| Director | Tim Robbins |
|---|---|
| Budget | $36 million |
| Box office | $2.9 million |
At the height of the Great Depression, the Federal Theatre Project, led by Hallie Flanagan, brings low-cost theater to millions across the United States. FTP and other projects of the Works Progress Administration face anti-communist criticism and increasing government pressure led by the new House Committee on Un-American Activities.
In New York City, playwright Marc Blitzstein is working on his new musical, The Cradle Will Rock, but lacks the inspiration to finish it. While attending a public protest, he is visited by two imaginary figures representing his late wife and the famed German playwright Bertolt Brecht. They encourage him to make the play more relevant to the times rather than an abstract concept. He eventually finishes the play, and it is greenlit by Flanagan as an FTP production and attached to director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman.
Anti-communist FTP clerk Hazel Huffman convenes a meeting of like-minded WPA employees. Tommy Crickshaw, a ventriloquist with FTP's vaudeville project who resents his assignment to train the untalented duo Sid and Larry, attends the meeting and finds himself attracted to Hazel. Although they grow closer while rehearsing the alarmist testimony Hazel hopes to give to HUAC, Hazel rejects Tommy's advances. Depressed, he oversleeps and wakes to find Sid and Larry performing his routine. Hazel is later called to testify before HUAC, prompting her coworkers to shun her.
Margherita Sarfatti, an envoy of Benito Mussolini's government, visits New York to gain support from American industrialists for Mussolini's war effort. Among her connections are William Randolph Hearst, Nelson Rockefeller, and steel magnate Gray Mathers, whose pro-fascist dealings create tension with his wife, Constance, an enthusiastic patron of the arts and friend of Houseman. Sarfatti connects Rockefeller with Diego Rivera, who is commissioned to paint a mural in the lobby of Rockefeller Center. However, Rivera soon clashes with both Rockefeller and Sarfatti over the mural's communist themes, especially its depiction of Vladimir Lenin.
Following Hazel's HUAC testimony, the WPA faces the threat of losing its budget. Although Flanagan appears before HUAC to give a passionate defense of FTP, the project is forced to cut funding for all FTP productions, lay off thousands of workers, and order all ongoing projects to cease their activities, including The Cradle Will Rock. A now-unemployed Tommy performs a set portraying his ventriloquist dummy as a Communist, before walking off the stage and leaving the dummy behind.
The Cradle Will Rocks opening is cancelled in the wake of the FTP cutbacks, as the actors' union refuses to let them perform without federal approval. Rather than give in to defeat, Welles and Houseman (assisted by a gleeful Constance) set up an improvised performance in a shuttered theater, with Blitzstein as both cast and orchestra. Male lead Aldo Silvano, who struggles to support his family after breaking with his well-to-do parents over their fascist sympathies, reluctantly goes along with the union's decision to avoid losing his job; female lead Olive Stanton must choose between the show and her live-in relationship with successful costar John Adair.
As Blitzstein begins the first song of the performance, the other actors, including Aldo and a now-homeless Olive, suddenly appear in the audience and perform the entire play without setting foot on the stage. As the show ends, the cast and audience break into celebration. Simultaneously, workers destroy Rivera's mural; Tommy shares a bittersweet embrace with a tearful Hazel in his dressing room; and a group of former FTP performers stage a mock funeral procession of Crickshaw's dummy (renamed "Federal Theatre Project"). The procession ends in present-day Times Square, which is lined with billboards advertising Broadway plays.