KW: ... was the Federal Theatre Project. That was the very beginning. So there's really a connection.
SN: We were the nuns, weren't we?
SN: I didn't go to college. This is where I learned about life and art and all kinds of important vital things. You know, we carried on a struggle for our art.
PB: Including the whole political scene and everything else. This is where we learned about life as it is in this country.
SN: Also, we were in a way, the women were, you know, feminists. We were tearing down old traditions, we were asserting ourselves in all kinds of ways as artists and as human beings. So it was—and we learned all kinds of—we were involved not only in dance but in the other things, the political, and organizational things. I mean, who—that I should walk on a picket line. I remember the first time I did. Well, it wasn't for WPA (Works Progress Administration) because at that time things were happening in Europe, too. Hitler was beginning to make himself known.
SN: Yeah. So it was all at that time.
PB: She wasn't born yet. She's knowledgeable.
KW: No, I wasn’t born yet but—
PB: We were made aware of what was really going on in the world and what was really underneath it all, the causes of what was happening in the world.
SN: And we believed in what we were doing, too, with all our hearts.
SN: Even though we only made $23.86 a week, that was a fortune! I mean, for that short time. I guess we could take some dance lessons other than—did you ever hear of the State School that existed before?
SN: It preceded the WPA and that was a place where people could go, people like us could go and take dance lessons — we were interested in dance.
SN: Ten cents. And everything, such an enormous variety of dance: ballet—
SN: It must have been federal funding and also state.
KW: Maybe it was CWA (Civil Works Administration) or something.
SN: I don't know what the initials were - It was called the State School so maybe it was just state and city funds. We're not sure.
PB: It was called the State School.
SN: But we ran from one class to another I remember for a while.
PB: That's right, we ran from one class to another.
SN: And after that, of course, it was inevitable that the Dance Project should appear. First the Federal Theatre must have happened. Do you know? I mean, you probably are —
KW: Actually I was going to ask you because sometimes you see references to the Federal Dance Project, like a fifth art project in addition to the theatre, the writers, the artists—
PB: The theatre was already in existence.
KW: Right. So this was maybe a sub section or division of the—
PB: This is like we had. They had a Children's Theatre, they had a Harlem Theatre, they had different theatres, so there was a Dance Theatre.
KW: But probably that wasn't the first thing to get set up. Probably —
PB: It wasn't. We had to push very hard for it.
KW: You knew about the other, the regular theatre?
KW: Well, how did you go about pushing?
PB: We had meetings with Hallie Flanagan. We had meetings with —
SN: She probably called them. She wanted them.
PB: We had picket lines. We had—we pushed in every direction that we could and had meetings with everybody that was important at the time that was connected with —
SN: Including Don Oscar Becque, who was the first —
PB: Including Don Oscar Becque.
SN: Do you have any material on him?
KW: There maybe some in the research files. We see his name, of course, and he, you know, participated within —
SN: He was a friend of Hallie Flanagan.
SN: And she wanted him to have the job. I mean, I guess, and he wanted—
KW: Of running the Dance Project -
SN: — it in New York in New York City. And how long he was there I don't remember.
KW: He did do seme work as an administrator, I don't think much though.
PB: He didn't do very much on it.
SN: But he was the administrator for the first—what? Year and a half or two?
PB: I don’t remember how long.
SN: Because I worked for him. He wanted to do choreography, too, and he chose me to be in his group when I got on. I think I came in the second wave after Tamiris and Charles had put on this very successful program, a double bill.
PB: That's one thing that I have.
SN: — which was smashing, excellent,
PB: That’s the only thing that I have. You see, this was not in —
KW: I think I have a copy of it but I think that was May of 1937. And then I had a note that said it went into repertory the next spring in 1938. It, I guess, got repeated somewhere or something. Is that right?
SN: Well, these things traveled around. According to what I have here—
PB: This must have been rehearsal for one of the scenes.
KW: Now you were both in Candide, right?
SN: I was not, No. No, Candide was done during the first year that it was set up. And I at that time was dancing in Florida and Cuba. So I came back to New York and found out what was happening. You know, it happened while I was gone, all of a sudden.
PB: It must have been early in 1936 that the Dance Theatre came into being.
KW: At that time, dancing already?
PB: Yes, I was in it from the beginning.
KW: Did you think it was difficult to get it started initially? I mean, were there
SN: There was never enough money, that's what. The money had to be allocated
PB: There wasn't enough money and there wasn't enough interest in dance.
SN: That was sort of a plaything on the side, you know.
KW: Well, no one had the reputation then that they now have.
PB: Not really inportant, nothing of it was very important.
SN: Well, Doris Humphrey when she did a lecture demonstration Would always say that in the minds of serious people who had regard for the theatre and music etcetera, dance was equivalent to basket weaving. Dance and basket weaving or in the encyclopedia or some place, a very minor art.
PB: Something on the side that wasn't very inportant.
KW: Well, where was Tamiris at this time? Was she making a name for herself with her own company?
PB: No, but? she was with it from the beginning, too.
SN: Yeah, but she had a reputation before.
PB: And she had her own company, sure.
KW: My impression was, and this might be wrong, that people like Humphrey and Weidman and Tamiris.
KW: Yeah, But I don't know if Graham ever did anything for the WPA but the other three did. And my inpression was that they weren't really relief workers or anything like that.
SN: They were invited to come.
KW: Yeah, they were invited to sort of lead something or contribute. And then dancers —
PB: They were the prominent names in the dance field. I'm sure that Martha Graham must have been approached, I imagine. But she had her own way to go and she didn't come in on it.
SN: Well, Doris didn't right away either.
PB: No. Charles did right away.
PB: And then Doris came in afterwards.
KW: They didn't always work as a team, in other words.
SN: Oh, no, Charles did his own work. Even when they worked together on concert programs, he did his own works. And then, of course, she did those huge works and what she did on WPA was "With My Red Fires." And there's somebody in Los Angeles, Eva Desca Garnet. Has that name appeared anywhere?
KW: I've seen her name, probably in playbills.
SN: Eva Desca was Doris's assistant and Doris came on the project just, I guess, the third or fourth year. How long did the Dance Project exist?
KW: I was gonna say — I wasn't sure when it started. But if it was 1937—
SN: You don't have those dates?
KW: Well, for the Dance Project as a separate entity, no. But the whole thing ended in 1939, that I know.
PB: Maybe that's when the Dance ended.
KW: Okay. So then it was two years.
KW: You see, the whole Theatre Project didn't start until the summer of 1935.
PB: That's right and the Dance started in 1936.
KW: Oh, 1936, okay. I thought you said 1937.
PB: Because this program was when? When was this program?
KW: I copied down from the production bulletin. I have May 1937.
PB: 1937. But you see, long before that, dancers were sorted into different conpanies and rehearsals begun. I know it started in 1936.
KW: You're right. This is a chart that we've made up of all the dance productions we found mention of and the first ones are in the sunnier of 1936, under Don Oscar Becque.
SN: And you have Arthur Mahoney on that?
PB: Yeah, that's right. Remember he taught ballet?
SN: He did a production that I was in. I was in three things that never saw the light of day.
KW: That's why I had trouble finding credits for you.
SN: That's why when "With My Red Fires" came on, I left the project. I couldn't stand it any longer.
PB: Adelante, Trojan Women, Candide. What else? Well, those three were on, you know — KW: Those were the ones I found credits for.
SN: And I rehearsed with Don Oscar Becque, I rehearsed with Arthur Mahoney, which was a marvelous experience, and also Felicia Sorel and what was his name, do you know who? These two people, he was way—I mean, it was he who was inportant, not she. And we rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed and nothing ever came of it.
KW: That was before "With My Red Fires?"
SN: Before "With My Red Fires," yeah. And then along came Doris and I remember going to one or two rehearsals and my heart wasn't in it any more. I didn't, I just —
KW: Because so many of them had not been put on?
SN: Yeah. Well, and this was so many people and I just didn't want to get lost in that —
SN: Yeah. And that was a big production. Did that see the lighted stage? Was that produced?
KW: I've seen references to it. I didn't think it was ever a theatre. I thought it was Tamiris' group itself.
SN: No, that was Doris Humphrey. She was reproducing a work that she had —
PB: I don't think that ever saw the lighted stage.
SN: It was not an original piece for the Federal —
PB: No, she had done it with her, own group.
KW: Well, I know I've read about it but —
SN: She may have done that on her own. You see, that had been performed —
KW: Oh, here we go. This is a program that's loosely called "Hunphrey-Weidman Program: Suite in F, including Race of Life, To the Dance, and With My Red Fires." And this has — it's the beginning of 1939, January 1939.
KW: It has "January 3O - February 4," a short run.
SN: It doesn't give the name of the theatre, does it?
SN: But I'll tell you what I performed in, if you're interested in this.
SN: There was a little offshoot — I mean, it was within the Dance Project — called the Young Choreographers Group. Did you come across this?
KW: I've read that name, yeah.
SN: And I was in a pool, I was placed in a pool for a while, which made me available to several Young Choreographers, so-called, who were Nadia Chilkovsky, Bill Matons, I think Boger Pryor Dodge and I know Mura Dehn. So these were the ones I knew of and I performed with all of them, with Bill and with Nadia and with Mura Dehn, And these programs took place in the Brooklyn Museum and in, I don't know, all kinds of smaller auditoriums and stages. And I have some programs with that.
KW: That was simultaneous to, that was at the same time?
SN: Dance Project, yes. But the Young Choreographers were given a chance to do their own works and they were supposedly doing original works. They were being given a chance to — the other people, I think, those who came on, like Helen, she had done that piece before, hadn't she?
SN: The How Long Brethren, She did that, she choreographed that for that. Well, Charles, of course, had done Candide before he came on the Project. That was from his repertoire and Doris, too. And Arthur Mahoney, I don't know what he was doing. We were working on some balletic thing. I wish I could think of Felicia Sorel's partner. You know who.
KW: All right. Here was a Federal Theatre production. "Folk Dances of All
Nations: The Little Mermaid, Mother Goose On Parade by Lilly Mehlmann and Roger Pryor Dodge and Nadia Chilkovsky." That's one that they did. And there's another one that’s Gluck Sandor somewhere. There. The Eternal Prodigal.
SN: That’s the one I was in, yes. That's the one when I had the part of a prostitute or something, I don't know.
PB: Oh, yeah. Doesn't that ring bells?
KW: That was late 1936, early 1937, Yes, 23 performances.
KW: Gluck Sandor, The Eternal —
SN: Had performances? Then he must have done — I don’t know. I know I didn't get to perform.
PB: What is this supposed to be?
KW: That’s the dates when we know that they ran.
SN: They ran simultaneously. It was one program.
KW: Yeah and this, I think, means repertory. In other words, that might have been the first and then later on intermittently over a repertory period or something, I don’t know how they dated them.
PB: Could be ran for several months.
KW: Yeah, That one was one of the most popular.
PB: I’ll never forget one time—you remember the rape scene in Candide?
PB: Where the soldiers turn all the women inside down with their legs up and they rape them and they roll off the stage together. Well, the soldier who was supposed to rape me, one night was out. And there I was, the lone person (laugh) and I had to improvise. There was a lot of struggling going on, you know, and I improvised running from one to the other, and trying to drag off — but it was funny that they didn’t notice it before that he wasn't there.
SN: You mean he didn't notify anybody? You mean all of a sudden you were on stage without a man?
PB: That's right, he didn’t show up. It was just one scene where some group of soldiers —
SN: So you found yourself completely —
PB: — unprepared for this. So I had to improvise. (Laugh)
SN: Like me with Danny Nagrin the other night. You don't know Daniel, but I had an experience last week that was —
PB: Oh, that was a beautiful —
SN: That was a beautiful experience. Daniel is on the college circuit now, you know, and he does a one-man show, so to speak.
SN: Yeah and he is very extraordinary because no dancer is dancing alone or hasn't for years. It's a company, you know, the company. And he's been doing solo concerts. He does one called jazz something. I have to get the program, I've got to show you. In a way it's being boastful but on the other hand, it —
PB: That's not being boastful. It's telling things that have happened.
SN: The reason I'm telling you about it, you see he was here last week, Daniel. And this is me, I, I don't know which is correct. "Mr. Nagrin thanks you very much." We danced together when he was just starting out in his career before he met Tamiris. Oh, I was his partner when he met Tamiris. That was the second sunmer at Unity House, the summer theatre. And he had never known anything about jazz and I had been introduced to jazz, to the jazz idiom. In those years, it was something very exotic and controversial.
KW: In the thirties or forties?
SN: It was in the thirties, just at the time of the Dance Project, by Roger Pryor Dodge and Arthur Mahoney. They both and Arthur Mahoney used jazz in his concerts and it was something exotic. So Daniel and I did a jazz dancetogether that summer and we did it in the show and we used to go up to Harlem.And in this program he talks about it. He acknowledges, he makes acknowledgement to me, which I think is very generous and wonderful. This Friday night I was in the theatre at Schoenberg, which is a smaller house. He does an intimate thing because he talks. And he said, "My friend, Susie, I think she's in the theatre. I'm not sure. Are you there?" and the lights came up and I grabbed my husband's hand. I said, "What is he doing?" I had seen him a few nights before. We have a dancers' get-together. Anyway, he invited me to come up on stage and dance with him. He does a history of jazz in the first part of this program, starting with a charming cakewalk.And he talks about the cakewalk and its origins. Then he did a Charleston, talks about that. He had some interesting theories about women and the emancipation of women after the First World War. And he asked questions of the audience and then the next thing was the Lindy Hop, which was at the timethat I was dancing jazz. And I was a jitterbug and I mastered it very well, so I got up and he said to me,"This might be a bomb."And I said, "Yes, it might very well be."He said, "Do you want to do it?" We're talking on the stage.I took off my — I had a coat and I was wearing the kind of a costume I could dance in, I happened that night to be wearing a pair of gum-soled, comfortable shoes. He said, "Do you want to do it?"I said, "Yes, I love to dance." And it was a sensation. I don't remember what happened. I mean, I was into this thing and I love to improvise. Improvising has always been easy for me, not that—we were just improvising together, you know. It wasn't a set dance. And the house came down.
SN: So that is like tying the thread —
SN: Yes, the thread that runs through ray life and here you are. Anyway, to get back to —
KW: Well, one thing I'd like to know just briefly from each of you is just a little chronology of how you — what your development was up to when you got in the Federal Dance Project. And, you know, don't be afraid to interrupt each other or take turns, or whatever but I'd just like to get both of you.
SN: You mean how Paula was a dancer and I was a dancer?
KW: Well, yeah, how you got interested in it, what you were doing before and how you, you know, fell into this at that time.
SN: Well, I'll tell you. When I got out of high school — you mean, this is a personal account? You want a personal account of my life?
KW: I'd like to know before and after as well as during.
SN: Okay, I'll tell you what I did, I, when I got out of high school, having studied at the Chester Hale School — now Chester Hale Dancers were being — you see, this was at the time — well, I'm going to backtrack a little bit. When I was 16, there were chorus dancers, chorus lines and chorus dancers in vaudeville. And I went to study with a woman who many years later became the ballet teacher that all the modern dancers went to. But at the time I was 16 she happened to be teaching —- she was the ballet mistress for the Chester Hale Dancers who provided the dance for the Capitol Theatre. They had four-a-day vaudeville shows. You've heard of "four-a-days?"
SN: I was not in the Capitol Theatre in New York but I went out on the road in three different shows for, I think it was 10 weeks each time, for a whole year. I was a chorus girl and it was fun. I liked doing it and it was a show that was built around an idea. In one they used Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. We did three dances, but we were chorus girls, there were 16. All right, that was how I started. Then I was living with my mother, she didn't want me to go out on the road any more. So there was an ad in the paper for dancers for a stadium concert, the Lewisohn Stadium in New York and that was Edwin Strawbridge, He was one of the concert dancers. Do you know that name?
SN: Second string, The inportant dancers at that time, even when I was young, were Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, Then anybody under that, Tamiris and Strawbridge and even Hanya Holm was not — I mean, she was there already, wasn't she? And anybody else, Esther Hunger and the whole string — I mean, there were lots and lots of dancers, soloists and so on, but they were all second string. These were first and of course on top was Ruth St. Denis somewhere. Well anyway — I’m stringing it out too long.
SN: But I had had some modern dancing when I was a little girl and I went to audition anyway. And there were ballet people from the Metropolitan Opera Company. There was no ballet in this country at that time really, not to speak of, no companies. And I auditioned. Anyway, he gave us a movement— do you dance, are you a dancer?
KW: I've just started studying.
SN: Oh Well, it’s a body roll. I don't know what else it's called. It'sthis way. [demonstrates] And we did it over and over again because he was doing a dance, Dance Of the Hours. Do you know that one?
SN: Anyway, I guess I did it very well but I couldn't move for a whole week after that, every muscle — it's supposed to be an exercise that uses every muscle in the body. It's used now in physical fitness and so on. At any rate, I danced in this thing. Pauline Koner was the soloist. Do you know that name, Pauline Koner?
SN: She's still — she just got a very sizable grant to do a piece of choreography now. But she’s in her mid-sixties, I guess. So that was my introduction to modern dance. Well then, after that — just at this time modem dance became very "in," very "mod." All the Broadway shows were using modem dance. So after that, I was in a Shubert follies with Fanny Brice and a whole — I mean I've got the programs. Anyway, this was Fanny Brice. We came in under Sarah Mildred Strauss, 16 modem dancers. We were exotic dancers and we were thebackground for their mood, atmosphere kinds of dances, you know. We opened on Broadway and it was an exciting experience for us. But when they started cutting down, which they do with huge — they had a cast of 100 or more, I think. Because with us they had the chorus dancers and they had the showgirls, you know, six feet tall with the plumes and everything, the whole thing. It was one of those elaborate Broadway glitter shows, the last of the Follies with Fanny Brice.
KW: When would this have been? Early thirties?
SN: Where's my program? Yeah. I've got it upstairs. Then after that I was in a Theatre Guild show on Broadway that used special modem dance group with Esther Junger. Esther Junger was a modem dancer . She—Charles was doing choreography for shows. He did Tonight at Eight-Forty with Esther Junger and then I went out on the road. Milton Berle was the star and Jimmy Savo in Parade, a Theatre Guild thing. This was during the Depression and we were doing material that was anti-capitalist, you know. And the theatre was full of rich people, you know, this kind of inconsistency. Well, they closed it up after seven weeks because that was the subscription season and they had to keep it running. And then they closed it up because it was too much. This was all Depression. I was in a Leonard Billman show that Edwin Strawbridge did the dances for, Lili, Eva Desca and I. Lili Mann, who was on the Dance Project, and Eva and I were in that and that didn't run very long. Then I got a job — oh, well, there were things in between I can't remember — but I got a job to go to Miami Beach for the winter season in a nightclub called Villa Venice that was run by a bigtime racketeer from Chicago. And also modem dance. They had chorus girls and they had showgirls and nude dancers and the whole works. But we were modem dancers. We were a group of eight, four boys, in quotes, and four girls, in quotes, and my friend, Eva Desca, and I had some duets together. We were exotic dancers. And then she came here and went to study at Bennington with Doris and Charles. Bennington was just opening, I think. And I continued; I went to Cuba. I had a most fabulous experience of my life. In Havana that was a different kind of a thing. That was political because there was an underground and there were young people who were being shot down in the streets. The big American hotel was closed down and well, it was very interesting. I came back to New York and discovered that there was a Dance Project. I went to visit my friend, Lili Mann. She was living by herself. She'd left home, which was Brooklyn. And so I found out how you did it. There was a certain procedure. You left home if you wanted a job and you went on relief. And you joined the Unemployed Council, which was an organization that was made up of the unemployed. They organized all the picket lines and the whole strategy.
KW: Now, what were you picketing?
SN: Oh, to open up the Project for more jobs for dancers. I don't know how many dancers were on in the first group.
SN: Not only that but already they were threatening to close down Candide and HowLong Brethren before I ever got on it, And that was the all-night sit-in. I remember that we — the word got out. You know, all of this was like a war campaign. There was the Council and there were small groups and, you know, when an edict came out that they were going to slash the funds, that meant they were closing down. Frcm the very beginning, they built it and then it was constantly threatened.
PB: Do you remember that all-night sit-in?
SN: Yeah. We were told to come and see Candide and How Long Brethren and it was a theatre on top of a theatre.
PB: Do you know who arranged that?
PB: Sonya and I. We approached Charles. You remember Charles was with us all night?
PB: We approached Charles and told him what our plight was and asked him to join us.
SN: Well, his plight — oh, well, yeah. He was dancing in it, too. He wanted it.
SN: I think his heart was with it, yeah.
KW: This was especially for the Dance Project?
PB: Yes. And they did, a large part of the audience, do you remember?
PB: And, of course, there were photographers. Something had leaked out that something was going to happen and there were photographers. And somebody — they didn't allow people in or out after that. It was roped off by the police, but samebody got through with sandwiches and coffee and brought food in to us.
SN: And that’s this picture. This was that night. Well, did you all get dressed?Yeah, you must have gotten dressed.
SN: You did? The sit-in and — I don't know whether this was the night. This may have been another one. We did a lot of them. I don't know whether that was the night. It doesn't say.
KW: Well, did you have many sit-ins?
SN: Many, oh, yes because these projects were constantly being threatened. We wanted more and they wanted less.
KW: Did you have contact with the Workers' Alliance? Were you in with that?
PB: Well, the Workers' Alliance was really the union that represented the WPA. workers.
KW: Yeah, that's right. Because I know they were quite active in New York on and off. They wouldn't particularly go to the Dance Project, let's say, but they were always involved in sit-ins.
SN: Maybe we were members of it. Were we members of the Workers' Alliance?
PB: I was a member of the Workers' Alliance.
SN: Oh, then I must have been, too.
PB: As a matter of fact, at the end of this, I'll tell you a story.
SN: Well, so that's how I got into the Dance Project and I was frustrated. Ihung around for about a year and a half and then I took off for California.
KW: Until the end? I mean, you stayed with it?
SN: I didn't stay 'til the end, no. When "With My Red Fires" was my next assignment, I didn't want any part of it. I wanted to dance, I wanted to perform.
KW: Well, it doesn't sound like you had any trouble getting work even then though.I mean, perhaps you didn't get paid much but—
SN: No, I was lucky. No, no, no, we did have theatre jobs and Lil, too. I mean -—I was lucky, I wasn't a real show type but it was a time in the history of modern dance that they were using dancers like us.
SN: I was. Oh, well. So I knew people who got me jobs.
KW: What did modern dance mean in those days? What did it consist of? I mean,it was a new thing.
PB: You mean the type of movement?
KW: Yeah. How was it different?
PB: Well, it was the break away from the ballet, the first off-toe.
PB: Then there was the school of dance called "interpretive," which was not like what we did at all.
SN: That's what I studied when I was a little girl. I studied interpretive dance.That was Isadora Duncan though.
PB: But I think what we did was much more basic to the human emotion, to the human feeling, to the human experience.
KW: Was it most often done in groups, would you say, with maybe a leader?
SN: You see, here was the Young Choreographers, the group which I —
KW: You speak of exotic themes. Does that mean you borrowed or got a lot ofmaterial from other cultures?
SN: No, we were dancing about very immediate things.
PB: Strictly American culture.
SN: We were like the — well, the plays that were taking place. We were tryingto dance about what was going on around us. That's what was different fromthe old traditional dance, which was still doing fairy tales.
KW: So your background up to that point?
PB: Is very different. My original interest was in the theatre as acting and as a child and I mean really a child from the age of about seven to the age of about 10 — I was in the Jewish theatre playing boys’ and girls' parts both.
KW: By Jewish you mean Yiddish?
PB: The Yiddish theatre, that’s right, doing all the dramatic children's parts.And then I got too big to play children's parts. Also, economically I had to go to work at a very early age and this left me not very happy. When I was 14 or so I joined Maurice Schwartz who was a very famous name in the Yiddish theatre. And at that time Paul Mini was there and his real name, which is Muni Weisenfreund. And I was with him for about two seasons doing small parts because he had his regulars and I was a kid. I was only 14 or 15.
KW: That must be Thomashevsky.
SN: Oh, my, she knows the names.
PB: I'll tell you about Thomashevsky. I was doing the children's parts. TheYiddish theatre ran untilThomashevsky wanted to take me on the road with him.
PB: When I was about nine years old but that would have meant taking me out of school and my mother wouldn't let me. But that was my connection, because I played with Thomashevsky when I was a kid. I played with most of the important Yiddish actors at that time as a kid.
KW: Baruch Lumet? Sidney Lumet's father, Baruch? Baruch Lumet.
SN: I was in a Yiddish thing with Molly Picon with some of the oldtimers but I don't know that name.continued and the company broke up after about a year or a year and a half.I think people went their ways, they got different jobs and things.Then I started looking around for another class and by this time MarthaGraham was active. This was in the twenties, still in the twenties.
KW: I was going to say she started really developing around the late twenties,I thought.
PB: So in 1928, I think it was, I started taking one class a week, an hour aweek, with Martha Graham. And I remember I saved my lunch money. I had an apple and they used to have those old five-cent boxes of raisins, you know. This was my lunch so I could save my money to take a lesson.
SN: Sure, we used to — a luxury was that Chock Full of Nuts for a dime, those fabulous sandwiches with a drink—
SN: — that was a nickel, I think, or maybe the whole thing was 20 cents. Andwe used to walk 20 blocks for a nickel. Would you believe it?
KW: I can believe it really. I would do it.
PB: That was when I decided that was what I really wanted to do.
KW: How was Martha Graham as a teacher?
PB: Oh, you know, when she walked into the room, she was the Presence.
PB: Everybody was very much in awe of her.
SN: They have a conflict about her as a teacher. I’ve heard people say thatshe’s not a good teacher.
KW: I would think she'd be very dominant.
SN: Nobody quite understood what she was doing.
PB: - everything she did was so startling, was so different, was so vital, was so —
SN: Oh, yes, we loved her. Whether we understood her or not, she was tremendous. She was tremendous and she still is.
KW: Did either of you know a woman named Lillian Shapero?
KW: I interviewed her in New York.
SN: She did the dances for the Molly Picon show that I was in. She was in Martha's company. She was one of the earliest in Martha's company. But she was never on Federal Theatre, was she? In the Dance Project?
KW: She choreographed one production of a Yiddish thing, We Live and Laugh it was called.
KW: Well, it was more within, I guess, the Yiddish group, but it had dance in it.We Liye and Laugh is what it was called and that was her —
PB: Qh, you mean there was a Yiddish section in the Federal Theatre?
SN: There probably was Italian, too.
KW: Probably. Probably less. The Yiddish was big and there was a German group an there was
PB: There was a Negro group, too.
SN: A lot of it. I'm looking through-
PB: Do you know that there was a Jewish Negro group?
PB: There was a Jewish Negro group.
SN: You mean they did plays in Yiddish? And they were black?
PB: Yes, and they were black. And I’ll tell you how I found out about that.It was very embarrassing. When the projects finally closed or were closing and people were being let go right and left —
PB: — I got an idea, I got a bee in my bonnet that if we pooled our money, we could eat longer. You know, it would stretch further and feed more peopleand the idea expanded and expanded in my mind and I decided to open a Pink-Slip Kitchen. This is where the Workers' Alliance comes in. Do you remember Ella Driscoll? I got her to help me.
SN: The name is absolutely as if I could look at it, but I don't know what she looks like.
PB: And do you remember Hilda Sheldon?
PB: Her brother was on the Writers' Project. So I got ahold of him to do some publicity. And we went to one of the Workers' headquarters in the Forties, you know the different, like the Ukranian Workers, the Russian Workers. You know, they all had their own union headquarters and they always had a kitchen in it. And I made arrangements with them—I did this all by myself. I made arrangements with than to have certain hours because their prime members usedthe place, certain hours for us. Now, Hilda's brother did a very good job on publicity and for the opening of that kitchen we had Leif Erickson, we had Vera Zorina. Tamiris poured the first bowl of soup and we fed a lot of the people who had just been let go not only from the Dance Theatre but from all the projects, you know from the art projects.
KW: Right. Anybody in WPA who was—
EB: Yeah. And this was so successful—
PB: The Pink-Slip Kitchen. — that it grew. We finally got a taxi driver who was very sympathetic and a cook from the Cafeteria Workers' Union who joined us. And the Workers' Alliance when they found out about this, they wanted in on it. So they typed up credentials on official stationery they gave me so that I could get food free to feed people.
KW: Where would you get it from?
PB: This is it. So at 5:30 in the morning, every morning, the taxi driver would pick me up, We'd go down to the market, you know the big market. What do you call it again?
SN: No, no, no. These were the wholesale markets in the middle of the night.
PB: Fulton Street Market or whatever it was. And we would get bread, we would get everything. And we'd come back and according to what we had that day, we would prepare it. Well, Tony did the cooking, he was the cook.
PB: He was from the Cafeteria Workers' Union but he served, washed dishes, did everything, you know.
SN: Was the Dance Project still alive?
PB: I was still on it. I was on it ’til the very end. There were very few left by this time but I was still on it. Now, while this was going on, we decided to try to include more people. So what we did was that those who were working would contribute $1.00 so that they could eat and it would give 10 meals to people who were out of work, I mean the printed-up tickets, we gave out tickets for the meals. And this ran very well for a long time.
KW: Like how long? Do you know?
PB: Well, it was the beginning of 1939 because we could see the handwriting on the wall then. It ran all through 1939.
KW: Even after the WPA closed?
PB: Yes, and into 1940, Now I remember one day semething very funny happened. While I was out with Tony, semebody gave us live chickens -— I mean with the taxi driver, not with Tony - gave us live chickens. And here we come back with five live chickens. What on earth are we going to do with them? Who's going to kill them? Certainly not I and the cook said, "No, don't look at me. I'm not going to kill them." Finally Tony and I went out, and the taxidriver killed them.
SN: Dead? Oh God, don't tell me. I mean, close the book.
PB: And that day I didn't eat there. (Laugh) I couldn't, I just couldn't after seeing those chickens running around in this hall. So it lasted that long and then people, of course, began to drift away and look for jobs because they had been out of work for seme time.
KW: But that's interesting that it was that late because, you know, Congress wassaying by that time when they were trying to close the Project, "Well,unemployment is way down and there's no problem any more." But as late as1939 or 1940, to have that. That's very interesting.
PB: So that was a very interesting part of my life, too.
SN: The war hadn't started yet and so the machinery that produced jobs and so on hadn't gone —
PB: You see, by that time in the forties we were already doing things for Britain.We were already creating all kinds of war machines for Britain, for theAllies, although we weren't in it.
KW: Although probably even at that point still a much smaller scale than was to come.
PB: Yes, on a smaller scale but it developed from there on because in 1940—you see, when the Project ended, when the Project finally closed, I wasn'tlet out. I was transferred to the Art Project.
KW: Now what did you do there then?
PB: Well, I could type so I was transferred.
KW: Do you know if they tried to do that with most people from the Theatre Project?
PB: No, most people were let out.
PB: Most people were let out. Most people were completely let out.
PB: I actually believe they were. It's true.
SN: They were gonna keep her satisfied or else God knows what.
PB: I was very fiery in those days.
KW: It really sounds like it, no kidding.
SN: You wouldn't believe it. She was very sweet and soft-spoken and gentle, withit all, You know, you didn't come off as one of these fire-eating revolutionaries.
KW: But a commitment underneath.
KW: I take it you met there on the Project.
SN: We lived together. That's how far back we go. Now our lives have been separated for all these years, Well, Paula has been out in California and we've seen each other once in a very blue moon, But here we are now, living side by side in Leisure World.
KW: Dancing? Where do you dance?
SN: Well, we have folk dancing here.
PB: The reason I know about this aiming so early is because I met my husband there on the Art Project . He was an art teacher and they approached himbecause of the type of work he did, to go to Dayton, Ohio to Wright Field.
KW: Oh, yeah, Wright-Patterson.
PB: That's right, Wright-Patterson. At that time it was Wright Field and Patterson was separate. To do these exploded view drawings in the manuals for the new armaments that they were shipping to the Allies. So that was as early as 1939, the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940.
KW: Well, let me ask you, did you know the end of the Project was coming? You must have known about the Congressional investigation.
PB: Oh, sure, we knew about' it. We knew about it from the beginning of 1939 because we saw it being slashed constantly, That's why it was the beginning of 1939 that I opened the Pink-Slip Kitchen.
KW: Did you hear people talking about these ridiculous Congressional, the thing with the Un-American Activities Committee and all that business? Did youknow that was going on?
PB: Of course we knew what was going on, sure. Oh, I want to tell you how I found out about the Jewish Negro Theatre. We had a lot of the Negro people who used to come and eat and one day somebody said something in Yiddish. So I answered in Yiddish, which I happen to speak well because I used to be in the Yiddish Theatre when I was a child. And as we were talking, one of the Negroes chimed in, . . . That means I’m also Yiddish. "I am also a Jew." (Laugh) And then he told us that they had this Jewish Negro group.
SN: Where did they come from, Paula?
KW: As part of the Federal Theatre?
SN: But where did they come from? I mean, what is this Jewish blackNot in this country?
KW: They were converts or what?
SN: How could they be Jewish Negroes? What is this?
SN: They had accepted — like Sammy Davis.
PB: Maybe they were. They were second generation maybe. I don't know. They were Jewish, they spoke Yiddish.
KW: And it was called, like, the Jewish Negro Unit?
PB: Yeah. Like the Jewish Negro Unit. That's how I found out about it and was I surprised!
SN: In looking through my programs I see that Orson Welles did a Macbeth with a black company. And then there were other things with all-black companies. There was a lot going on with black companies.
KW: It really was and it was the first time really that blacks were featured and not just in the usual kind of roles. And definitely Orson Welles and John Houseman together, they did a lot in New York for sure.
PB: And a lot of prominent people today, not blacks, came out of Orson Welles' group out of the Mercury.
SN: Oh, my, yes, And do you have Cradle Will Rock? Do you have the whole history of Cradle Will Rock?
KW: Well, it's interesting, you know, because that one was closed by the WPAbefore it opened—
SN: You know about Cradle Will Rock?
KW: Yeah. What a great story that was!
SN: Oh, that was, and it was a marvelous play.
SN: Oh, sure, that was something!
KW: On that night? Did you see it then when it —
SN: I think I was there opening night. I think I was. I'm not sure because—
KW: That opening night is so historic.
SN: Sure. When the whole audience moved to another place.
KW: It's interesting. You see, for most plays we have the production bulletin and all the stuff. But of course, because that one wasn't produced under WPA, that's not there. We have rehearsal photos and, you know, Marc Blitzstein and all the dancers around the piano and that kind of thing but nothing else.Although in the Archives I've seen what was supposed to be the program and, you know, it said WPA and The Cradle Will Rock. But of course it wasn't printed, you know, and it didn't come out.
SN: Well, they must have had something printed up because it was all set to open. KW: It was ready, yes.
SN: And they closed it down opening night. They waited 'til that last minute.
KW: That's right. They didn't say—I don't know if you know—but they didn'tsay "We won't have this production." They made seme rule about, "We can't have anything open before June 30th" or whatever the date was and "It has to start the next fiscal year, starting July 1st."
PB: And incidentally, there was another very interesting point. When Tamirisput on Adelante — that was about the Spanish War and of course, was pro-Loyalist — do you know who closed it down?Who was responsible for closing it down?
KW: I didn't know it really was closed down.
KW: Oh yeah, that makes sense, I can see now.
PB: The Catholic Church closed that up. They went to Hallie Flanagan —
PB: Well, Tamiris found out. Tamiris was no little flower by the wayside. She was a bristling character herself.
SN: And how! She was a terrific woman.
SN: As a woman she was terrific. As a dancer, you know, we used to, but —
PB: As a woman and as a fighter, she was marvelous.
SN: Oh, articulate and sophisticated and brilliant.
KW: As a woman, you mean also as a feminist?
PB: She was a marvelous person.
SN: And she was always also concerned for the dancer. As a dancer and a human being, for her art, she was willing to go out and fight. I mean, there were all kinds of — whether they were connected with WPA or not — all kinds of organizations and meetings to try to bring dancers together, to try to get the platform.
PB: Let's see, you have the time schedule. When was that produced, Adelante?
KW: Adelante, Look at the end of that—
SN: Oh, here it is. Isn't this it here?
KW: Oh, that's late, that's very late.
PB: Now this was really what did it, When the Catholic Church got ahold of Hallie Flanagan —
SN: She must have been Catholic, too, Flanagan.
PB: — this was really the death knell of the Project.
SN: That also. I mean, they didn't like a lot of things in the theatre.
PB: They were phasing out before but this really was the death knell.
KW: Because I mean that's one month before the whole thing ended, you see.
SN: But all of them, you know, Living Newspaper and It Can't Happen Here and all of these controversial things that were revolutionary.
PB: But I mean as far as the Dance was concerned, this was the death knell.
KW: Well, it seems that Hallie Flanagan would have been sympathetic but whether she could do anything about it, especially at the end, I don't know. Is that your impression?
SN: No, she was for it, she was for it.
PB: She was for it, of course.
SN: She asked for pressure from below and look what it says about Federal Theatre, In Literary Digest, "The greatest producer of hits is the Federal Government." That was in 1936. I just picked this out today. "It has four smashing successes in New York, a record unequaled by any producer in eight years." While George Seides, who was one of the big voices, in Scribner's Magazine in October 1936 stated that Federal Theatre was the chief producer of works of art in the theatre for the last year. And see, here's another black group.
KW: Oh, Heaven Bound. That was in Atlanta.
SN: I didn't see that, Oh, that was in Atlanta?
PB: There was another black company in Chicago that did semething that was supposed to be —
KW: They did a play called — what’s it called, something about Fog, White Fog I think was the name of it. There was a black unit in Chicago and there was one in LA.
SN: Do you have Bella Lewitzky on your list?
SN: She was, I think she was, I’m not sure,
KW: I mean, dancers, as I said, that's a big gap for us.
SN: There was a big Federal Dance Project here.
SN: And I’m sure Bella — you know her name?
SN: It took her all these years to make her name nationally known and internationally, I suppose. She's been struggling in dance all these years but she and Lester Horton — Myra Kinch is in the book.
SN: Oh. She's in the East, isn’t she?
KW: No, she's in LA and her husband was an arranger.
PB: Yes. He was her canposer. He composed for her. I remember seeing those things.
SN: There were other people. Lois Elfeldt. Do you have that name?
SN: She was functioning. I don't know whether she was on the Project or not, but she lives in Laguna. I was going to mention it to you the minute you walked in but you didn't ask me, so I didn't think about it. I mean, if you had asked me for names, you know, I could have given them to you. But she may have been on the Dance Project. She was Head of Dance at USC for many years and she's retired, Lois Elfeldt.
SN: No, here in California. And she was head of the Dance Project at USC which, of course, is not as important as UCLA which is the dance university, I think.
KW: Tell me about the productions that you. . . his name. . .
SN: Did you know that it was her husband who did it?
KW: He may have adapted something. I mean, I don't know where the actual material came from but—
SN: I have all the newspaper clippings, the reviews, good, bad and indifferent.
KW: I was gonna say, you know Michael Cisney was in that company. We interviewed his wife.
PB: Michael Cisney. No, he was an actor.
KW: Well anyway, his former wife, now married to someone else, is Marcella Cisney.And she gave us this big, colorful story about how terrible Trojan Incident was and, you know, all the disastrous things that happened, and the men's leather leggings looking so ridiculous so they took them off at the last minute and then all you saw was these hairy, bony legs. And all the girls with the New York accents trying to act as if they were classical Greeks but having New York accents, I mean, she was really very critical of the whole thing and I was just curious about — and she also said it got bad reviews. And also this playbill with a difference of opinion, whatever that thing was you showed me.
SN: Oh, listen to this. "As an experimental production, Trojan Incident," this is John Anderson, "uses music, pantomime, dialogue, the dance, choruses, and what would appear from this distance to be a little aesthetic shredded wheat and arty whim-wham." (Laugh)
KW: She said that they called it "Trojan Accident." (Laugh)
KW: I mean, what was your impression of it? Was it that bad as they said or was it just—
PB: Well, when you’re in a thing it’s very hard to tell. Before a thing you're concerned really with what you're doing, your reception.
SN: Just listen to this. "Since there is no single item of the production except some of the ballet designs" - you see, the dance came out well—"that is not pretentious tommyrot, aesthetic hoopla and ordinary bunk, there is no point whatever in discussing its details. For a scene designer who has done the brilliant work he has, Howard Bay, who has a tremendous reputation from his Broadway work, at least should know better. But I do think that if the Government is going to pay for such things on the stage" — you see, they used it also. They were always, you know, the Government was paying for it — "it might as well take the more merciful and logical course of paying people to go to see them" and so on. I mean, it just went on and on.
KW: Well, what was the audience reaction? Could you tell?
PB: No, it didn’t. How long was it on?
KW: April-May 1938 is all I have. I don't know.
SN: Hits one treats it more gently. Brooks Atkinson is not so devastating. You see, Brooks Atkinson, who rates over John Anderson —
SN: Yeah. And this is Arthur Pollock of the — I've got every newspaper, theBrooklyn Daily Eagle, for instance.
SN: You collected them all, too? Oh, my! Well, if you want these, you can havethem.
PB: Would you get me some copies?
PB: I really would like to have them because, you know, I’m heartbroken at having lost that carton and everything in it.
KW: Oh, yeah. So are we, I'm telling you. Anything that’s lost at this point is, you know, it's really sad.
SN: (Reads) "Federal Theatre combines Tamiris and some dancers with Euripides and Homer." (Laugh) It's funny.
PB: I gather they didn't like us. (Laugh)
SN: (Reads) "Trojan Incident is a dance drama of doubtful importance," I don't remember — you know, I —
KW: But did the audience that was there, I mean did they not clap? How did they react?
SN: Oh, there's always some applause. I mean, you like to think —
KW: But did they consider it avant-garde? I mean, did they think it was a little out of —
PB: You would say avant-garde about Adelante but not about Trojan Incident.
KW: What was the message of Adelante? What was the theme of it?
PB: It was a very definite pro-Loyalist, very definite. There was no question. Ifyou saw it, there was no doubt about where we stood.
SN: Did she have a full evening or did she share the program with what?
PB: No, it was a full program.
SN: Was it a full program? You mean it was a full evening?
KW: When there's a full-length thing like that, is there an intermission in a danceconcert?
PB: I think it was a full-length thing.
SN: What was it like, Paula? Tell us what it was. I don't know. Was it a fullevening with, an intermission?
PB: That I don't remember whether there was an intermission.
SN: You don’t have a program on the thing then obviously.
KW: Oh, I do but maybe it's over there. Is that it?
KW: Yeah. It doesn't say anything about an intermission.
PB: No. "Order of scenes." There were a number.
PB: Yeah, It was a full program.
KW: What did the critics say about that? Do you know?
PB: Well, it was at a very controversial time and it depends on how they feltwhether the review was favorable.
SN: But you see if you had your reviews. Well, did you ever interview GenevievePitot?
PB: She worked with Tamiris all the time.
SN: But she did a lot of work, yeah, and she would know.
PB: And the Hall-Johnson Choir.
KW: The Hall-Johnson Choir was in that?
PB: Sure. Do you remember the Hall-Johnson Choir?
PB: They were in the boxes singing.
SN: Did they sing for How Long Brethren, too? Which group? She also used achoral group.
PB: I think so. The Hall-Johnson Choir.
SN: Bill batons was in that, yes. Bill Matons is in Los Angeles if you can gethold of him.
KW: Oh, I'd love to try, really.
SN: He was in Doris and Charles' original company. He's a nut though. I don't know whether you should or not.
SN: Yeah, you would have a wild experience.
PB: He was teaching in New York years ago.
SN: Who? Are you talking about Bill?
PB: Wasn't it Bill who was teaching body correction or something?
PB: Oh, no, no, no. I know who—
SN: No, Bill, you know Bill is out here.
SN: Yes, Was Milton on the Project?
SN: Feher. I danced with him in a show. My God, look who was in this.
KW: Which one is that, Adelante?
SN: Mura Dehn was in it, Ailes Gitaour, that beauty. Did you ever hear of Naguchi?
PB: And you know, he wasn’t at all good looking,
SN: Oh, yes, he has a beautiful face.
SN: Yes, he has a gorgeous face.
SN: Well, anyway, Klama Pinska. Are you going out to San Francisco?
KW: I was going to ask about Klama Pinska. Is she in San Francisco?
SN: I'm in touch with her. She called me just about a month ago.
KW: I'd like to get her address, no kidding.
KW: I knew her name from several things. That's from Adelante, I think.
SN: I didn't know she was on the Project.
SN: You are in for an experience. Well, you know what she's been doing?
KW: No, I don't, I don't know.
SN: You know, she comes from the Ruth St. Denis School, Denishawn. She was the Denishawn School and she can tell you stories. Anyway, for years in recent history she's been trying — she wants to carry on Ruth St. Denis's glory. And she wants to bequeath what she remembers of all of the concerts, to the worldbefore she leaves it. So she was supposed to have a program at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) and they dillied and dallied and nothing ever came of it. And she finally went to New York last winter and I can't remember her name, but one of the dancers who has a company in New York got a grant for Klama, lent her her company. Klama staged some of Ruth St. Denis's old, old dances and it was a smash.
FB: Really? But she herself wasn't that good.
SN: And she was so vindicated. Well, as a dancer? No, but I mean, she is reproducing —
KW: What is she good at, choreography then?
SN: Reproducing Ruth St. Denis's choreography and she is going to do it at UCLA next year in January. But she was in town just a few weeks ago and she called me from LA to ask if I was going to see Bella's concert, Bella Lewitzky. And it happened I was going on a Friday night and she was going on a Saturday night or vice versa. We talked a little bit and I rhapsodized over her great success, I had a small party for her two years ago when she came down here. She stayed in my house, Anne Barlin was out of town - you know, Anne was living with me — so Klarna stayed and I gathered together a few people like Saida Gerrard, Now, Saida's another one you could see.
SN: Well, I saw her last, Monday night.
SN: She's fine, She'll tell you —
KW: Well, I'11 take any and every name.
SN: Well, jot it down before I forget. Saida Gerrard and Bill Matons. I have a number for him if you want to try. And Eva Desca Garnet and I called Anne andshe's free on Tuesday if you — or whatever.
KW: Anne what's her last name?
SN: Anne Lief and she's Anne Lief Barlin. Anne is a specialist in children's dance and I'm still teaching children.
SN: Yes, I am. I'm teaching in two Montessori schools, boys and girls. I'm producing the new generation of dancers. Janet. Let's see, Janet Schaff, Mildred Tanzer, Roger Dodge who just died a little while ago, Donald Knapp, Al Rosenblum. Do you remember him, Paula? Al Rosenblum?
PB: Of course. He always hung out with one of the other boys, one of the other fellows.
KW: Lili Mann, I think you mentioned her.
SN: Oh, Lili is my dearest friend. She's coming out here next month.
SN: She lives in — she happens to live in Teaneck, New Jersey.
KW: Who was it you said lived in Croton?
PB: Fanya Geltman. But if you write to her now it's Fanya Del Bourgp.
PB: Yes. She's at 64 Pepfield Avenue in Croton.
SN: She is teaching. She teaches —
SN: Not only that, but the Mayor of Croton, they had a day dedicated to her.They made a tremendous community celebration for her.
PB: She also had a grant from the Government for continuing her teaching. Sheput on a big production. She's doing very well.
SN: So some of us manage to keep going.
KW: Oh, really more than you think. I don't know about dancers in particular but many people that we interview have stayed with some line of theatre work or something related to what they were doing then, really a surprising number, I think.
PB: Have you gotten anything out of us?
KW: Oh, yes. Are you kidding? Oh, my God! No kidding, really. Do you remember Add Bates?
SN: Yes. He was the only black man on the program.
KW: I didn't know he did anything connected with dance at all.
SN: How did you know him then?
KW: Well, someone else interviewed him and I didn't really—
KW: Yes. I think he's in New York.
PB: Yes, he's a woodworker. We asked about him. He was doing fine cabinetry.
KW: He might be in Brooklyn. I can't remember but he's —
PB: He had a quality of movement that was all his own. There's an Edith Siegel— he did one stunning dance that was choreographed by a woman called Edith Siegel who is also still teaching, working with children, with another man and it was called "Black and White" and it was a black and white dance. And they appeared on that program that Anna Sokolow and Sophie Maslow and so on and so forth. They were called the Young Choreographers, too. A lot of them came from Martha's company and some from Doris and Charles' and thesetwo. And that was the one stunning dance that Edith Siegel choreographed and Add Bates was in that.
KW: I didn’t know about his dance connection at all until I saw this program.
SN: Then how do you know his name?
KW: Someone interviewed him within the context of, I think, being an actor. I didn’t listen to the whole interview but he was also apparently in seme regular theatre productions.
SN: Are there other people like you interviewing dancers?
KW: Well, I'm not just interviewing dancers but there are two other people doing interviews.
KW: On the Theatre Project. On Federal Theatre.
SN: You should do Mura Dehn. Have you done Mura Dehn?
SN: Oh, she’s in New York. I saw her last year. She’s somebody very important to interview because I mean, talking about black people, she was given a grant, a big grant. She worked with black people way back then. You see, her interest is in jazz. And I see here she is, her name is here, and so is Roger Pryor Dodge.
KW: Who you said just died, right?
SN: Yeah. But he was also interested in jazz and he and his pictures—and I'm amongst them because I was his partner; I mean, I'm looking through all my old programs and my memories are stirred up. I don't remember half what I did, performing here and there and here and there. And he’s in, what's it called? There’s a dance library at Lincoln Center and there's a portfolio that is related to Roger Pryor Dodge and of course to Mura Dehn, too, becauseshe still had, I think, a black company that she took to Africa or she went to Africa or something or other. She's a charming person and you will enjoy her and she can tell you a little bit about that Young Choreographers Group maybe.
KW: You mentioned Anna Sokolow. Was she part of that?
SN: I don’t think she was on the Project.
KW: Well, she worked — someone did interview her, not on tape but just met withher briefly. And I think she had something to do with maybe one production.
PB: Wasn't she with the Neighborhood Playhouse?
SN: No, she wasn't Neighborhood Playhouse. She was from Martha's company.
KW: She had some brief connection like Lillian Shapero did about caning in for one kind of production, I don't remember what.
SN: She never did anything for—not that I know of.
KW: But she's still apparently active. She works out of the Lincoln Center also.
SN: Sophie Maslow. Sophie wasn't in it.
SN: Or Jane, Jane Dudley. No, Martha wouldn't let her people do anything. She wouldn't let them take a show job.
KW: Anything but work for her?
SN: Yeah. And they starved. There are several of Martha's people in Los Angeles where we see. Thelma, Babbitt and Freda Flier and we talk about it.
PB: Well, you know, Martha is a very complex person. At the same time that she was a goddess, you know, she was also a tyrant.
KW: Very egotistical, would you say?
PB: Well, of course. She's a genius and she knows she's a genius.
PB: Very hard, I mean, she’s tyrannical when it comes to her people. And theyworship her.
SN: And they left. It’s like the tearing of flesh when they speak of it.But some people have come back to work with her, to help restore seme of theold dances and so on. She was like a mother figure and she wouldn't let themtake any jobs. Frieda just recently—
PB: They had to be dedicated like she was dedicated.
SN: She needed them all the time. You see, if they worked on WPA then four orfive hours of every day we spent on WPA.
PB: They wouldn't be available.
SN: And we sat around a hell of a lot, too. It wasn't perfect by any means.
KW: Sat around waiting for what? Assignments?
SN: Things to happen. It was very frustrating.
KW: It was the same with the actors.
SN: But we could live, we could pay for our rent and we could pay for food andwe could pay for classes.
PB: Even occasionally buy a pair of slacks.
SN: Slacks? We didn't wear slacks.
PB: Or a skirt. We wore skirts more those, days.
SN: So it gave us a chance to catch our breath.
KW: I don't know anything about male dancers. Were there a number of male dancers then?
PB: Oh, yes, sure. You mean on the Project?
PB: Not as many as women but there were here.
KW: Was their treatment any different, did you see? I mean, speaking of this feminist question, did they get any different treatment?
PB: We had Phil Gordon, Maurice Silvers, Milton Fair, Lee Sheiman, Add Bates, Sidney Stark.
SN: Oh, Sidney Stark was Katie O'Brien's partner.
PB: Yeah. You had quite a few and they're not all on here. There was Al Rosenblurn.
SN: That's in here. Here are the men: Roger Dodge, Donald Knapp, Raja Ojardino, who became Katherine Dunham's partner and he danced in the summer theatre with me. Oh, yes, I have a picture of him and me dancing together. And I remember Katherine Dunham was scheduled to do a show on Broadway and Iwanted to get black so I could try to get into that group.
KW: Did she only use black groups then?
SN: Mostly black. There was one white who is now married to the black singer, what's his name?
PB: The very popular one, the pretty one.
SN: He's an actor, too. He makes movies.
KW: The only two names that come to mind are Belafonte and —
SN: And her name is Julie. Oh, she's Jewish.
KW: Is she Jewish? I was going to say she's English.
PB: What's his name? I can see his face.
KW: I can see her name, too, but I can't think of what their last name is.
SN: Harry Belafonte. She danced with Katherine Dunham but she had dark skin, her whole family.
KW: Did you ever see Katherine Dunham’s productions then?
KW: She was out of Chicago, wasn't she?
SN: Yes. She came to New York with a concert first, a real modern dance concert and then she went Broadway, so to speak. Then she started to do things that were very theatrical and charming and she was a beautiful personality. I studied with her a little bit when she was here in Los Angeles. Then, of course, recently she came back again but it wasn’t the same. Anyway, you asked about the male dancers. I just want you to know that anybody in a pair of pants who looked like a male could get a job because there were, no male dancers really to speak of. As few as there are now, in our country and in our culture, men are not encouraged to dance. And that’s why I feel I'm making a small contribution because when you teach in a preschool setting— although I’m teaching older kids now in a private school, that’s a Montessori schools! have a captive audience and the boys, those who want to dance, can dance without feeling their peer pressure.
KW: Like a sissy or something?
SN: Yeah, because we call it body movement for the most part. You don't say"dance."
SN: Yeah. They didn't — I mean men, just I think, certainly on the Project, a lot of the guys who were dancing had nothing else to do and maybe deep down they liked to dance. There were those who had had very little training like Jack Connolly, for instance, Al Rosenblum, Sidney Stark, I think he was going to college. And you know, there was no place to turn and they heard about the theatre and the Dance Project and they were good, as it turns out, but verylittle training really. Of course now the dancers are far, far superior in their training. You know, it's not like our day.
KW: Well, there are probably more places to go for training, for one thing.
SN: Yeah. And dance has an audience and dance has backing and there are grantsand all this thing that’s going on.
PB: But still not very many men.
PB: Very few men. It's just not in our culture.
SN: Of course, what's happened during my experience, when I danced at theLewisohn Stadium with Eddie Strawbridge, there was a group of men from the Metropolitan Opera House. At that time opera was there and I don't know how it sustained itself but there was a corps de ballet and they were male dancers, they were ballet people all of them. And I met a man by the name of CharlesLasky. He was a young dancer and he took a shine to me and I danced with him as his partner. You know, we were always partnering to try to make the scene in nightclubs or in shows or in — and this was what I was doing half my life in those years was dancing, teaming up with semebody and auditioning for jobs. So I teamed up with Charles. At the same time he was telling me that he was in touch with a man by the name of George Balanchine. Who started the ballet theatre? You don't know? I wish you, could be more helpful. Anyway, I mean the man who organize it, not a dancer. At this time I was in that Follies show but I used to rehearse with Charles in between. And I took some Graham classes but not with Martha. I studied with Anna Sokolow, I had a little smattering of this and that and so on. And Charles was telling me about the plans to start a ballet company and did I want to. You see, I had had ballet training and I had had modern training. And I decided that I didn't want to be a ballet person because that to me was exotic dance. That had nothing to do with reality, with the world in which we were living and I really belonged to that group. I mean, I belonged to modern dance, Graham. Graham was doing dances that were very important. She did Deep Song that had to do with Spain and she had to do with human emotions. Where is that thing that I had, Paula? And you know now there's a Book Guild that produces just dance books, and if you join it you get a dance book a month or every three months and I don't want it. Where is that picture that I showed you, Paula, that said, "What is Modern Dance?" I wanted to show it to Karen. You know, it says it has something to do with the coming revolution. Where is that?It seems to have disappeared. "What is Modern Dance?" I mean, it comes from that period. Well anyway, it's a cartoon. It's from The New Yorker. And these dowagers are sitting in the theatre and looking up on the stageand there you see three figures that look like Graham figures, flowing skirts and so on and they're like this. And she says, "I don't know what it really means but it has something to do with the coming revolution." (Laugh) KW: Well, that's probably how a lot of people felt. (Laugh)
SN: And you know that show that I was in with Fanny Brice, she did a takeoff on modern dance. You know, revolution. We were the radicals.
KW: Haye you seen any films of the Chinese ballet or something more recently?Because they are very much that kind of posture.
KW: Yeah, but I mean to an extreme that probably people thinking it was revolutionary then would not have thought, had they seen that. Do you think that your audiences were disposed toward you politically? Did you get that impression or did they just-
SN: Oh, yes, these were very turbulent times. This was the Depression.
PB: That's just what I was going to say. Don't forget this came out of the Depression, and there were hundreds of thousands of people who felt the same way because they realized that—
PB: Their lives were just tom apart by the political scene.
SN: People really were starving. There were Hoovervilles, there were bread lines. My mother—I didn't have a father—but my mother was getting relief and cans of food which we couldn't eat. We used to give it to our dog.
KW: Where was that from, the food?
SN: Well, they had big warehouses, government food. They used to pack meat.What did they call that meat in those big cans that they gave to the guys? Spam. And boxes of prunes and potatoes. Well, we ate the potatoes and the prunes but we wouldn't eat that canned meat.
PB: They were terrible times. They were times that really tore at your guts.
SN: But by the same token, this was fertile soil for the creative energies of people because not only was it on Federal Theatre but there was other theatre that was—I mean, the Civic Rep. (Repertory) Theatre, that's Eva Le Gallienne and her theatre.
SN: And the Artef Theatre. There's a new Artef Theatre and that's how I remembered the old Artef Theatre, And this was the theatre of realism and novels, too, the proletarian literature.
SN: The Living Newspapers, theatre, I mean developing a whole new technique for the theatre. And, it was... you know, you really felt it.
KW: Well, you could see it all around you. It wasn't like nightly entertainment.
SN: And it was exciting, it was vivid and rich,
SN: And people were making statements and we were looking. . .
SN: Did anybody interview Orson Welles?
KW: He's hard to get ahold of.
SN: Is he? This is an interesting sidelight but last night we were in the heme of friends who spent part of the summer, seven weeks, in France. And she was showing slides, marvelous slides. Well, one of the slides was in a restaurant, I don't remember where, and she said, "Do you see that man sitting there?" You know who it was? Orson Welles. And then much, much later in the showing of her films, in an entirely different place in France, she said, "Do you know who that man is? Guess who we're gonna see now." And it was Orson Welles. She met him in a different place at a different time so we asked her if she went up to talk to him. He was in France making a picture this summer.
KW: He has an address in Italy also. So he's over there a lot.
SN: So she went up to him and he was very pleasant. She said, "I must say helloto you because we saw you in Paris" maybe it was and this was somewhere elseand, you know, this kind of thing so what are they gonna say. But you've been at this for how long?
SN: And you mean during the two-year period—what about John Houseman?
KW: Yes, John Houseman we've interviewed. But Welles is—I don't know what his story is. He doesn't usually answer letters. I mean, he's the kind of person that some people told us, "He'll only do it if you give him money" or, you know, whatever. Or maybe he's saving it for some kind of autobiography.We don't know for sure ;but at this meeting I was just at, another man from my office was there too,and he was on a panel with someone who's an old family friend of Welles. And he said, "Well, no problem. I'll get to him." So maybe that'll work out, but he's not the kind of person like someone with a somewhat smaller ego who would say, "Sure, I'll be glad to talk to you."
SN: He was such a beautiful young kid then. You know, we were all kids.
PB: I want to tell you something that I told Sue before. On the closing night of the Children's Theatre—this is back to Federal Theatre—when Pinocchio was playing, this was interesting.
PB: You know the story of Pinocchio where he becomes a live boy at the end?
PB: Well, the night that the theatre was closed, the director changed the last scene and Pinocchio died. Now we who were very active arranged a little scene. We had a coffin draped in black, put Pinocchio in the coffin, we all were black clothing and we had a march along Broadway,
KW: Didn’ t it say something like "Pinocchio Killed by Act of Congress?"
PB: That's right. But they don't say in there that we had this march alongBroadway. We staged this and it was all around—you know Times Square, the whole square?
PB: We circled that whole square with the coffin. We had thousands and thousandsand thousands of people standing on the sidelines watching what was going on and we told them what was going on. But of course that was the end.
KW: How were you in with that production at all? I mean, what was your connection?
PB: Well, the only connection we had was that by this time we were all fightingfor our lives together and we had meetings together and we were interested—
KW: People within Theatre and Dance and the others?
SN: And the Writers' Project and the Art Project and the Music. We all feltvery close together, it was close-knit because we were the arts,
KW: That's something I wasn’t sure of because you see in a lot of theatre productions the Music Project was the orchestra and that kind of thing but I wasn't sure how—
PB: We were all closely allied.
SN: Especially towards the end when the numbers were few and you draw closer together, I guess.
PB: You know, I still don’t know whether Hilda’s brother whose name was Sidney, Sidney Sheldon, whether he's the same Sidney Sheldon who has successfully put on TV shows now. I don't know whether it’s the same Sidney Sheldon.
SN: I didn't know him. Did you know him in those years?
PB: Oh, yes. He worked with me on that Pink-Slip Kitchen. He did all then publicity.
SN: What about Hilda, where is she?
PB: I have no idea. She’s probably in New York.
SN: Next time you go, pick up a telephone book. She has a different name now.
PB: What was her married name? I don't remember that.
KW: There are still a lot of people in New York.
SN: It's funny, none of them went to Florida. Everybody came to California.
KW: There are a few in Florida.
SN: Well, Micki went to Florida, Micki Appel. She died. And Janet is in Florida, Janet Schaffher name was here. Let's see, who's in Los Angeles? Well, Bella should be able to help you, maybe she would.
KW: You already gave me about ten names. I'm gonna get the addresses from you before I leave.
KW: George Sklar? We interviewed George Sklar.
KW: He wrote a play that was produced by the Federal Theatre.
SN: Did you interview him here in LA?
KW: I didn't, someone else did.
PB: I think you'll get the most information from Fanya Geltman in New York.
SN: Well, Paula, you're the one really. I sort of stood on the sidelines.
KW: Did you have any pressure or trouble because you were so active, with like the labor side of it?
PB: No. I had no trouble because it was only the active groups who got anything accomplished at that time. If you didn't fight, you didn't get anywhere on the WPA.
SN: But they didn't take everybody onto it, onto the Dance Project either. That was another thing. You know, there was a woman by the name of Mary Rivers who had been in Martha Graham's company. Well, anybody who was in Graham's company had to be—she auditioned for the Dance Project and she was not accepted.
PB: How come? Maybe they thought she was too stylized.
SN: I don't know what happened and that was a bone of contention, too, that was. There were some people who weren't allowed to come on. I don't know whether you know this. This is a side issue but there was always this big question. Were the projects there to give people jobs or were they there for the sake of art?
KW: Yeah, that was the division.
SN: I mean, were you exclusive or were you open? And we debated it. I mean, there was discussion going on all the time about it: who should be working, what were the guidelines.
PB: There were also different times. People were auditioning all the time but there were also different times when the pressure from the opposing forces was greater and there were times when our pressure was greater. When our pressure was greater, they allowed a few more people in. When they were cracking down, they didn’t allow people in, and this had a great deal to do with whether people got through the auditions or not.
SN: There must have been edicts. We don't know what went on behind the scenes. Tamiris would have been a marvelous person to interview. It's too bad that it waited this long. How many years ago? It's about how—35? Forty years ago.
KW: Yeah. When did she die? Early sixties, late fifties?
PB: No, not late fifties. It was much later than that. When did she die?
SN: I remember it because Danny was here. He was up in Idlewild and he calledme to tell me that she had died but I don't remember when it was.
PB: And then for a while before she died she wasn't seeing anybody. She didn'twant anybody to see her the way she looked at that time.
SN: I knew her quite well because I was her assistant on a movie here, Up inCentral Park. I also danced with her in Salt Lake City when she did, she was invited to do the choreography for a centennial, a 100th Centennial of the Mormon Church there. We did what was called "Promised Valley." You know, it's fresh because I've been looking through my whole big hugescrapbook and all this stuff. And she always/a very exciting person. PB: She was a gorgeous woman.
KW: Just last week — there's been a series of productions at the Library of Congress based on these Federal Theatre things and one of then last week, the theme was Women in the Federal Theatre. And there's a dancer in Washington named Liz Lerman who's young and a teacher. She came out one day to the Project and looked through photographs of Tamiris. She was going to try and reconstruct a dance of Tamiris', just from, you know, maybe four or five photographs. I thought it was an interesting effort, and she did. I have no idea if it was anything like Tamiris or of her movements, but she—
SN: Does she look like Tamiris?
KW: Well, she has fuzzy hair, not short but —
SN: Tell her what you said about her legs.
PB: The sexiest legs that anybody ever had. You looked at her legs and you saw a bedroom.
SN: Oh, go on now, that's you.
SN: You shouldn't be taping this.
KW: It's a great remark, no kidding.
PB: She had a very sexy body. She didn't have much up here.
KW: For a dancer though, that's—was she tall, short?
PB: Tall, long legs, beautiful.
KW: She was German, right? And her name was Helen Becker? Is that right?
SN: That's right, but she wasn't German.
SN: Yeah, but not German. I mean, she was born in this country.
KW: That’s what I meant is German background but I didn't know about her background. How did she take the name Tamiris, do you know?
SN: You know why? This is where the exotic comes in. Oh, in the early years of modern dance, everybody was getting names like that. I mean Tamiris and Tashamira and you have to look at the old dance magazines. I can't remember the names but-—
SN: Yeah, Dana. And all these names, there was a whole group of dancers. It was fun, I suppose, when they were young, you know, and this was the thing to do. I changed my, name. I mean, when I signed that first contract for the Zeigfield Follies.
PB: What did you change it to?
SN: To Ramos. That’s not my family name, my surname.
SN: No. But I wanted to be Spanish and I wanted to be a Spanish dancer and when Igot on the Dance—no, before I got on the Dance Project, I signed up for a series of classes with Cansino in New York and I could never take those classes, PB: Which one?
SN: Ansel, I guess, or whoever was there on Fifth Avenue because I had to walk on picket lines instead. I got caught up in those before I got on the Dance Project.
KW: Was there a thing with the pickets or the unions that you were supposed to be a member of the Communist Party?
KW: There wasn't that kind of overt pressure?
PB: Undoubtedly there were a few members but there was never—
SN: I don't understand. Who was forcing anybody? You mean to get on the Dance Project?
KW: No, But some people have told us in order to (a) be considered for employment or (b)—you know, there was one sure—
KW: No, on the Theatre Project.
SN: What union? We didn't have a union.
KW: Or once you were in, let's say, the Workers' Alliance or semething that youhad to therefore become a Communist Party member.
KW: I couldn't believe that it would have been that organized.
SN: Isn't that weird? I wonder who would say that.
PB: That’s a hundred percent wrong. Not 99, but 100 percent wrong.
KW: I couldn't believe that the Party would have ever been that organized orbeen that concerned about anybody who was—
SN: No, but there was certainly a Communist Party and it wasn't underground.
PB: There was a struggle undoubtedly that was influence but to say that this wasa necessary thing, ridiculous.
KW: That was my inpression, too but some people—I mean, one man who wrote aplay even told us that he couldn't be considered for employment because they asked him, "Are you a Party member?" And he said, "No" and they said, "Well, forget it." And I was skeptical when I heard that.
SN: They were never that powerful, no. Right or wrong, we never came that far along in the revolution. (Laugh)
PB: I'm sure there were members. That's a ridiculous and untrue accusation.
SN: Now look, you take Orson Welles' company, You had Orson Welles, you hadBurl Ives, you had Joseph Cotten, you had a lot of other people. Do you think they're Communists? (Laugh)
KW: I don't. I don't know what somebody in Washington thought. Really, if youread the testimony from the investigations. I mean, total hearsay, such inaccuracies you can't believe, no kidding. To think that it made the whole Project end, There were 10 people who testified and they weren't actors, they weren't dancers, Somebody who worked in the Mail Room was the key witness.
PB: You mean these were people on the Project who were being questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee?
PB: Was the Project still in existence? No.
KW: Yeah. This is what closed I this hearing.
PB: Was it the Dies Committee or what committee?
PB: They were looking for reasons to close it.
KW: Oh, yes. It was a scapegoat.
SN: There were those—I mean, we have people in this country who don't believe in art, period, you know, the boondogglers.
KW: Including a lot of people in Congress.
PB: We also have people who are personally very conservative. As soon as they see somebody on a picket line or putting up a battle for semething or really going to town, they’re a "Communist."
KW: What do you think was the net result of the Federal Theatre and Dance Projects? Or what do you think came out of it?
PB: Well, I think a lot of talent came out of it and a lot of the people who were on it have really developed and become very important in their field. Wouldn't you say so?
SN: I agree. I wish it had continued.
KW: Can you see another one like that one happening now or something different?
SN: Well, in a sense they're—something is happening. There's a lot of federal money, you know, the grants, the federal money, the semething for the—what's it called?
KW: National Endowment for the Arts.
SN: Yeah, which dispenses funds, not enough, not anywhere near enough. I have always believed from my earliest beginnings in a state-sponsored theatre and the arts or support of the arts. And you know, we've talked about what goes on in Europe, certainly for the theatre and for dance.
PB: But this is different here because the grants that are given and so on aregiven to the leaders, the teachers, someone. It's not actually for the performing people.
SN: That's true and when Bella gets a grant, it's a very insufficient sum of money because they spread it all over, spread it around. It's only to produce a new work. It's not for her salary and it's not for her dancers to live on. And it's only for the cost of that new work. So a person like Daniel, for instance, Daniel Nagrin, who has really consecrated his whole life to the pursuit of dance, he still lives like we lived during the Depression period. Paula, you can't believe how he lives. He's in a loft building. He doesn't really like that but he's trapped in a loft building up on the third or fourth floor of a factory, an ancient factory building on Broadway somewhere. You go up in a freight elevator and because he has to protect himself—you know, he was beaten up when he lived in the Village on Bleecker Street. Oh,he was attacked one day and severely beaten up, just semebody on the street.You have to ring the bell now in a certain way when you go up and then so what? You walk up and here is this huge loft. He lives in a curtained-off section and he eats in this section and then here’s his studio. And then he works so hard in order to keep going.
SN: Not really because he goes out as a performer so much.
SN: He teaches—yes, he does—he teaches workshops. He was here for a week. He did workshops and he did the two performances and he was hoping since he came out here that he could get a few more bookings. And he got something in Fresno and maybe, I don't know. He said he might be doing something on Sunday but it's very hit and miss, certainly not a decent living.
KW: What's this foundation? He sent his letterhead. What is this?
SN: What is that? They all have it. Lewitzky has a foundation and he has. If you want to make a donation, it's a tax write-off. And I don't know what it amounts to.
KW: Do you know about Alwin Nikolais?
KW: He's got something called the Chimera Dance Foundation and I didn't know what it was. I mean, he's got a group, but I didn't know what it was.
SN: I don't know how he supports his group. How do you support a company all year round? It's very difficult. There has to be more money. There has to be government. Do you know the answer? I don't know where you're at, we know the answer. You know, you cut down on all the money that's being spent on munitions and destruction and you turn it around and you give jobs to people, including dancers and all the rest—
PB: It's the same debate as was going on then.
SN: She's taping us. Are you gonna turn this over to the FBI?
PB: It's a very sad commentary, really. There are snail countries in Europe that support the opera, the theatre, all the arts, so that they can really just work on their work and not have to worry about making a living. And then here, the wealthiest country in the world—
SN: But you heard Manon the other night, didn't you?
SN: Well, did you hear the governor afterwards?
SN: Didn't you want to write him a letter?
SN: I wanted to write him a letter.
SN: No, the Governor of New York State, Hugh Carey.
SN: Wasn't he an old union man? Well, he said that these things that we're talking about, all the arts, are what people are living for. That's what life is all about.
PB: This is what remains of the world. Not the business, not the amount of money you make and so on, but the art that a nation produces is what lives on.
SN: The expression of man's yearnings and aspirations, his soul, his "neshama" — that's a Yiddish word that means "the soul." Neshama sounds beautiful, you know.
PB: But how many other governors feel that way?
KW: Yes, his is the New York State Council of Arts. It's very active.
SN: And that was a beautiful production.
KW: Someone, one of the interviewees pointed out something that I hadn't thought about. We're probably subsidizing other countries' art projects because of foreign aid but not ours so much.
SN: We're subsidizing their military budgets much more than their art projects.
KW: But who knows where money gets syphoned?
SN: So we hope, we still keep hoping. It’s very sad but dancers still can't earna living. The young dancers—we see young, brilliant dancers at UCLA, I see them. They get much more training than we ever did. It's much mere open to them. We performed, we lived our dance and we performed. I would have performed for nothing because that was how important it was to me. But they have to go into other areas of activity.
KW: Or at least fall back, I would think, on teaching or something.
PB: Unless they get into a television show or something.
SN: Yeah, but you don't. I don't know where concert dance is. It's yes and no.There's more acceptance .There's a big concert audience at UCLA every dance. I mean, they have dancers coming and going and big audiences and so on. So maybe that’s an improvement over what we had, but I think the dancer's lot is still not a secure one.
PB: A dancer's life is not a happy one.
SN: Not a happy one, right. (Laugh)
KW: Well, was it then so much although it sounds like you all were happy.
SN: Oh, it was. We felt happy about what we did. I don’t know. Maybe it’s in retrospect.
PB: No. They were terrific days.
KW: It seems like a combination of their political, you know, as an expression of many things in your Jives. PN (Philip Nadel): It was an expression of necessity, of absolute—-they were deprived, they were poor, they were hungry, they were starved for a platform in terms of their dance or their art, the writers, the dancers, the singers and whatnot. And the Government provided an opportunity for them (1) to exercise their art and (2) to eat.
SN: How long did this whole Project last?
KW: From 1935 to 1939, that’s all.
SN: That's a nothing, a nothing. And there's a lot left that the artists left behind. I mean, there are buildings that have WPA art.
PB: When I was transferred to the Art Project, I was the secretary to the Associate Director of the Art Project of New York. Do you know what I used to do? I used to go out and sell art, sell paintings to the different government buildings.
KW: Well, this is fantastic. I can't tell you but really it's so helpful to us because you can't just go by the playbills, you know. And it's always good to get different people's opinions.
PB: The playbills don't have any of the excitement or any of the struggles.
KW: Or any of the stories really. I mean, they have the dates and that's it.But you need the different people. Even if I interviewed other people who said, "Oh, those crummy unions were always giving us a lot of trouble," that's significant to get some people saying one and some people saying the other. That's the only way that history ever comes full is when you get everything like that,
SN: Is somebody going to collate all of this material and do a book or what?
KW: Well, not of the whole thing. Right now one thing that—not I'm doing but two other people are doing, is a scrapbook with a lot of pictures and also captions and little brief descriptions. There's a chapter on dance and there's a chapter on Living Newspapers and different things like that.
PB: What is the purpose of doing this?
KW: Right now just to get it, just to have it as a research collection. People come who are writing their Ph.D. dissertations.
SN: That is what's happening. Remember? We had a dancers' get together here recently and we discovered (1) Eva Desca's daughter is terribly interested— she has a young daughter-—in knowing about what happened, I mean, the beginnings of dance. And you consider this part of dance history.
SN: I mean, we’re concerned about the whole, long, historical sweep of it or flow of it. And then at Claremont there are young people who are doing their papers and theses and what-not on the history of modem dance or whatever kind of dance, of dance. And certainly during those years—
SN: Yeah. Four very brief years but they came out of something and then something came out of those years, too. The young people are kind of reaching back into that period. And if you don’t do it now, we won't be around—
SN: The life and the breath of it. It should have been done 15 or 20 years ago when it was still—
KW: Sure, but you know then there was a stigma still. I mean now we're still finding people—most people are now saying, "Well, I'm proud to say that I worked for the WPA." But some people will still say, you know, "Well, I would never put it on my resume, and I'm only admitting it to you that I worked on it," It's that kind of thing and a lot of people are still touchy if they later had blacklisting problems, which is understandable.
PB: Well now, wait a minute. Take these people. You know, in relation to what somebody said before, take these people who are so timid about admitting it
PB: Do you think these people ever were?
PB: To some people it was something to be ashamed of and something, you know-—
KW: Well, to be on relief was—
PB: A terrible thing. The fact that we enjoyed being on the Project was something else.
KW: But now it’s beginning to be fashionable as. . .
SN: ...a, a natural flow, a growth and a development, an evolutionary process. But unfortunately, we haven’t ccme a long way because the theatre all by itself is not very healthy. I mean, the Broadway theatre is not healthy.
PB: Do you know, aside from the theatre, I think that more and more, everything that was done on the WPA, not just the arts, is being recognized as having been important, even the laboring work that was done.
SN: Oh, yes, there are bridges and buildings.
PN: The ironic thing is that they need a program today similar to WPA, particularly because of the great number of kids unemployed.
KW: But now I don't know if anyone wants to admit some kind of economic problem in terms of unemployment. No one wants to say, "Well, there's a depression and we must do something."
PN: Everybody acknowledges the fact that especially those black people where 50 percent of the unemployment is mostly young blacks. So if we only had it today, a WPA or public works program—
PB: I think it would take a very sympathetic president and a willing Congress.
PN: They talk about the housing shortage and building new houses when there arethousands and thousands and thousands of houses in the Watts area that could be easily refurbished, rebuilt, refinished, which would provide good housing for people. But somehow or other you just can’t bring the two together. It just won't work somehow. But with the Government plan and Government action on this thing, it might be feasible.
SN: Do you know it's after 5:00. I think maybe we better wind it up since I don't think we have anything else to say.
KW: I think we've covered a great deal of ground. (End of interview)