The Federal Theater Project was set up in August, September and October, 1935, one of several kindred programs of the WPA's Federal Project Number 1. It was designed to employ the skills of theater people on relief, including actors, stagehands, technicians, playwrights, costume and set designers, and various office personnel necessary for FTP operations. Under the National Director, Mrs. Hallie Flanagan, the FTP acted as both a medium for employing indigent artists and as a mechanism for extending theatrical entertainment to the American masses. Production units throughout the country educated and amused through presentations of classical drama, historical plays, marionette shows, religious drama, drawing room comedies, murder mysteries, political satire, living newspapers, foreign language plays, musicals, Negro Unit productions, dance performances, circus shows and vaudeville revues. The photographs document the wide range of FTP activities. They show audiences, production scenes, sets, theaters, backstage, workshops, New York City slum conditions, publicity, actors, other performers, playwrights and celebrities. Photos of such prominent people of the time as Babe Ruth, Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor reflect efforts to publicize the Project's activities; and photos of then relative unknowns such as Orson Welles, John Houseman, Joseph Cotten, Dan Dailey, John Huston, William Bendix, Buddy Rich and Burt Lancaster indicate its contribution as a showcase and opportunity for undiscovered talent. This series is a consolidation of previously separate series- 69-TA, TGP, TGR, TGS, TM. These originally were part of the records of the states, the national FTP offices and National Service Bureau in New York City and the national office in Washington, D.C. Some prints in this series, of New York State, New York City, Illinois and Indiana, match negatives in 69-TS.Check the negative numbers, which are located on the image, the back of the photo or the caption, against the negatives in 69-TS.
