SALT OF THE EARTH: A PATHBREAKING FILM
by Professor James Lorence, University of Wisconsin - Marathon County
Time: the 1950's
Place: Zinctown, New Mexico, USA
A pioneering independent film, Salt of the Earth (1954) was a bold attempt by blackballed artists to circumvent the notorious blacklist that enveloped Hollywood in the 1950s. Based on the bitter Empire Zinc strike of 1950-1951, Salt of the Earth told an inspiring story of victory in class struggle through solidarity across racial and gender lines. The literature and critical comment on the film at the time of its production was politically polarized. Perhaps most revealing was a special issue of California Quarterly intended to publicize the new movie and educate the public on its social, economic and political meaning.
For ten years after the film's failed distribution, little was written about the strike or the remarkable motion picture that it inspired. The silence was broken in 1965 with Herbert Biberman's gripping memoir of the filmmakers' experience. Finally, in 1978, Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt published a landmark analysis of the Salt story, in collaboration with screenwriter Michael Wilson, whose script was part of the project. Since that time scholars and critics have rediscovered the merits of the film, thus confirming director Herbert Biberman's prophetic forecast:
“Be careful whom you blacklist - he may be extolled
as a hero in the next, if not his own generation.”
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Ellen. "Salt of the Earth: Women, the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union and the Hollywood Blacklist in Grant County, New Mexico, 1941-1953." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999.
Biberman, Herbert. Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film. Boston: Beacon Press, 1965.
California Quarterly 2. Summer, 1953.
Cargill, Jack. "Empire and Opposition: The 'Salt of the Earth' Strike," in Robert Kern, ed. Labor in New Mexico: Unions, Strikes, and Social History since 1882, 183-267. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1983.
Ceplair, Larry and Steven Englund. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1979.
Dick, Bernard F. Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989.
Fariello, Griffin, ed. Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition, an Oral History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.
Garcia, Mario T. Mexican-Americans: Leadership, Ideology and Identity, 1930-1960. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Gómez-Quiñones, Juan. Mexican-American Labor: 1790-1990. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.
Gordon, Linda. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Hodges, Robert C. "The Making and Unmaking of Salt of the Earth: A Cautionary Tale." Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1997.
Kernen, Lisa. "Keep Marching Sisters: The Second Generation looks at Salt of the Earth," Nuestro 9 (May 1985): 23-25.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983. Ithaca: ILR Press, 1996.
Lorence, James J. The Suppression of 'Salt of the Earth': How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Film in Cold War America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
McGilligan, Patrick and Paul Buhle. Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
Miller, Tom. "Class Reunion: Salt of the Earth Revisited." Cineaste 13 (June 1984): 31-36.
Puette, William J. Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media Viewed Organized Labor. Ithaca: ILR Press, 1996.
Robinson, Lillian S. "Out of the Mine and Into the Canyon: Working Class Feminism Yesterday and Today." In James, David E. and Rick Bergs, eds. The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Question of Class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, 172-92.
Rosenblum, Jonathon D. Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners Strike of 1983 Recast Labor - Management Relations in America. Ithaca: ILR Press, 1995.
Rosenfelt, Deborah Silverton, and Michael Wilson. Salt of the Earth. New York: Feminist Press, 1978.
Walsh, Francis R. "The Films We Never Saw: American Movies View Organized Labor, 1914-1954," Labor History 27 (Fall, 1986), 564-80.
Zaniello, Tom. Working Stiffs, Union Maids and Riffraff: An Organized Guide to Films About Labor. Ithaca: ILR Press, 1996.
FILM RESOURCES
A Crime to Fit the Punishment. New York: Voyager, 1984.
Memorias de Sal. Las Cruces: KRWG-TV
Salt of the Earth. Los Angeles: Independent Productions Corporation, 1954.