The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
"The chocolate soldier"
Federal Music Project, sponsored by United Service Clubs of Pasadena, 1938
What it is
A color silkscreen poster announcing a Federal Music Project production of "The Chocolate Soldier," Oscar Straus's operetta, at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Made under the WPA sometime between 1936 and 1939; the designer went unnamed on the sheet.
Why it matters
The New Deal put artists on the federal payroll, and posters like this were the WPA's public face, plain, cheap to run, meant to fill a house. This one belongs to the Federal Music Project rather than the better-known Federal Theatre wing, and it was sponsored locally by the United Service Clubs of Pasadena, an operetta first heard in 1908 pressed back into service to sell tickets in Depression-era California.
What to notice
The flat, unmodulated color blocks, a woman set against a soldier, are the silkscreen's own signature: each hue laid down as its own solid pass, with no gradient to soften it.
Cheap ink, borrowed romance, a night out somebody meant to sell.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Theater poster
- Poster published
- Federal Music Project, sponsored by United Service Clubs of Pasadena, 1938
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98518998
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
