Ballin offered a description of the murals at Burbank City Hall in a letter to the City of Burbank in 1948.

"The mission of a mural painting is to enhance the architecture and to give a harmonious unity to the room in which it is placed. A building is better for a good mural and a mural is better for a well designed building. The painter should take into consideration a design that best fits the requirements. Scale is vital. By scale is meant a system of proportions by which definite magnitudes serve as agreeable and proper. The question of light and color are equally important and a painter who knows mural painting gives these things paramount consideration.

Designing THE FOUR FREEDOMS, Hugo Ballin incorporated a modern tendency as influenced by the spirit of the past. He did not want the decoration to be vague and incomprehensible. He felt that the work must be in the spirit of the building. An extreme modern trend would have shocked and been aesthetically irrelevant.

"The decoration measures 22 feet long and eleven feet six inches high. The theme of the mural was taken from the ideology of the Second World War. The Four Freedoms are Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear.

"The large figures that occupy the upper half of the painting are symbolic. The lower section of the mural depicts these freedoms put into practice in everyday experience.

"The large left hand figure holds a disc showing lips as illustrative of the spoken word. In the woman’s lap are a number of books -- the printed word in various languages. Behind the woman are the letters of the alphabet. Below, several speakers are haranguing. People are looking up at them. The woman at the desk is the next to speak. The man at the typewriter is preparing his talk. Above him there are several Legion flags.

"The second panel shows Moses deep in contemplation. He is holding the tablets of the Law. There is a crucifix with some saints at the terminals of the cross. A Pope in the regalia of office is reading from the New Testament. Three old Jews are standing at a table. One man is blowing a ram’s horn. Another is holding a Torah. Below them a clergyman is at a lectern. An American Indian is protecting a flame and in front of him on their knees are four people in prayer and supplication. A savage back of the Pope is learning to pray.

"The third figure represents Plenty holding fruits and flowers. Below her is a modern market. A woman with a basket on her arm is about to receive a bag from a grocer while a little boy on his velocipede is asking for something to eat. Behind this group a man is loading a donkey. Below the donkey a sow is rooting for food. In the background a man and woman are working at a farm machine.

"Freedom from Fear is symbolized by a strong man holding a tablet which is a symbol as opposed to instruments of war and aggression. Below him is a family partaking of their evening meal. A Negro is reading his paper. Close to him is a cat and a rooster while at his elbow a child is playing with a dog. A mother and child and a rancher occupy the right corner of the composition. In the background two figures are dismantling guns while above hover protectors of the skyways.

It was the intention of the painter to have the entire mural serve to illustrate the spirit of democracy."

In his 1941 State of the Union address, Roosevelt called on the U.S. Congress to allocate funds for war production so that the United States could support its allies in Europe in their fight against Hitler. He then outlined the "Four Freedoms" (begins 5:20) that he believed were worth defending at home and abroad - the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear - which he then translated into world terms. Ballin's depiction of these freedoms, particularly the freedom from want and the freedom from fear, strayed significantly from the "world terms" outlined by Roosevelt, but reflect his attempts to translate those values into individual, human terms.

Ballin used both allegorical and "real" figures to illustrate the "Four Freedoms," placing the allegorical figures at the top of his piece and separating them in terms of scale from the "real" characters below, echoing his works at the Griffith Observatory and the Wisconsin State Capitol. Each allegorical figure holds a prop that reveals signals something about the value they represent: the freedom of speech holds a pair of lips symbolizing the spoken word and scrolls symbolizing the written word; Moses holds his tablets to signify the freedom of religion; a beautiful woman carrying the bounties of nature represents the freedom from want; and a younger "strong man" hold a tablet as a symbol of peace triumphing over aggression. By spacing them evenly, Ballin created a fragmented plane with four semi-discrete sections within one large panel, reflecting the influence of film on his storytelling techniques.

The scenes below showing the freedoms as "put into practice in everyday experience" are both realistic and romantic. In the "Freedom of Speech" section, Ballin depicted a street meeting scene that realistically captured the dozens of protest actions that occurred almost daily in Los Angeles during the turbulence of the 1930s. His "modern market scene" in the "Freedom from Want" section, by contrast, portrays a vision of consumer society from a much earlier time. By the 1930s, grocers in Los Angeles replaced store front "general store" style markets like the one Ballin created here, with larger "drive-in" super markets that offered a much broader variety of goods and processed foods. Although he did capture the modern machinery used to harvest crops in the age of industrial agriculture, the inclusion of the donkey seems anachronistic. It seems likely Ballin may only have included it as prank to make the mayor appear with the ears of a jackass, as Mayor Charlie Compton suspected in the 1960s.¹

Perhaps most noteworthy, however, was Ballin's inclusion of non-Anglo characters throughout the piece, albeit in smaller, secondary roles to the white figures. In the "Freedom from Fear" section, for example, Ballin featured two white families, each in domestic scenes with strong fathers showing clear concern for protecting their families while the mothers attend to the duties of child rearing and the home, reinforcing gender norms popularized by advertising and wartime propaganda in the 1940s. But Ballin added an African American man, not working for the families, but rather educating himself on the day's news, to this section of the mural. The black population in Los Angeles exploded during the war years, rising from 64,000 in 1940 to over 200,000 by 1946 as thousands came to the area seeking jobs in war production industries, including at the Lockheed plant in Burbank.² Ballin likely felt that in order to fulfill the building's public purpose, he needed to reflect the experiences of all of the residents and workers in the area, including African Americans, showing the evolution in his ideas about art and representation.

Details on the mural and Ballin's description courtesy of the City of Burbank. Photo by David Wu.

1. “’Freedoms’ Murals to be Liberated” Los Angeles Times May 18th, 2001; Mary Jane Strickland, Burbank Historical Society.

2. According to Josh Sides, the city’s African-American population rose from under 40,000 in 1930 to 64,000 by 1940, and to over 200,000 by 1946. See L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 37.