M (1951)

M (1951)         B                     

USA  (88 mi)  1951  d:  Joseph Losey 

[Lang's M,] is and remains a classic, which one doesn't want to compete with, so for a variety of reasons I somewhat reluctantly undertook my version.  One was that there was a considerable Hollywood pinch because of political pressures, and I didn't want to go a long time without work.  Another was that I was very much interested in David Wayne, whom I thought brilliant and extraordinarily right for the part.  And I undertook it with a restriction on the structure and basic story line, because the censorship office wouldn't pass it as a new script, only as a remake of a classic.  Therefore my treatment of the central figure came into direct conflict with the whole structure.... All that emerges from the film, really, is a couple of--I think--remarkable sequences, some previously unseen aspects of Los Angeles, and a fantastic performance from Wayne.

—Joseph Losey, from Losey on Losey, by Tom Milne, 1967

Born in Wisconsin, the American heartland, where he was friends with Nicholas Ray in high school, Losey studied at Dartmouth and Harvard Universities, moved to New York to work in theater, directing WPA political theater groups combining an anti-realist aesthetic with radical political views.  Losey studied with Sergei Eisenstein in Moscow and Bertolt Brecht in Germany, directing the world premiere of the American version of Brecht’s play Life of Galileo in 1947, which he would later film in 1975.  By 1951, he had directed five films, none of which expressed his political views, however they do contain common themes of manhunts and mass hysteria, reflective of the political paranoia of the era.  After making his first film in Technicolor, THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948), Losey’s subsequent American films are all classified as film noir, where location shooting was an important element in all of them while also exhibiting an artistic visual aesthetic that would become the hallmark of his later more modernist studies of power and class, exploring personal relationships within the rigid British class system.  Losey had briefly joined the Communist Party in 1946 and was subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) shortly after completing this film, but was blacklisted when he refused to cooperate, leaving for Europe, never to return.  What followed was a difficult career of an artist in exile, where according to Video Curator Steve Seid from BAM/PFA (Joseph Losey: Pictures of Provocation - BAM/PFA - Film ...), “Throughout his forty-year career, Losey seemed preoccupied with the limits of personal awareness and the freedom that arises from it. His fully faceted characters confront ethical dilemmas—hypocrisy, personal weakness, moral fallibility—and more often than not fail to retain their integrity. Losey’s characters lack the very freedom he sought throughout his own life,” remaining deeply contemptuous of the American film industry, where outsiders become a recurring motif in his films.  In remaking Fritz Lang’s M (1931 in 1951 for Columbia Pictures, Losey was offered the chance to direct the film by the same producer of the Lang film, Seymour Nebenzal, though he was contractually obligated to follow the original script.  Although there are location shots of housing estates, and a long sequence shot in the cavernous and baroque complex of Los Angeles offices known as the Bradbury Building, the same locale utilized in other film noirs D.O.A (1950), I, THE JURY (1953), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), where Robert Aldrich, notably, was Losey’s assistant director, and the infamous Blade Runner (1982), the story — the hunt for a child killer (David Wayne) by two equally dubious organizations, the police and the underworld — follows many of the cultural nuances of the original.  The darkness and shadows mirror the murderer’s own mind and his own helpless recognition of his guilt. 

Losey’s earlier film THE LAWLESS (1949) reflected a similar mob mentality, introduced in voiceover, “This is the story of a town and some of its people who, in the grip of blind anger, forget their American heritage of tolerance and decency, and become the lawless.”  This overriding sense of anger and injustice was an oblique reference to contemporary politics, especially the liberals’ collective failure of nerve in abandoning the cause of the Hollywood Ten after the 1947 HUAC hearings.  Striving for an intellectual rather than an emotional connection with his audience, Losey’s pessimistic world view often alienated audiences, depicting a world ruled by coldness, greed, and hypocrisy.  After the original HUAC hearings in October 1947, there was a period of calm before the storm, as the hearings started up again in March 1951.  Nebenzal and Losey were certainly aware of the deteriorating conditions for leftists in the movie industry, making the film at the height of McCarthyism and the Red hysteria, so the cast and crew are comprised of leftists and communists that would soon be subject to the Hollywood blacklisting.  In 1950, having exhausting their appeals, the Hollywood Ten began serving their prison sentences.  Within a year, no one worked in Hollywood without political clearance approved by HUAC.  Karen Morley, playing a murdered child’s mother, seen helplessly calling her missing child’s name down the building’s enormous stairway, is unforgettable, where she had already been blacklisted, while screenwriter Waldo Salt, an unfriendly witness in 1947, was subpoenaed again for a second time.  Within this swirling maelstrom of political discontent, including a 10/26/51 article written by Lowell E. Redlings from the Citizen News that reads, “Many in the cast, whose names have been associated with communistic fronts and activities, brought about a picket line in front of the two theaters, the pickets’ signs protesting the use of ‘known reds’ in the film and therefore urging non-patronage,” Losey brings to Los Angeles the same feeling of turmoil and unrest that Fritz Lang brought to the original in 1930’s Berlin, both undergoing bouts of political upheaval.  Losey initially turned down Nebenzal’s offer to direct the remake, changing his mind because he needed money, only to discover that Lang was openly hostile to the project, where according to film scholar Thomas Elsaesser, Lang showed up at a promotional screening and got into a shouting match with Nebenzal.  The famed Austrian director was a great cultural hero during the Weimar Republic, creating the original with his second wife Thea von Harbou, becoming his first talking picture, inspired by the real-life serial killer Peter Kürten, known as the Monster of Düsseldorf.  Lang threatened legal action, but he had no screenwriting credit on the film, while the papers that would establish his rights to the story had been lost when he escaped from Berlin.  Nebenzal, a German exile who also escaped to the West, procured the rights from Harbou and simply ignored Lang’s wishes, moving ahead with Losey. 

A fundamental difference between the two versions is the shift from newspapers in the 30’s to television in the 50’s, where the citizens of Berlin learned about the child murders from newspapers and from posters plastered around the walls of the city, while the residents of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles obtain their information from watching television.  In Losey’s film, the murderer never writes to the newspapers, instead late in the film it’s the underground mob that attempts to coerce favors from newspaper publishers in exchange for an exclusive story turning the child killer over to the authorities.  While Losey’s film, at times virtually shot for shot, pales in comparison to the formal beauty of Lang’s shadowy expressionism, which was a breakthrough in sound recording and way ahead of its time in its methodical, perfectly synchronized, psychological storytelling, Losey’s version is especially noteworthy for moving the camera into the shoddy downtown streets of Los Angeles into the now demolished slum neighborhood of Bunker Hill, with its irregularly shaped streets, shabby rooming houses, and Victorian-era mansions memorialized by pulp writers such as Raymond Chandler, providing something essential that Lang’s studio-based film lacks, namely a time capsule recording of the historical architectural and urban fragments seen before their imminent demise.  Sixteen months after the end of the shoot, Los Angeles voted in 1951 to condemn most of the buildings in the neighborhood for urban renewal.  The film’s opening sequence of the Angels Flight tramway, a steep incline railway with a long flight of stone steps alongside, offers a glimpse of the hilly landscape and wide open spaces, but also a stack of newspapers with the headlines “CHILD KILLER SOUGHT” as the killer (Martin Harrow as David Wayne) boards the train just before the ascent up the hill.  What follows is a montage sequence of the killer approaching various young girls, where he’s eventually seen sprawled out on a park bench high above the hill with a panoramic view of the city below, captured by the mesmerizing cinematography of Ernest Laszlo.  Wayne has more screen time than Peter Lorre’s character, playing a helpless psychotic with a mother complex, where her framed portrait dominates the grim environment of his dark, claustrophobic apartment, seen molding clay sculptures of childlike figures before wrapping a cord around their necks and snapping the heads off.  He also collects shoelaces from his victims which are used in a sexually suggestive manner, associating masturbation with strangulation, revealing a mother-fixated sexual dysfunction that could serve as the model for Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). 

Despite a laudable cast, there’s very little connection to any of the characters with Losey, as he’s prone to do, using an overly theatrical style that distorts and exaggerates the effect of the stark realism of the streets, which has the effect of distancing the audience from the story, becoming an increasingly empty experience where women are all but absent and there’s simply no emotional connection to anyone except the lone figure of Karen Morley.  Instead, with a script that fails to live up to expectations, they all play stock characters, as Jim Backus plays the overwrought Mayor that wants action, Howard Da Silva plays a chain-smoking homicide cop that can’t give him any answers, Roy Engel is the overly paranoid police chief making apocalyptic pronouncements of doom on TV, Martin Gabel is the abrasive, tough-talking crime boss used to having his way, Raymond Burr is his stalwart henchman following orders while Glenn Anders, so familiar “taking a little tarrrr-get practice” in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947), psychoanalyzes his boss’s every move, Luther Adler plays a washed up lawyer, the mob mouthpiece who can’t stay off the booze, and John Miljan is the blind balloonist with floating fat lady balloons that recognizes the serial killer’s ominous whistling, who previously worked in silent films as well as Buster Keaton’s first talkie in FREE AND EASY (1930).  Lang’s objection to the remake was the setting in bright and sunny Southern California, the exact opposite of Lang’s carefully constructed cloistered madness, a link between silent and sound, but also German Expressionism predating Film Noir.  Berlin in the 20’s and 30’s was filled with poverty-stricken beggars and panhandlers on the streets, comprising the underground network, while Los Angeles had no such culture in the 50’s, where Losey acknowledged, “I couldn’t believe myself in the idea of the whole underworld ganging up against the killer.”  Nebenzal, however, felt the story could still work as Los Angeles, and America in general, had all kinds of random psychotics running around the streets, often seen creating a disturbing presence, but this rationalization never expresses itself onscreen, instead doing a poor job duplicating an underworld gang of thieves, where this is actually the weakest part of the entire picture.  Peter Lorre is so compelling in the original, evoking great sympathy in his speech to his accusers, not just because he is helpless to his sick condition, but because after performing such hideous acts he persuades the audience to care about what happens to him.  Wayne on the other hand, is not a sympathetic figure, where his weeping pleas about his wretched childhood dominated by his mother’s tyrannical hold on him fall short with the audience, where in the same breath his twisted mind resolutely calls her “a good woman.”     

For Lang, the film was really an anti-death-penalty statement, a reminder that no matter how grotesque the crime, criminals often tend to be victims of abuse in some strange and perverted way, where state sanctioned killing is an inappropriate response for what in large part are society’s ills, often stirred up by the voices of moral authority.  For Losey, it’s a more personally haunting psychosexual thriller with an allegorical subtext of McCarthyism, rabid anti-communism, and a lynch mob mentality that would eventually drive the director out of the country for the rest of his career.  The film is not without humor, where especially notable is a discussion between two witnesses, with a man seeing a blue dress, while a woman insisted it is red, so the man turns angrily and shouts at the woman, “What are you, a communist?”  While Losey’s film loses its way at the end, the first half is much more compelling with its excellent use of Los Angeles locations, including the infamous chase sequence that takes place inside the ornate Bradbury Building downtown on the southeast corner of Broadway and Third (just a block east of Angels Flight), with its interior courtyard, exposed elevators, and wrought-iron railings, turning into an architectural web of intrigue.  With its distinctive stairways and balconies, not to mention spatial enormity, where the killer hides in a cramped storage room of mannequin parts, Losey even filmed the roof of the building, using a notable shot through the roof’s skylight. The army of beggars mobilized by the underworld in Berlin is replaced by a fleet of radio-connected taxi drivers in Los Angeles, with views through the windows of the cars with an eye fixed on the vantage point of the road.  Losey was interested in the script for its alternately chilling and pathetic protagonist, a victim of his own psychotic compulsions balanced against recurring images where random innocent people are persecuted in the streets by a public worked up into hysteria by the child killings.  Three of the notable players, Howard Da Silva, Martin Gabel, and Luther Adler, were blacklisted, where the film was greeted by right-wing picketers in Los Angeles that October.  In Dan Callahan’s Senses of Cinema essay on Losey, Joseph Losey - Senses of Cinema, he reflects on his career:

These last fifteen years or so make for a melancholy afterthought to such auspicious beginnings, and these poor films have permanently marked Losey’s reputation. Far more damning in its way, Caute’s voluminous biography lists, in tedious detail, his many shortcomings as a man. “A bit of an old misery, an unhappy person,” said cinematographer Freddie Francis (quote from Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life, by David Caute). 

Most accounts paint Joseph Losey as almost always rude and ungenerous, a man who made many enemies and, worst of all, a man who badmouthed almost all of his actors. Perhaps he was not as smart as he thought he was. The psychological notes he kept on his characters reveal a somewhat shallow mind. In the interviews he gave, there is a strong whiff of the charlatan. Looking at the evidence, one can only assume that too much critical acclaim crippled his instincts and made his talent self-conscious. He seems so bored with the films of his last years, so passionately committed to the movies up to and including The Servant. “Do you really think he is a great director?” asked a colleague of mine, when I was starting on this piece. After a hesitation, I replied, “Yes.” We might hesitate over Joseph Losey, but we cannot deny that his best work, so wounded, so angry, so filled with crazed brio, so bold, emotional and unashamed, places him securely in the pantheon of great film directors.

MASH

Ring Lardner Jr. (far right) with eight others of the Hollywood 10 charged with contempt of Congress in 1947

 

Robert Altman at the Cannes Film Festival, 1970

MASH             B+          
USA  (116 mi)  1970  ‘Scope  d:  Robert Altman 

Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) angrily to Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) 

I wonder how a degenerate person like you could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps?

Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois) 

He was drafted.

And then there was…Korea, which flashes at the opening (at the studio’s insistence) to distinguish it from the Vietnam War, which was in full battle mode at the time this film was made, offering Altman’s own commentary on the military experience, sort of his own cinematic CATCH-22 (1970), both films satirizing American wars, which were ironically released in the same year.  The director’s cynical views are based on his own World War II experiences in the Air Force, flying over 50 bombing missions in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.  Still to this day, this remains Altman’s most popular and certainly his most commercially successful film, shot for $3 million, a half a million under budget so as not to draw attention or unnecessary interference from the studio brass, who never really knew what was happening, and grossing close to $90 million dollars, all but saving the studio, according to Altman.  The film’s popularity spawned an extremely popular TV show (starring Alan Alda) that ran for over a decade in the post Vietnam era, which used the same opening helicopter sequence, theme music (without the lyrics), with actor Gary Burghoff as Radar, and at least initially C. Wood as General Hammond, reprising their roles for television.  Altman’s son Mike wrote the lyrics to the theme song “Suicide Is Painless” at the age of 14, and reportedly made more money from the movie than his father, who reportedly made only $75,000.  Altman’s criteria for the song was that it had to be the “stupidest song ever written” called “Suicide Is Painless,” but found the task of writing stupid lyrics at age 45 too difficult for himself, assigning the task to his son who reportedly wrote the lyrics in five minutes.  The song is now ranked at #66 on AFI’s top 100 songs in American cinema, AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs.  Many more people remember the television show M*A*S*H (1972–1983), with 99 Emmy nominations breaking all network records, without ever having seen the movie, where Altman detested the television show (which lasted four times as long as the war itself), feeling it was the antithesis of what he hoped to achieve with the film, which was questioning the United States involvement in Vietnam, as America was never attacked or in danger, as it was in a politicized, artificial state of emergency left over from the rabidly anti-communist days of Senator Joe McCarthy that had little meaning to the ordinary people on the street. 

The politically subversive tone of the film struck a nerve with audiences in the late 60’s when people were feeling rebellious and anti-war, where the dark humor fit the times, much like the mocking tone of Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) towards the Cold War.  Movies with liberal, anti-authoritarian themes were all the rage in the late 60’s, like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), THE GRADUATE (1967), Rosemary's Baby (1968), MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969),  Easy Rider (1969), or The Wild Bunch (1969), a time when the studios were still run by powerfully staunch conservatives.  To make a film like this within the Hollywood studio system of the times took some clever subterfuge, where Altman describes the journey as having escaped mostly unscathed without anybody noticing, where he did his best to keep a low profile, as 20th Century Fox was more concerned with their other big budget war movies being produced at the same time, PATTON (1970), which went on to win 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, also the 4th top grossing movie of the year, and TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970), the 8th top grossing film, while MASH surprisingly topped them both at #3, while also winning the Palme d’Or Best Film at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.  The origin of the film was Richard Hooker’s 1968 book MASH:  A Novel About Three Army Doctors, a pen name for Dr. H. Richard Hornberger, a former military surgeon whose book fictionally recounts the exploits of three insubordinate Korean War surgeons, revealing how they comically resort to zany antics in order to maintain their sanity during the insanity of war.  Screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr, a former communist, was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten during the late 40’s and early 50’s era of McCarthyism, notable for serving a year in prison for contempt of Congress by not naming names of other alleged communist sympathizers, dismissed by Darryl Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox studios in 1947, where the blacklist was not lifted until he as given co-writing credits for Norman Jewison’s THE CINCINNATI KID (1965).  His interest in the novel, as he identified with the blasphemous nature of anti-establishment tone, prompted the interest of the same studio that blacklisted him, ironically rehired by Zanuck’s son, Darryl Zanuck, Jr.  Supposedly a list of about 15 directors (including Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Bud Yorkin, and George Roy Hill, among others) turned down the project until it was finally offered to Altman, something of an unheralded novice at that time with a reputation for going against the grain of studio wishes.  His work in television on the gritty war-oriented show Combat (1962–63) was notable for its anti-war flavor, which got him fired as the networks hated it, so here he gets the chance to reprise the same subversive elements again in a movie.  

One of the film’s revelations is the historical accuracy about doctors being drafted out of medical school, some after only a year or two in medical practice, where they were whisked off to the front lines in helicopters and placed somewhere close to the battlefront in one of these emergency mobile hospital units.  As soon as their boots hit the ground, they’re thrust into immediate action where they’re up to their elbows in blood, amputations, and death, where they routinely worked 16, 18, or 24-hour shifts, with one doctor reportedly working 80 straight hours due to the continual onslaught of maimed, wounded, and dead soldiers.  Some of these medical students didn’t even know where Korea was on a map, and knew nothing about the army, as they had absolutely no military training, but their surgical skills were in high demand in the early 1950’s.  Because they came from a non-military background, they tended to be eccentric, non-conformists who enjoyed tweaking the noses of authority.  This irreverence led to the tone of the book, as these doctors didn’t respect rank, they respected competency.  Always placed close to the front lines, as that’s where the casualties were, these MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) units were constantly on the move, sometimes twice daily, reportedly as many as 27 times in 11 months.  This aspect was not depicted in the film, but it did show how desperately they needed blood and basic hospital supplies, a point noted in Herbert Kline’s searing Spanish Civil War documentary HEART OF SPAIN (1937), Heart of Spain + Photo League Shorts, with the filmmakers living with a mobile medical clinic and filming it in operation, saving wounded soldiers on the front lines through blood transfusions.  Because of how valuable these doctors were, the reality was they couldn’t take them out of duty for minor military infractions, as they were needed to save lives.  The Korean War was the first use of helicopters to transport the dead and wounded out of battle zones, as there were no passable roads, where the symbol of helicopters turns out to be an interesting parallel between both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as the helicopter has come to personify both wars.  It was also the first war that routinely treated all wounded patients, friend and foe alike, where the doctors made no distinction.  One constant in the MASH units was lurking behind every off duty moment was the arrival of more helicopters, where there was a neverending demand for the services of doctors. 

Shot on back lot of 20th Century Fox studios in the Lake Malibu area, recently flooded just before shooting began, so the green foliage was quite pronounced, giving the film what could possibly be a lush Southeast Asian look, though in the background are the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles.  This is a curious little war film with no guns, no battle scenes, and is perhaps more anti-authority than anti-war, as the war itself is never in view, but instead features three doctors and a continuous line of casualties, blending comedy and carnage, where at the heart of the film are the bloody operating scenes that take the place of the battlefield operations.  Confined to their tiny geographical area, this medical unit remains psychologically confined or imprisoned by their so-called safety zone, where there are few, if any, quiet or silent moments, while they’re also restricted by the ineffectiveness of the military order and chain of command that seems to have little plan or interest in actually winning the war or understand the ramifications of any of its arbitrary rules.  In a Vietnam weary nation, where the parallels between the Korean and Vietnam Wars resonated, audiences loved the outrageousness of it, expressing shocking realism with scathingly dark humor.  Highlighting exaggerated issues of morality and sexuality, the film shows the grimness of war through the scandalous behavior of the characters who got through the war with the use of bizarre humor, which led to continuous acts of rebellion, especially the two lead characters who are flown in, Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce and Elliot Gould as Trapper John McIntyre, two out of work actors that resuscitated their professional careers by playing perversely unruly surgical doctors that dealt with life and death every day on the operating table, developing a mocking tone towards army rules and regulations, which meant nothing to them, eventually building a community of characters onscreen that exist in opposition to military authority, perhaps hoping to have a similar influence with offscreen viewers.  Gould especially seems to be channeling Groucho Marx (“Say the magic word and win a hundred dollars”), where a gong sounds after the joke punch line where a drum roll plays in stand-up comedy, where the film is a series of crude bathroom jokes and barroom humor, the more obscene the better, as according to Altman, there was nothing more obscene than patching up these wounded young men and sending them back to the front lines again, which is the true insanity of war.  14 of the 30 speaking roles were novices who had never worked on a movie before, where Altman hoped their fresh faces would enhance the film’s realism, as they could act naturally instead of offering a grand dramatic acting “performance,” which tend to be overwrought, which is exactly what Gould initially portrayed in the beginning and had to be toned down by Altman.  And if you want to see what a perfectly crafted, toned down performance looks like in an Altman film, look no further than Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973).  As is typical in Altman films, though not known by the actors at the time, there is a constant mumble in the background with people stepping on each other’s lines through overlapping dialogue, where Altman favors a more freewheeling, improvisational style to rigidly sticking to the actual script.  Ring Lardner Jr. was furious how his dialogue got lost on the set, and felt sabotaged by Altman, though he was the only one to win an Academy Award for his Best Adapted Screenplay, where Altman always followed the tone that was established in his irreverent, wildly hysterical script.

Both Sutherland and Gould couldn’t understand why Altman was paying all this attention to the extras in minor roles when they were supposedly the starring lead characters, questioning his sanity, complaining to their agents and the Fox producer that they wanted Altman out, as they felt he was an irresponsible madman who had no idea what he was doing, as there was such a chaotic atmosphere on the movie set.  Little did they know how magnificently Altman creates order out of chaos, as that is his signature style as a director, a reputation only further enhanced throughout his brilliant career.  Altman tends to get everyone involved on the set, even the minor characters, as no one knew who was miked or where the focus of the camera was during each shot, so everyone had to remain on high alert, as if the camera was on them, and it wasn’t until they saw the final edit that they had any idea what the overall vision was for the film.  In this manner, a wonderful sense of camaraderie develops on the set, as Altman loves to use an ensemble style where everybody matters.  Altman is known for embellishing the screenplay, in this case, making it more exaggerated and outrageous, creating a total farce, where the only way to survive the madness of war is by laughing in the face of certain death.  For most of the new faces, Altman raided San Francisco of all its acting talent, digging up all these personalities, where actors are given such wide latitude to offer uninhibited expression in their performances.  In order to pay for all the extras, Altman had to go through the script and give each of them at least one line, as otherwise the studio wouldn’t hire them.  One of the surprises of the film to the participating actors was the use of loudspeaker announcements that are interspersed throughout, like chapter headings, offering absurdly amusing war commentary, announcing what movie will be shown, what food establishment is suddenly off limits due to heath regulations, or a change in some military regulation, often followed by some ridiculous sounding Japanese song, written by musical composer Johnny Mandel who also scored the music to the theme song.  This decision to add a stream of messages occurred during the editing of the film, adding cohesiveness to the comical set pieces and helping to keep the chaos in order, where some were taken word for word from Korean War Almanacs and military manuals, where they also discovered (and used) an actual prayer in the army hymnal for blessing an army vehicle, in this case the stolen jeep that both brought Hawkeye Pierce to the MASH unit while also sending him back home.             

One of the more farcical elements in the film is the meeting of the two strictly by-the-book soldiers, Major Burns (Robert Duvall), an old school, Bible-reading surgeon of questionable medical skill, ridiculed relentlessly by both Hawkeye and Trapper, and Major Houlihan (Sally Kellerman), brought in as the new head nurse, who finds the contempt for Major Burns an appalling example of military protocol.  When the two devise a plan to write a letter of complaint for such a deplorable example of army morale, they can’t take their hands off each other, leading to an infamous bedroom scene where Radar places a microphone into their tent so their sexual antics can eventually be broadcast throughout the camp over the loudspeaker.  Houlihan gets the nickname “Hot Lips” afterwards, based on her own sexual ferocity on display, while Major Burns is goaded mercilessly into a ridiculous fight, where he’s sent home afterwards in a straight jacket under psychiatric evaluation.  The sexual taunts toward women aren’t the least but subtle, but are crude in nature and continue throughout the film.  While some find this an example of Altman’s misogynist nature, it’s more reflective of how women are treated in the military, showing the attitudes that existed then and now, especially with those giant male egos involved.  Despite the exaggerated satiric absurdity on display, the distrustful, anti-authority tone was reflective of the mood of the country, which was also growing tired of hearing the endless military assessments of successful missions that only sounded more and more absurd when so many dead soldiers continued to return in flag-draped coffins.  The script was about the Korean War, but all the criticisms were aimed at Nixon and the war regime.  The studios themselves felt the display of blood and guts was excessive, that it would be too grotesque for audiences, but those were the scenes that provided the authenticity of soldiers maimed and dying, which reflected the reality of a protracted war.  All the attempts to take advantage of their recreational time only grow more deliriously bizarre, going to ridiculously comic heights, like Hawkeye and Trapper turning the helipad into a driving range, wearing flamboyantly snazzy attire just to hit golf balls, where Trapper grows annoyed when an actual helicopter lands, “Wish they wouldn’t land those things here when we’re playing golf,” yet the extravagance of these outrageous stunts are continually contrasted against the bloody carnage of war. 

One other notable development involves John Schuck as Captain Waldowski, the Painless Pole who provides dental expertise, known for being the most endowed member of the male species throughout the entire Asian front, where soldiers actually line up to get a peep when he’s taking a shower.  When he has an in-bed performance crisis, which completely contradicts his Don Juan prowess, he’s ready to admit life’s not worth living anymore, that the only option is suicide.  A black capsule is the method of choice, suggesting a quick and instant (and painless) death.  On the day of the shoot, Altman changed the original plan and after a break for lunch, had an entirely new set design, also an enlarged photo of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper, lining up his characters in a similar looking, brilliantly staged scene, creating an homage to Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA (1961), which also creates an unforgettable beggar’s banquet Last Supper moment set to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”  This scene is set to the movie theme song, beautifully sung by Kenny Primus, who performed in a Broadway production of Cats for perhaps twenty years, where Hawkeye has to convince the always likable Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois) to offer the last rites, who of course considers suicide a mortal sin and an abomination.  But according to Hawkeye, he’s not really committing suicide, he’s only “intending” to commit suicide, drawing a distinction, where a little church intervention might actually prevent the poor soul from actually going through with it.  The solemn ritual is carried out with a great degree of gravity, eventually lying down in a coffin, removing his gum, and washing down the poison pill (actually a sleeping pill) with some Scotch, with everybody bringing mementos to take with him to his grave.  Bud Cort as Private Boone is deeply disappointed, reminding him that “You’re throwing your whole education away.”  While the method worked for Hitler and Eva Braun, Painless has an altogether different reaction, requiring the therapeutic services of an attractive nurse known as Lt. Dish (Jo Ann Pflug), where apparently Mulcahy’s prayers were answered. 

There’s also the infamous Hot Lips shower sequence, where the group sits around and drinks martinis in folding chairs as if they’re having a country picnic, but they’re waiting for the nurse’s allotted time to use the shower, where as they arrive each woman is casually pulled away in some needless conversation, leaving Hot Lips alone in the shower, where one side of the tent is set up to collapse on demand, leaving the poor woman naked on display in front of the entire unit, where she’s so infuriorated afterwards that she runs to the commanding officer shouting “This isn’t a hospital, it’s an insane asylum!  And it’s your fault, because you don’t do anything to discourage them!”  Certainly one of the memorable moments, as they do behave like animals, where it’s typical of the adolescent bathroom behavior exhibited throughout, where this vein of ridiculous humor is the lifeblood of the movie.  Adding to that is the infamous football game, where two military units make obscene bets over a football game.  Shot in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, the opposing team is actually a collection of professional and semi-pro players, including 6’ 8” defensive tackle Ben Davidson and tiny punt return specialist Noland Smith (aka Super Gnat), who opens the game with a touchdown, both stars from the Kansas City Chiefs, while the MASH squad enlists the aid of Fred Williamson as “Spearchucker” Jones, another Kansas City Chief defensive back player (both Davidson and Williamson also played for Oakland, but Altman knows them through his Kansas City connections) in his first film before leading a long and active career in the movies, starring in blaxploitation films during the 70’s and 80’s, where he’s still working today.  The game itself, when looked at from today, could easily be perceived as racist, where just the name “Spearchucker” was a lot for Williamson to overcome, but Fred is always a cool dude and he rises above the indignity of the occasion, as does the humor, which includes players on the opposite team smoking a joint, one of the few mainstream films of the times besides Easy Rider (1969) to freely acknowledge smoking dope, and the first use of the word “Fuck” in an R-rated film, where Painless makes a crack on the scrimmage line across from Ben Davidson, telling him “You’re fuckin’ head is coming right off,” which gets him run completely off the field.  With Hot Lips as a surprisingly enthusiastic cheerleader, putting everything she has into every cheer, even as she remains clueless about football, the game turns into a demolition derby pile up of MASH unit injuries, where Altman has a chance to add more battlefield metaphors.  There’s perhaps no way to avoid the existing racism among the troops that existed then and now, but Altman’s over-the-top portrayal is joyously crafted, grounded in ribald humor.    

While the movie features a single Korean character, Kim Atwood as Ho-Jon (who learns to mix a perfect dry martini), though that is apparently not a Korean name, and features populated street scenes in Seoul, Korea with people uncharacteristically (and amusingly) wearing Vietnamese hats, in reality MASH units were saturated by Koreans working as cooks, hospital attendants, where they were regularly assigned to clean up afterwards and keep the surgical areas and medical instruments clean.  Also, nurses, like doctors, were equally indispensable during the Korean War, though almost all were volunteers.  While it’s likely none would have actually been as openly harassed as Hot Lips, but the high percentage of rape of women in the military, where more than 20% of currently serving female veterans will be sexually assaulted according to the statistics from the recent Kirby Dick documentary 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: # 5 The Invisible War, keeps the situation a hot button issue to this day.  Nurses from the Korean War era do report placing a Korean woman with a baseball bat in front of the shower door when it was reserved time for nurses to shower.  The last MASH unit in Korea, by the way, was decommissioned in 1997.  At the time the film was released, it opened in New York during a January winter blizzard, yet there were lines around the block to get in.  A theater in Vancouver ran the film for more than a year in an era that proceeded the building of Cineplex theaters, so it was extremely popular with all audiences, including GI’s, where the military initially banned the film from playing in military bases, thinking exactly like Hot Lips and Major Burns that it would lead to poor morale, but they quickly rescinded the order when soldiers were leaving the bases in large numbers and going AWOL to see the movie.  The war was still going full blast when it was released, where the bold and audacious tone just fit with the times, expressing a little bit of the insanity in the air, a war film where the only guns fired were on the football field.  The film also expresses the bittersweet emotions that overcome soldiers when they’re informed they can go home, where there’s a guilty feeling about leaving others behind when the war was still raging.  As a result, there’s no real end to the film, as the lingering war was not over.  The Vietnam War would not officially come to an end until April 30, 1975, the year Altman released Nashville (1975), a film some consider his greatest work.  By that time Altman had made eight consecutive uniquely original visionary films that alone would have placed him among the great legendary directors of all time, but it also established him as one of the few great American auteurs with such a distinctive style to his work, where he continued to make films for another thirty years.   

Salt of the Earth

A Group of Copper Miners Near Hanover, N.M. (photo compliments of Juana Sierra, one of the picketing wives)

 

SALT OF THE EARTH        A                       

USA  (94 mi)  1954  d:  Herbert J. Biberman

Have you been to a movie this week? Are you going to a movie tonight, or maybe tomorrow? Look around the room. Are there any newspapers lying on the floor? Any magazines on your table? Any books on your shelves? It’s always been your right to read or see anything you wanted to. But now it seems to be getting kind of complicated. For the past week, in Washington, the House Committee on Un-American Activities has been investigating the film industry. Now, I have never been a member of any political organization. But I’ve been following this investigation and I don’t like it. There are a lot of stars here to speak to you. We’re show business, yes. But we’re also American citizens. It’s one thing if someone says we’re not good actors; that hurts, but we can take that. It’s something else again to say we’re not good Americans! We resent that!

—Judy Garland, 1947, speaking on the coast-to-coast radio program called Hollywood Fights Back!

Essential viewing, the lone film to fight back against McCarthyism, made by blacklisted filmmakers *after* being blacklisted, as this historical gem from 1954 is the only film in U.S. history to be blacklisted itself, not fully released in American theaters until 1965, a rousing effort and a genuinely inspiring film, where the director Herbert Biberman was one of the Hollywood Ten who were cited in 1947 for contempt of Congress and blacklisted after refusing to answer HUAC questions about their alleged involvement with the Communist Party.  Biberman and the other nine were given jail sentences of 12 months while also banished from the film industry, where a group of studio heads met and declared they would no longer employ anyone suspected of being a communist or belonging to organizations having communist sympathies.  Hundreds in the film industry suddenly found themselves out of work and unemployable.  Many people on the blacklist simply believed in civil rights, but that was decidedly “Un-American” in this postwar Red Scare.  While the committee was ostensibly seeking proof into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry, finding little evidence, they instead cast a broad net of fear and condemnation largely based on unsubstantiated rumor and hearsay, where artists were forced to name names or face jail sentences, fear tactics more typical of the communist methodology.  The East German Stasi secret police in the 70’s and 80’s became experts at it, where as many as two million informants were used, infiltrating every aspect of East German life, where spouse’s often spied on one another and an entire nation lived under fear, or the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 60’s which alleged that bourgeois elements were infiltrating communist society, insisting that those revisionists be removed and sent to re-education camps, where literally millions were subject to public humiliation, arrest, and torture, including seizure of their property.  Based upon public denunciations of alleged traitors, children often denounced their own parents, family members, or neighbors, as a large segment of the population was systematically displaced.  While not on such a massive scale, a similar method was used by witch-hunting congressmen, who were basically anti-Semitic and anti-labor and wanted to purge all liberal thought from American culture. While liberal ideas certainly influence films and literature of every era, in hindsight it’s incredulous to think so many in positions of power actually believed people were attempting to smuggle communist ideology into Hollywood screenplays, where the prevailing fear was rampant.   

Forming a group called the Independent Productions Corporation, the idea for the film came from blacklisted screenwriter and film producer Paul Jarrico who took his wife and son to New Mexico, spending time at a ranch outside Taos with union organizers Clint and Virginia Jencks who informed them about a zinc miner’s strike in Grant County in the southwest portion of the state, eventually joining the picket lines.  With fellow blacklisted friend Michael Wilson writing the screenplay, spending three months living with the primarily Mexican-American miner’s families, what he discovered was that Mexican miners were forced to live in unsanitary conditions while performing the most dangerous work, subject to more frequent accidents while earning half the pay of their white Anglo counterparts.  So the primarily Mexican-American miners went on strike at the Empire Zinc Mine & Mill demanding safer working conditions and equal pay, creating an especially tense and violent atmosphere between Anglos and Chicanos.  While the film is blisteringly realistic, shot in the Italian neo-realist style of Rossellini resembling a non-fiction documentary, yet it’s a fictionalized composite of real events based on what actually happened, partially funded by the miner’s themselves and their union, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Local 890, who are credited as producers in the film, who themselves had been expelled from the CIO in 1950 on charges of Communist domination, where the script was continually updated and revised based on input from the local miners, where most of the roles are played by the miners themselves and local Anglos working alongside blacklisted actor Will Geer as the troublesome sheriff, Grandpa from the popular television series The Waltons (1971 – 1981), one of only five professional actors.  It’s the only major American independent feature made by communists, where Jarrico later reasoned that since they'd been drummed out of Hollywood for being subversives, they'd commit a crime worthy of their punishment by making a subversive film.  The narrative thread provided throughout is by Rosaura Revueltas, a highly successful Mexican film star who was herself born in a mining town in northern Mexico, very familiar with the circumstances, playing the fictional character Esperanza Quintero:

How shall I begin my story that has no beginning?  My name is Esperanza, Esperanza Quintero.  I am a miner's wife.  This is our home.  The house is not ours.  But the flowers... the flowers are ours.  This is my village.  When I was a child, it was called San Marcos.  The Anglos changed the name to Zinc Town.  Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A.  Our roots go deep in this place, deeper than the pines, deeper than the mine shaft...

Her broken English is highly effective, as it’s a perfect balance to the dirt poor setting, with families living in tiny identical houses owned by the mining company, where this kind of hard scrabble life eking out a bare-bones existence has rarely been portrayed with such authenticity.  Esperanza’s husband is played by real-life Union Local president Juan Chacón as Ramon, whose grandfather once owned all the land in the region, but here they’re just like everybody else where all the men work in the mines.  After a series of routine accidents in the mine, causing additional hardships because only miners manned by Mexicans are ordered to work alone and not in teams, where all pleas to the boss fall on deaf ears, as the one argument the company can make to the white Anglos is that they have it better than the Mexican miners, so a systematic anti-Mexican prejudice is clearly built into the status quo, where they are the only families living in unhealthy sanitary conditions.  After yet another accident when the men are ordered to return to the mines, they refuse, calling a strike vote, demanding equal parity with the Anglo workers.  While this is a demand the company never intends to meet, they refuse to even negotiate with the striking miners, allowing the strike to drag on endlessly for months, where the sheriff, at the behest of the company, would round up the picket line ringleaders and arrest them, often beating them up as well, hoping non-union replacement workers (scabs) would be able to break through the picket line afterwards, but after a few fights with scabs where only the striking miners are arrested, the scabs, usually brought in from out of town, are more reticent to try again.  There’s one particularly intense crosscutting sequence that’s far ahead of it's time, going between Esperanza giving birth (without a doctor, who would not cross the picket lines) and her husband not being able to help her because the police are beating him up in the back of the squad car.  When a ruling comes down from the court ordering them back to work, in accordance with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, their only choice appears to be either to capitulate to the bosses and end the strike or go to jail.  In one of the more powerful moments of the film, Frank Barnes (Clinton Jencks), the international union representative, indicates this is a democratic union and the members will have to decide for themselves what course of action to pursue.  This is a chilling moment, rarely seen in other pro-union films, especially considering the staggering effect of democracy on those blacklisted. 

What follows is unprecedented in any other film of its era, as the wives of the miners come to the union meeting and volunteer to man the picket lines, claiming the law only pertains to the miners, not their wives.  Most of the men are against the idea, believing women belong at home with the children, which certainly reflects the “backward” attitudes of the times, where men, including respected strike organizer Ramon, treat their wives like second class citizens.  The union doesn’t allow non-members to vote, so after a lengthy and somewhat indecisive debate by the members, they adjourn into an all-inclusive community meeting on an issue that affects every single family and vote to accept the idea, as it’s better than the men going to jail.  The Women’s Auxiliary Committee quickly gets organized and takes action to form a new picket line, often looking after their children while picketing.  Even so the men, as well as the police, think they’ll quickly fold, but they stand firm, even when approached by scabs, surprisingly holding their own without their husband’s intervention, which would mean immediate arrest.  Many of the men feel useless at home with the children, and tend to go out drinking at night, or disappearing altogether on alleged hunting trips, where the marriages are strained, but others, faced with the drudgery that is women’s work, including laundry, cooking, cleaning, and child care, discover a newfound respect for their wives.  Esperanza is hesitant at first, pregnant with their third child, but the idea of saving her family by assuming greater responsibilities helps her grow more confident over time, where she takes ownership of her role not only in the family but in the community, where women’s equality is one of the essential forces that sustains the striking families over a 14-month period of food rationing, police brutality, trumped up charges, forced evictions, and strained home lives, made even worse when no doctors are allowed into the community, even for childbirth.  In fact what stands out today is the film’s depiction of women as brave and unyielding, taking nothing from anyone, where included in their conscious raising awareness is an idea of what could be achieved by working together.  No longer seen as an extreme leftist propaganda film, instead, it’s a surprisingly realistic look at the inequalities mining workers faced, not to mention a behind-the-scenes history lesson on the politics of the time.  The social realist film carries tremendous weight in its feminist, pro-labor views, causes that are just as relevant today, where the message for exploited workers is in the power of joining together, where it’s equally important to get the support and involvement of the larger affected community.    

Because of the unvarnished depiction of human lives, expressed with moral conviction and a sense of urgency, the film has a rare and unusually profound strength, showing historical precedent and the importance of truly independent American filmmaking.  The film was immediately denounced by the U.S. House of Representatives for its communist sympathies, with film critic Pauline Kael calling it simplistic and “as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years,” the American Legion called it “one of the most vicious propaganda films ever distributed in the U.S.” while The Hollywood Reporter claimed the film was made “under direct orders from the Kremlin.”  In fact it’s a movie where the Hollywood industry and the FBI did everything they could to insure it was never made, as described in James J. Lorence's 1999 book, The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America, and Biberman’s own book Salt Of the Earth: The Story of a Film, 1965.  During the shooting, production was hampered when they were unable to hire a union crew, as Roy Brewer (Roy M. Brewer : Biography), head of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and one of the chief cooperating witnesses at the HUAC hearings in identifying and denouncing communists within the industry (eventually naming over 150 anti-American subversives in his pamphlet Red Channels), refused to allow union personnel to participate, so the all-union crew largely consists of blacklisted members and black technicians who were otherwise unable to obtain work within a white-only industry, while other professionals were reasonably afraid they would be blacklisted for working with communists.  Brewer told reporters that he and other union officials, including Walter Pidgeon, president of the Screen Actors Guild, had been trying to halt production of the film for over a year.  Since the shooting took place during the Korean War, conservatives on the right were convinced the film was a Stalinist conspiracy to encourage the strike in order to hinder the mining of precious metals needed in the production of weapons needed for the war.  Vigilantes disrupted the production, shot at the filmmakers’ cars, and attacked some of the crew, including Clint Jencks, while town merchants wouldn’t do business with them.  The union hall in nearby Bayard was set on fire and the union hall in Carlsbad was burned to the ground, while Anglo cast member Floyd Bostick’s home was also destroyed by fire.  The FBI arrested and deported the film’s star Rosaura Revueltas on a technicality as an “illegal alien” midway through shooting, as her passport had not been stamped at the border, requiring a production team to shoot footage illegally in Mexico, where they allegedly filmed her voiceover narration, while billionaire RKO chief Howard Hughes banned laboratories from processing any post-production footage, so the filmmakers were never able to see the rushes, where editing reportedly took place in the ladies room bathroom of the closed but still standing Rialto Theater in South Pasadena.  Once completed, premiering at an independent theater in Yorkville, New York, and at the Grande Theatre in New York City, unionized projectionists were directed not to screen the film, while the FBI inspected license plates of any cars parked in the lots of the 12 theaters nationwide that eventually did show the film, languishing unseen for ten years until resurrected during the rebelliousness of the mid 1960’s, eventually selected into the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1992. 

From The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America, by James J. Lorence, 1999:

[I]n the final analysis, then, Salt of the Earth remains an enduring document of Cold War America and an emblem of determined independence.  A film little seen in its own time has become a symbol of an alternative vision of America in the 1950s, a view that emphasizes conflict and confrontation. The Salt story challenges the consensus view of race relations, gender roles, and class harmony and signifies a historical counter-trend, which existed side by side with a ‘culture of conformity.’  The age of McCarthy and ‘the Committee’ also produced the dissent of the Salt group and its supporters among the friends of intellectual and artistic freedom in a nation under siege.  For all the vicissitudes of its troubled history, Salt of the Earth remains a fragile, celluloid monument to that culture of resistance.

From the IMDb discussion forum, by hezmodo» Sat Aug 26 2006 01:42:26

My grandmother, Virginia Derr Jencks Chambers (Ruth Barnes), who died in 1991, wrote this in the 1980's (I think). The typo's are hers, by the way, as she typed it on a manual typewriter. This may answer some of the questions by some of the posted discussions. I am open to PM's if anyone has additional questions.
 

"Salt of the Earth grew out of an explosive mixture: Mexican-American nationalism, working class consciousness, cultural workers of middle-class intelligentsia who refused to be relegated to decay and who wanted to give film goers a radical view of life and, finally, a blacklisted union thrown out of the CIO, besieged by the U.S. government which willingly did the work for the great metal mining giants of this country. SALT grew out of anti-communist hysteria in Washington and the militancy of a section of the American working class. It was conceived in 1950, filmed in 1953, shown a year or two later and has been blacklisted with the U.S. commercial film market ever since.
 

Herbert Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten who had spent a year in prison, as well as Paul Jarrico and Michael Wilson, two blacklisted writers, after meeting members of the Local 890, Int’l Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, located in Bayard, New Mexico, talked to other black and graylisted artists in Hollywood about making such a picture. Their goals were:
 

1. Put to work those among them who were unable to work because of political views and/or accusations.
2. Make a contribution to a culture of reality and hope, counteracting the deluge of *beep* coming from Hollywood at this time.
3. Show political identification and sympathy between the working class and intellectuals of the left.
4. Demonstrate to the powerful Hollywood movie makers that the Left-Liberal artists had unity, a degree of power, and were not helpless in the face of the terror waged against the Left in the U.S.
 

After approaching Local 890 leadership they went to Denver to talk with Mine’s top people. IUMM&SW at that time was still a very powerful organization, still with locals in Canada, fraternal ties in Mexico. It had been expelled from the CIO in 1947 (?) as communist-dominated and the even more powerful union, the Steelworkers, which in the early 30’s had been organized itself by Communists, awarded itself the jurisdiction of Mine-Mill’s 130,000 members. This led to the end of this historic union, a union which grew out of the Western Federation of Miners. By 1965 (date?) all of Mine-Mill was in Steel; however, before the pact was signed Mine-Mill was able to win a number of concessions for its locals and its staff—so while wounded almost to death, there remained enough power to exert pressure after almost 15 years of facing the government in the form of arrests, “fellow” raiding unions, and the strength of companies such as Kennecott, Phelps-Dodge, American Smelting and Refining, Anaconda, U.S. Refining and Smelting, etc.
 

In the hope that the film might help and could do no harm the officers agreed in 1952; the event to be documented through a semi-fictional story was a strike by one unit of Local 890, an amalgamated local, against Empire Zinc. The unit was less than 200 people against a small piece of a huge cartel represented by John Foster Dulles, an attorney for the cartel. The strike started in October 1950 for parity in the district; in June, the woman, almost all Mexican-American, took over the picketlines after a local court gave the company an induction. Waves of arrests and violence follows: the press of the company followed the strike and the valiance of the women won much support through-out the country. A tiny strike caused the NY Times to send a reporter to Silver City, New Mexico ----.
 

Mike Wilson, one of Hollywood’s top talents but then blacklisted, came to the picketlines in November, 1951. He stayed around for some weeks, just observing, departed, and returned six weeks later with what became essentially the SALT script. However, upon the return, a group of union men and women gathered in a tiny living room and upon Mike’s request read and criticized the script, suggesting some significant changes. The changes were made, in the next year. Later the film crew arrived in Silver City and set up, warmly welcomed by business people, aware of the dollar potential. There is no question that the community was puzzled by why a Hollywood group had come to make a picture for that communist-union bunch in their midst, which had such a radical history. But pride and money won and for about one month the townspeople could not do enough for the crew.
 

But within less than a month the situation changed. Victor Riezdl (spel?) a venomous, anti-union, anti-“red” syndicated columnist, ran an article attacking the film makers and Mine-Mill and the continuing strike within Local 890. It was picked up by Walter Pidgeon and John Wayne, members and officers of a crypto-fascist “artists” organization, AWARE, which then demanded that the House Committee on UnAmerican activities pillory those associated with the film. AWARE was the response of the Hollywood right wing to opportunities afforded by McCarthyism and HUAC. Many people lost their livelihoods through the attempts of AWARE.
 

At this point a cresendo of hate was launched from Washington, D.C., through the HUAC and the press. The Catholic church in spot radio announcements told its followers they would be excommunicated if they persisted in helping make the film. The local vigilantes started a series of violent attacks on the union families and film people, beatings and smashing of equipment. The vigilantes were mostly businessmen, some foremen and company people, and ranchers, and they were assisted by the Silver City Press and El Paso Times (150 miles away) both carrying editorials and huge headlines calling for the reds to be run out of the Silver City area. There was an attempt to burn the union hall, a successful effort to burn the home of one 890 member, an Anglo, especially hated. The phone calls to the Jencks home, hate-filled and anonymous, came at all hours. In increasing cresendo of hate and violence until the New Mexico governor sent in state police to quell the storm.

Rosaura Revueltas, the star or SALT and Mexico’s leading actress who was flown from Mexico City to Juarez, crossing the border by bus at El Paso to work in the film, was pre-emptorily picked up in the midst of making SALT, hustled back to El Paso, locked up, and deported within a few hours for having crossed the border illegally – despite the fact that her papers were in order. This made innumerable problems in completing the picture – but all were solved by patching and planning.
 

The tension held constant for about two weeks but soon after that a few friendly small businessmen, two sympathetic priests and the head of the Highway Patrol – who had grown up in SC [Silver City] and was a very unusual Anglo because he truly like the Mexican people -- all these met with the film people and union leaders and said the situation was out of hand – that the crew must finally leave or lives would be lost. By then the local radio station had public announcements on the half hour on quotes from HUAC re Mine Mill etc., along with the threat of excommunication from El Paso. The Press daily called for violence. The entire scene was one of great terror. It became impossible to buy gasoline at stations, food for necessities. The union leadership and the Hollywood people were outcasts in a small area where everyone knew each other. Soon after the warning and demand – because those sympathetic felt that they could not hold back the flood – the film crew and actors left in small convoys at night, silent and unannounced, fearful of the black unoccupied roads before them. And the union people were left alone to do what they could. Even so, no one – then – among the hundreds who had given time and help in making the picture and any regrets. They did not get to see the fruit of the labor until almost two years later when cars drove into a local drive-in, the only place that would show it, and union people communicated their emotions over scenes in the movie by blowing their car horns! Two families from the Hollywood area joined in the celebration: a gripsman and a carpenter.
 

After the crew left another event too place: within a few weeks Jencks was arrested by the FBI, barefoot, playing ball with his children at the dinner hour. The charge was perjury of the noncommunist affidavit of the Taft-Hartley law, $10,000 bond, put up some hours later by IUMM&SW out of Denver, its headquarters.
 

The situation became untenable for either working or living and so early in June, 1952, Jencks together with his family was transferred to Denver to service mountainous locals in that area and to prepare for trial. From public records of the Health, Education and Welfare Committee of February, 1952 it became obvious why the arrest had been made; for in that time the public relations representative for Empire Zinc had appeared before a subcommittee on labor and demand that the communists making the movie, agitating in Grant County, New Mexico, be stopped. He was specific about Jencks, as well as a few others. Approximately two weeks later his wishes were met. The film crew was disbanded and Jencks had been arrested – a few days before the statute of limitations on his Taft-Hartley affidavit would have expired.
 

Because there was an agreement and conspiracy between the film industrialists, especially that great anti-communist Howard Hughes, the U.S. Dept of Justice and FBI and HUAC and Senate Sub-Committee on Internal Affairs (the McCarran Committee), along with the Motion Picture Film Operators Union – one of the most corrupt and degenerate company unions this nation has ever seen – the makers of SALT and unbelievable difficulty in getting the film printed, spliced and edited. Pieces of the work were farmed out to a score of print labs all over the LA area and editors were asked to do what they could at night with these bits and pieces. It took almost a year to get one print.
 

Finally, there was a big movie-type preview in NYC, which cost the desperate filmmakers a lot of money they no longer had. Juan Chacon and Henrietta Williams were guests, coming from Bayard. TIME magazine, the Nation and a few other publications gave favorable reviews but the political climate was such in 1953-54 that professional people were afraid to come too close; in addition, it soon became impossible to see the picture. Between the film projector’s boycott, and that of the distributors who would threaten a theatre owner that he would get no more movies if he tried to show SALT. The cooperation of the FNI was almost superfluous in getting rid of SALT. On occasions there was a tiny art of film house where the owner ran the project and was not dependant on Hollywood films (Paramount, Fox, MGM, Warners, etc.) the FBI would make its warning visit.
 

This blackout continued until the early 60’s, approximately ten years, although SALT had been acclaimed abroad, winning honors in France and Scotland, being dubbed into other languages, including Chinese. However, it took the student movement, the fightback against HUAC in SF [San Francisco] and Berkeley, the rising women’s movement, Viet Nam, La Raza, Black Panthers – all, all the great human movements associated in the United States with the 60’s to bring SALT to life in America. It served many aspects of these movements: class, national oppression, women, minorities, revolution – and best of all, humankind through love, a demonstration of the best in all of us.
 

With all its flaws – and they are there – SALT turned out to be far more meaningful than its creators could ever have hoped.
 

Almost universal in its appeal, creation of disparate forces, this film will continue to make a statement to and about our country for years to come."