarious Warner Bros. pre-code comedy, Havana Widows. The film stars Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell as a couple of New York chorus girls who travel to the Cuban capital with the aim of getting rich by seducing and suing a rich American millionaire. Not only is their married target a heavy drinker, but their shady lawyer is also either completely inebriated or passed out drunk for the duration of the film!

https://youtu.be/KVFiC4M4ctA

When Joan Blondell returned to Havana with her husband, Dick Powell, on their honeymoon, Massaguer would be on hand to greet them and to scribble down an instantaneous caricature of the Hollywood celebrities.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

If rum and roulette were two of the draws attracting Americans to Cuba in the 1920s, it was the local music and dance that kept them entranced, and which returned with them to the American mainland. The American craze for Cuban music began with the wildly popular song, El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor), which had its American debut on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on Forty-seventh Street, performed by the house orchestra of Havana’s Gran Casino Nacional. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) capitalized on the popularity of The Peanut Vendor by providing a fanciful story of the song’s supposed origins in the musical film The Cuban Love Song, released in December 1931. The film featured a duet version of the song performed by Lupe Velez and Lawrence Tibbett.

https://youtu.be/61HdC26i1tw

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Although the rhythm of El Manisero was a son pregón, it became known in the U.S. as rhumba. The rumba actually began as an urban, Afro-Cuban phenomenon, in which couples danced to percussion in a fast-paced rhythmic frenzy described by outsiders as scandalously seductive. In his 1931 exhibition at the Delphic Studios in New York City, Massaguer paid tribute to the origins of the dance with his pastel and watercolor/gouache drawing, After the Rumba, depicting a half-nude mulata rumbera.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The rumba’s popularity was boosted by two Cuban dancers, René and Estela, who not only performed at the Cuban pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, but who also lent their suave moves and shimmies to a nightclub scene in the popular film, Another Thin Man (1939).

https://youtu.be/qM5R7Ln39Kk

The American appetite for rumba was also whet by the aptly named Hollywood film, Rumba, starring Carol Lombard, George Raft, and Margo.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Released in 1935, it introduced movie audiences to a tamer, Americanized version of the rumba—(a fox trot set to Latin music)—through the story of a dancer (played by Raft) with ambitions of opening his own nightclub in Havana and his romantic encounter with a rich American socialite (played by Lombard).

https://youtu.be/qnEC_Q5n2QI

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Dance studios like Arthur Murray took up the challenge of teaching American audiences the basic steps of the Americanized rhumba, (often spelled with an added “h” to lend it some sophistication), and in later decades did the same for those trying to learn the impossibly complex mambo, and the cha-cha-cha.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

The first tidal wave of American tourism to Havana dried up by 1933 because of the repeal of Prohibition, the worsening of the Great Depression, the violent overthrow of Cuban president Gerardo Machado’s regime, and growing world tensions. Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, however, continued to present an exoticized and glamorized version of the island paradise in a spate of musical comedy films including Havana somewhere in the title.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

The post-WWII musical film, Pan-Americana, built on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policies to promote renewed trade and cultural exchange with our Caribbean and South American neighbors.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The Cuban singer (and original Señor Babalu), Miguelito Valdes made his Hollywood debut in that movie musical, but ultimately lost his title to another Cuban band leader and Hollywood and television star, Desi Arnaz.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

Despite the popularity of Cuba-themed Hollywood films and musicals in the forties, the next flood of American tourists did not take place until after the end of the Korean War and the usurpation of the Cuban presidency by Fulgencio Batista. Many of the films of the fifties set in or about Cuba continued to promote Cuban dance and music, moving from rumba to mambo and the cha-cha-cha. The mambo became so popular in the United States, that it was taken up by Italian American singers, Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney in songs that made the dance charts in 1954.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The director of Rock Around the Clock, Fred F. Sears, also made the film, Cha-Cha-Cha Boom!  This low-budget, music-driven film released in 1956 told the fictitious story of an American talent scout discovering and introducing Cuban band leader, Pérez Prado and his mambo musical stylings to the sophisticated New York audience.

https://youtu.be/fGoLa3zDIRk

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The film noir thriller, Affair in Havana (1957),  is remembered less for its dark murder plot, than for a scene in which a young Celia Cruz made her Hollywood debut.

https://youtu.be/BJtD2RipM9c

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Collection

The American films made towards the close of the decade tended to reflect growing American anxiety and disillusionment with the corruption of the Batista kleptocracy. Actor Errol Flynn, famed for his early swashbuckler and Robin Hood roles, tried to resurrect his flagging career by starring in a gritty film noir set in Havana. In The Big Boodle, Flynn plays an innocent American casino croupier caught up in political intrigue and corruption.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Fortunately, Flynn’s final flop, an Exploit Films production titled Cuban Rebel Girls, is not one for which he is remembered. This low budget cross between a documentary and exploitation film, starred Flynn as himself and introduced his underaged lover as an American girl drawn into support of the cause of Castro’s guerrillas. Partially filmed in the revolutionaries Sierra Nevada mountain encampment, Flynn tried to champion the cause of the underdog revolutionaries and simultaneously to recapture the romanticism of his own Robin Hood roles in real life.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Gaspar Gonzalez’s documentary, Errol Flynn’s Ghost, examines the important cultural role played by Hollywood movies and cinema in the lives of the Habaneros, featuring original interviews, film footage of the city’s many famous movie palaces, while recalling Flynn’s exploits and intrigues with the Cuban revolutionaries. While I would never recommend wasting time watching Flynn’s Cuban Rebel Girls, I would encourage my local readers and film buffs to be sure to catch a screening of Errol Flynn’s Ghost: Hollywood in Havana at the Key West Film Festival in November 2019.