ABSTRACT
In 1942 Pilgrim Trust withdrew, and Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) established an office in London with music, art and drama panels supporting amateurs and professionals. It was against a background of continuing austerity, rationing and the creation of the Welfare State that the Arts Council superseded CEMA, and with the subsidies they provided over the following decades, British theatre practice expanded and diversified enormously. The Arts Council was thus caught in the 1940s between Tennent's and their rivals, the Old Vic. Lewis Casson urged that any profits made by Tennent's Plays should go to the Arts Council, not the commercial producing company, and suggested that the Council was in danger of colluding with Tennent's attempts to monopolise the stars. It was ventures representing the apex of the pyramid which flourished and gave the Arts Council a firm footing in the theatre.
