Above: One of my favorite WPA posters, a promotion for the Federal Theatre Project's production of Big Blow. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The Artist: The poster above was created by artist Richard Halls (1906-1976). According to the website Posters for the People, Halls' "early years were spent traveling through the U.S. and Europe with his father, a sculptor whose commissions included many public monuments... Halls joined the FAP from 1936 to 1939 where he created many posters for the Federal Theatre Project... Halls began to work as a freelance illustrator, but a part-time job as an instructor at City College of New York redirected him to a career in education. From 1952 to 1976 Halls taught advertising art and design on the faculty of the State University of New York at Farmingdale. He received his B.A. from Adelphi University in 1961."
The Play: The Big Blow appears to have been an entertaining and moderately successful melodrama set in Florida, where the playwright, Theodore Pratt, was living at the time. The Internet Broadway Database lists the play as running in New York, from October 1, 1938 to February 1939, while Halliie Flanagan, the director of the Federal Theatre Project, records it as running all the way to April 1939 (Arena, 1940, p. 381 - Flanagan also writes of Big Blow performances in Boston, p. 230). Some of the players in Big Blow appear to have enjoyed reasonably successful acting careers after the production of the play, including: Kendall Clark (1912-1983), who played Wade Barnett; Dorothy Raymond (1914-2008), who played Sarah Barnett; and George Mathews (1911-1984), who played "Deefy." Mathews went on to become a prolific character actor in shows like Have Gun Will Travel, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
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