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| 201 7 From Yiddish Socialism to Jewish Liberalism The Politics and Social Vision of Pins and Needles, 1937–1941 Two months after the ILGWU opened its Broadway review in the refurbished Princess Theater on 39th Street, Brooks Atkinson raved, “Pins and Needles, performed by workers in the garment trades is witty, fresh, and box office.” Noting the “sparkling” music and lyrics of the score, the New York Times theater critic called chief songwriter Harold Rome the “discovery” of the show. For many people in theater and labor, Pins and Needles accomplished what its creators hoped: a triumphant and exuberant expression of workers’ and unions’ place in American politics and culture. Atkinson concluded, “Most of the wit, humor, and sentiment that the review makers have assembled spring logically from the culture of the union garment workers who play it.”1 What the show said about workers’ culture embodied a swiftly changing set of ideas about race, gender, politics, and the labor movement. As a cultural product, Pins and Needles involved a complex combination of losses and gains for union members, especially for those who had embraced mutual culturalism. Atkinson hinted at that change when he praised several numbers written by Harold Rome: “‘Doing the Reactionary ’ and ‘Sing Me a Song of Social Significance’ have done more than anything else to remove the Fannie Brice curse of ‘rewolt’ from the stagecraft of the labor movement.”2 Brice, the comic star of the Ziegfeld follies, was known for her exaggerated Lower East Side Jewish accent. One of her signature skits in the mid-1930s was a satire of the leftist choreographer Martha Graham in which Brice’s character cries out in a Yiddish accent, “Rewolt!” Pins and Needles had no such ethnic signature.3 202 | From Yiddish Socialism to Jewish Liberalism Producing Pins and Needles Less than a year after David Dubinsky hired Louis Schaffer to take over the recreational and cultural activities of the International union’s educational department in 1934, Schaffer focused his energies on an ambitious project to create a theater production company for the New York City labor movement. With Dubinsky’s support, Schaffer brought the plan to the American Federation of Labor convention in 1935. Though a number of unions expressed interest, neither the AFL nor any individual union was willing to commit funds to finance the enterprise.4 Anxious to proceed anyway, the General Executive Board of the ILGWU approved the full financing of Labor Stage Incorporated under the nominal direction of Julius Hochman, manager of the New York City Joint Dress Board and vice president of the ILGWU. Schaffer became the executive director.5 In the fall of 1935, Schaffer rented the Princess Theater on 39th Street and 6th Avenue, a location near Broadway and within the northern edge of Manhattan’s garment district. The playhouse originally seated 499 spectators but was renovated in the summer of 1936 to fit 600 seats, and Schaffer had the upper floors of the theater converted to rehearsal and office space. The Broadway venue was central to Schaffer’s vision: to create a show that would appeal to mass audiences , beyond union members and the working class.6 Schaffer tapped the talents of Harold Rome, a Yale University graduate who had attended law school and studied architecture. Rome had written songs for Gypsy Rose Lee and worked at the Green Mountains resort in the Adirondack Mountains during the summer of 1935.7 His lyrics touched lightly on social issues, and his music evoked the idiom of Tin Pan Alley: melodic, upbeat, and devoid of any specific ethnic or racial markers. Within a year, Rome had created Pins and Needles. The Labor Stage production of Pins and Needles that drew Atkinson’s plaudits opened on Broadway on November 27, 1937. In the original cast, with one or two exceptions, the forty-four actors were all union members who auditioned for the parts. The show, a musical comedy revue that poked fun at conservative politics, was unusually successful, becoming the longestrunning musical in Broadway history until Hellzapoppin eclipsed its record.8 Pins and Needles ran for more than two and a half years on Broadway with three companies, two of which also toured throughout the United States and Canada, and was performed at the White House. In the combined three-anda -half-year run of the Broadway and national tours, Pins and Needles comprised close to fifty skits, most of which had musical numbers. Each show included between nineteen and twenty-two...

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