The run closed April 2, 1938
- Opened
- January 3, 1938
- Closed
- April 2, 1938
- Performances
- 108
- Previews
- —
- Theatre
- Windsor Theatre
Of the 1,388 productions we hold that opened in the 1930s and record a performance count, this is the 253rd longest. That is a rank within what we hold, not within everything that was staged.
Other stagings of The Cradle Will Rock 1 more that season
| 1947 | Mansfield Theatre Revival · Howard Da Silva | 34 perf. |
Who was in it44 named
John Adair
Guido Alexander
Howard Bird
Billy Bodkins
Helen Carter
Robert Clark
Blanche Collins
Peggy Coudray
Alma Dixon
Abner Dorsey
George Fairchild
Dulce Fox
Edward Fuller
Warren Goddard
Lillia Hallums
Josephine Heathman
Edward Hemmer
Robert Hopkins
Larri Lauria
Frank Marvel
Jack Mealy
Geoffrey Powers
Ralph Ramson
Marian Rudley
Lucille Schly
E Sidney
George Smithfield
Bert Weston
Huntley Weston
Hansford Wilson
Robert Worth
Robert Fransworth
Maynard Holmes
Ralph Macbane
Charles Niemeyer
Le Roi Operti
Jules Schmidt
7 of these 44 names have a person record behind them and link to one. The other 37 are set from the identifier in the cast list, which is a slug of the name — so hyphens and full stops are lost and a few come out wrong. We hold nothing else about them. Nobody here is matched to a character: the cast list records who was in the company and not what they played.
Creative team
- Director
- Orson Welles
- Producer
- Sam H. Grisman
A producer is one string on this record, however many people or companies it names. Directors and choreographers are held both as text and as identifiers; where an identifier exists the name links to a page.
Around this production
- 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. Broadway Musicals Show By Show Seventh Edition Stanley Green Cary Ginell, p. 106
- 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. At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 238
- The Cradle Will Rock.The, 191, 220, 224 At This Theatre 100 Years of Broadway Shows Stories and Botto Louis Viagas Rober, p. 361
- 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… Broadway Its History People and Places An Encyclopedia Bloom Ken 1949 2nd Ed New, p. 184
- 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. Broadway Musicals the 101 Greatest Shows of All Time Bloom Ken 1949 Vlastnik Fra, p. 97
Passages naming this production, found by keyword across 178 books. Where it turns up in the literature, not curated notes about it.
What this page does not know
- No photograph of this staging. 48 of 13,459 productions hold one.
- No character names. We can say who was in the company and not who they played.
- No recording is held for The Cradle Will Rock at all.
- Reviews, box office, running order, understudies and designers: none of it is held for any production.