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.
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."
