His ghostly muse, Bertolt Brecht, exhorts him to tell the truth, even about corrupt union officials. Flanagan's testimony underlines the value of the federal program, which allowed actors and playwrights to find decent employment and millions of citizens to taste the free expression of theater. Taking a wrecking ball to free expression. Funds for the theater project dry up and Blitzstein's play is cancelled, mirroring all too closely the events of the actual steel strike he has dramatized. He fires Rivera.
Big money appears to prevail.
From darkness, light. A splendid montage that serves as the film's finale opens with the wrecking hammers destroying Rivera's mural while an assemblage of the rich, costumed like pre-revolutionary French aristocrats, attend a ball. Mourners declaring the death of the Federal Theatre march somberly up Broadway. But Welles and Houseman have located an alternate theater.