Herbert Biberman, 50, served six months at a federal institution at Texarkana, Texas. The original film was the brainchild of director Herbert Biberman, who had been jailed for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee; Michael Wilson, a talented screenwriter who later wrote “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Lawrence of Arabia”; and producer Paul Jarrico. As Howard Hughes explained in a letter to Congressman Donald Jackson, the studios could effectively kill the picture if they denied the production access to the facilities they needed — to edit, dub, score, and otherwise prepare the movie for theaters. He was not someone who would back down from a fight, as Howard Hughes, who owned the RKO studio, learned when he removed Jarrico’s writing credit from The Las Vegas Story. Salt is based on the Empire Zinc strike of Local 890 in Bayard County, New Mexico that took place from 1950-1952. Eventually, Revueltas recorded narration under clandestine circumstances in a dismantled Mexican sound studio, and the crew shot final footage of her in Mexico and then smuggled it like contraband over the border. Salt of the Earth was released in 1954, during the anticommunist McCarthy era by a collection of blacklisted individuals, including screenwriter Michael Wilson, producer Paul Jarrico, and Hollywood 10 director Herbert J. Biberman. Afterwards, if Biberman still doubted that Chacon could get into character, Jencks had the bruises to prove he could. A special edition DVD, Salt of the Earth and The Hollywood Ten, which includes interviews with some of the miners, footage of the HUAC hearings, … With only three weeks left until shooting, the exasperated director finally decided to take a chance and cast Chacon as Ramon. The editor, who had worked only on documentaries, proved unsuitable. Throughout the shooting, Biberman marveled as Chacon grew into the part of Ramon. Three earthquakes centered in Inglewood shook the Los Angeles area early Monday, and by 8 a.m., about 40 quakes had been reported. Unionized projectionists were instructed not to show it. Plaschke: UCLA didn’t deserve to get Laettnered after playing like champions vs. Gonzaga. Many other locals found roles in front of the camera. The Hollywood Reporter called it “Commie” propaganda directed by the Kremlin. Kids Kids Template:Infobox film Salt of the Earth is a 1954 American drama film written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico.All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics.. Many of the people blacklisted never found work in movies again. The next hurdle would be finding theaters to show it. The production cast other members of Local 890 as miners and their wives. While in the short term the film reached only a small general audience, in the longer term it successfully reached specialized audiences—people who knew the film was ahead of its time. Wilson traveled to Grant County and attended union meetings, visited the miners’ homes, and watched and listened as the strike unfolded. He also fought to get blacklisted writers the screen credits denied them. They were perfectly acceptable as drama, he explained to his partners, ‘But we’re dealing with something else. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today! (He finally received the credit, posthumously, in 1998.) The Hollywood blacklist was an unofficial denial of employment to professional artists who were accused of having sympathies or direct connections with the Communist … The strikers were predominantly Mexican Americans, members of the Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a union the Congress of Industrialized Organizations (CIO) ejected in 1949 for alleged Communist influences. Salt of the Earth was a film made at the height of the Cold War during McCarthyism. The result was that instead of a monolithic studio system that could control every aspect of film production and distribution… In one of the best games in NCAA Final Four history, UCLA did not deserve to lose on one of the most unlikely final shots in tournament history. “Salt of the Earth” was so thoroughly suppressed on its release in 1954 that some film historians call it the only blacklisted American movie. The film was still far from completed. Pathé Laboratories suddenly refused to process the daily rushes, so Biberman could no longer review each day’s work and had to print scenes blind. Stalin’s pact with Adolf Hitler in 1939 disillusioned many a Beverly Hills Bolshevik, though some, like Biberman, remained unswayed. After much persuasion he agreed to host the film’s opening. While Salt of the Earth is already seen as a radical film since it involved blacklisted writers and directors during Hollywood’s Red Scare, many audiences let the political implications of the film overshadow its radical choice to prioritize a woman in its narrative. Although it wasn’t part of the settlement, the company soon provided hot running water for the miners’ homes. He died in 1997 in an automobile accident near Ojai, California, at the age of 82. By the way, actor Will Geer was also blacklisted at the time and labeled a communist. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. Throughout the 1930s, the Communist Party USA remained active in Hollywood, establishing guilds to give writers and actors bargaining clout against the studios, and fighting against Fascism abroad by championing the Spanish Republic and rallying against the Third Reich. In late summer, strikers descended upon three carloads of strikebreakers nearing the company entrance. It was shot in New Mexico, just months after the strike. Biberman developed land in Los Angeles and wrote a book, Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film, published in 1965. Blacklisted Film, “Salt of the Earth,” Will Have Remake. When director Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront opened in 1954, critics and audiences hailed the gritty movie about Hoboken dockworkers and applauded Marlon Brando’s performance as the ex-boxer who ‘coulda been a contender.’ At the next Academy Awards ceremony, On the Waterfront won Oscars for best film, best director, best actor, and best supporting actress. Charting UCLA’s roster for next season may not require much effort. Furthermore, Brewer warned Lazarus that further association with the blacklistees would finish the theater owner’s career. They rediscovered it in the ‘60s and resurrected it gradually in film schools, union halls and women’s centers. Then the wives and mothers of the union’s Ladies’ Auxiliary circumvented the injunction by marching in place of the men. One of the blacklisted Ten was Herbert Biberman, who went on to direct the 1954 independent film Salt of the Earth, arguably the most heavily-banned film in US history. A sandwich improves every hike, and in L.A., you can almost always find one not far from the other. They teamed up to form Independent Productions Corporation and set out to find a story to tell. The filmmakers first cast a blacklisted white actor for the role of the striking miner, Ramon, and picked Biberman’s wife, blacklisted actress Gale Sondergaard, as Ramon’s wife, Esperenza. As well as the overt political dispute, there were many other factors involved. Salt of the Earth is a 1954 American drama film written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico.All had been blacklisted by the Hollywood establishment due to their alleged involvement in communist politics.. They decided to make a film dramatizing the 1950-51 strike by Mexican American workers at the Empire Zinc Mine in southwestern New Mexico. As he wrote to Congressman Jackson, ‘The Hollywood AFL Council assures you that everything which it can do to prevent the showing of The Salt of the Earth will be done.’ In New York City the production found a theater owner whose projectionists belonged to a different union. This drama film is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view. In 1954, this episode was turned into a film called “Salt of the Earth,” made by filmmakers who had been blacklisted in Hollywood over alleged leftist sympathies. The strikers demanded that the Empire Zinc Corporation give them the same benefits and wages it gave the region’s Anglo miners. He was also a Communist and one of many movie professionals who found inspiration in the Soviet Union — or at least what dictator Joseph Stalin allowed the world to see of the Soviet Union. He found that company housing for Mexican Americans lacked indoor plumbing and that the company organization was stacked in favor of Anglo workers. “Salt of the Earth” was so thoroughly suppressed on its release in 1954 that some film historians call it the only blacklisted American movie. Salt of the Earth is a story about low wage labor, workers fighting for unions, women fighting for a place outside of the home and finding their political voice, and it’s about the 1950s racial hostility of Anglos toward Mexican-Americans. The U.S. Information Agency and the CIA made sure Salt got as little overseas distribution as possible. To the film’s loyalists, the fact that Hollywood is planning a remake of “Salt of the Earth” is proof of its resonance. Those of us who submerge ourselves in film history will know a great deal of this shameful era, but I’ll be quick to catch those unititated up to speed. Salt is based on the Empire Zinc strike of Local 890 in Bayard County, New Mexico that took place from 1950-1952. The director of now-forgotten films such as Meet Nero Wolfe and The Master Race, Biberman had helped found the Screen Directors Guild, which later became the Directors Guild of America. ‘We found we didn’t have to ‘act’,’ Chacon would later write about the experience. Biberman hired the Roderick brothers, two lanky white miners from another union, to play redneck deputies. Now the laborious job of post-production — the assembly and polishing of the film — began, and the movie industry made the process more difficult by throwing up as many roadblocks as it could. While the film's very exsistance is a tribute to the determination of the artists to do the right thing and not be silenced, it is much more than that. Why was the charge of “communism” leveled against the strikers? Jarrico wrote scripts in Europe and returned to the United States in the late 60s, his Communist years long behind him. In 1956 the film company filed an anti-trust suit charging more than 100 industry figures with conspiracy. Swarm of earthquakes rattles L.A. area after magnitude 4.0 jolt. News of the confrontation flashed through the mining district. As the filmmakers scrambled to find another editor, they moved operations into the ladies room of an empty theater that Simon Lazarus owned in Pasadena. Jencks emerged from the fracas with a black eye, and the violent crowd nearly destroyed the camera. B Because the film stood outside of mainstream Hollywood productions at the time, it is infused with rare perspectives on issues of ethnicity, class, and gender. Salt of the Earth ‘s director was Herbert Biberman, one of the so-called Hollywood Ten, blacklisted and jailed for over six months for not naming names—of friends—as Elia Kazan had. The film premiered on March 14, 1954, at the only theater in New York City that would show it. The New York Times‘ Bosley Crowther wrote that ‘an unusual company made up largely of actual miners and their families plays the drama exceedingly well.’ While several found it unfairly pro-labor, few saw it pro-Red, save a young writer named Pauline Kael, who wrote that it was ‘as clear a piece of Communist propaganda as we have had in many years.’. The movie sparked controversy while being filmed. Soon the media and the government began scrutinizing the maverick movie troupe. As a result, Geer appeared in very few films over the next decade. The critical reaction created problems. It is doubtful that any other American movie inspired such official harassment and outright intimidation as “Salt of the Earth,” the saga of striking Mexican American miners written and directed by blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers during the Red Scare. Those films returned to haunt the movie industry when World War II ended and the Cold War pitted the United States against the Soviet Union. Realizing the hypocrisy of this casting, they started looking for Mexican-American actors, with no luck. In 1951, HUAC increased the pressure on the movie industry with a new batch of subpoenas for Communist Party USA members, past members, and even non-affiliated liberals. Biberman, fellow Ten member and producer Adrian Scott, theater owner Simon Lazarus, and blacklisted screenwriter Paul Jarrico saw possibilities for that discarded talent. Roos rented his land to the filmmakers for one dollar. They signed her to play Esperenza. Having sustained it for 50 years, hundreds of “Salt” fans converged here for a conference sponsored by the College of Santa Fe that was part tribute to the film and part political protest rally. At first, Salt of the Earth (1953), may appear an unlikely example of a pivotal film. ‘I’m probably the only writer who has been blacklisted on both sides of the Iron Curtain,’ he said. Some saw their movie, in which Brando’s character testifies against the racketeers who run the docks, as an allegory in support of informing. Late one night in early March, someone fired shots into Clint Jencks’ parked car. Salt ran at the Grande for nine weeks, taking in a more-than-respectable $50,000, and opened in another dozen or so American theaters. Clinton Jencks remembers the community’s initial response to the Hollywood attention. Smith: Here’s what happened to some of the homeless people booted from Echo Park, UCLA players, stars react to buzzer-beater loss to Gonzaga, Six buzzer-beaters during UCLA coach Mick Cronin’s two-year tenure, Troy Aikman says UCLA proved it belonged in Final Four: ‘I couldn’t be prouder’. Juan Chacon was the union’s newly elected president, and both Revueltas and Biberman’s sister-in-law, Sonja Dahl Biberman, suggested that the director consider him to play Ramon. Indeed, this film, Salt of the Earth, was basically blacklisted (as were many of the actors, including Will Gear who plays the sheriff) in the context of McCarthyism. Denied work in Hollywood studios because of their Communist affiliations, the three formed an independent production company. Compared to the ebullient Biberman, Bessie was a dour cynic. Finding a cast would be equally difficult. by Brian Brooks. Neither side was willing to back down, and the strike lasted for 15 months. Geer was blacklisted in the early 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. After firemen came snooping they relocated again, this time to a vacant studio in Burbank. To be fair, Salt of the Earth faced a similar hard right meltdown upon its release in 1954 when it was effectively blacklisted. Communist or not, lines such as ‘This installment plan, it’s the curse of the working man,’ indicate the shortcomings of writing for ‘a people’ instead of people. He directed one more movie, Slaves, a poorly received variation on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The FBI scrutinized the film’s financing, seeking a Communist Party connection. Several weeks later someone burned the home of one of the film’s Anglo miners. Salt of the Earth was written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico – all three were high-profile victims of the infamous Hollywood blacklist. Some were blacklistees, others were documentary filmmakers who wanted to break into features, or greenhorns eager for experience. It was banned in both Canada and the States—which is shockingly hard to believe. People there objected to one scene where the main character had an extramarital fling and another in which he purchased whiskey with his last paycheck. In October 1950, after several months of unsuccessful bargaining with Empire Zinc, the members of Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW, or Mine-Mill) went on strike in Hanover, New Mexico. Both movies were shot on location with the participation of those who had lived the real stories. The day before he had received honors at a star-studded Beverly Hills soiree entitled ‘Hollywood Remembers The Blacklist.’. Michael Wilson won Oscar attention for his scripts, even though his name did not appear on the final films. One of the films blacklisted writers, Michael Wilson later went on to write screenplays or co-write them for "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" Salt of the Earth had a … In the meantime, Simon Lazarus began the process of assembling a crew. But “Salt” had a second act. By the beginning of 1954, the moviemakers had turned their raw footage into a movie. The company agreed to higher wages and insurance benefits but denied the union’s demand for paid holidays and remuneration for all time spent underground. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would give director Elia Kazan a lifetime achievement award at the 1999 Academy Award ceremonies, it reopened wounds that had not yet healed. In New Mexico a town is built by the zinc mine. The United States House of Representatives denounced it, the FBI investigated the film's finances, the American Legion called for its boycott and only 12 cinemas in the whole of America dared to screen it. That done, Biberman and Jarrico resigned from the company to move on to other work. And both movies shared a history in the Hollywood blacklist. James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. On the Waterfront was a hit and is remembered as a classic film. published in Salt of the Earth Recovery Project Digital Archive Women’s leadership roles have, historically, come up against the tradition of patriarchal authority. After all, the film was effectively banned in America for decades after its release and is hardly a well-known film among the American public. This film was produced by Paul Jarrico, directed by Herbert Biberman, and written by Michael Wilson with music by Sol Kaplan, all of whom were blacklisted. Jarrico found the subject matter while on a family vacation in New Mexico, where he heard about a mining strike in Grant County. Like Kazan’s film, Salt of the Earth was based on an actual situation, in this case a mining strike in New Mexico. So when he finished his script treatment, Wilson took it to Grant County. Salt of the Earth, a film about striking zinc miners in New Mexico, which was based on a real strike in 1951, was released on this day.Because of its left-wing perspective on the struggles of the miners, and the participation of left-wing activists, it was widely banned in the U.S. Anglo actors such as Will Geer and David Wolfe, both blacklisted, signed on as the sheriff and the chief foreman, respectively. Salt of the Earth was released in 1954, during the anticommunist McCarthy era by a collection of blacklisted individuals, including screenwriter Michael Wilson, producer Paul Jarrico, and Hollywood 10 director Herbert J. Biberman. ‘We eventually broke all that down, but it was very consciously being used as a way to keep people fighting each other instead of the company.’. In his account of the blacklist era, writer Stefan Kanfer referred to Wilson’s ‘clanking, agitprop prose.’ In some scenes the shortcomings of an inexperienced crew and amateur cast are obvious. But when the production arrived in Silver City, New Mexico, in January 1953, it still lacked a male lead. In later, friendlier years he would get credit for writing Friendly Persuasion and for his contributions to The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. The strike was settled on January 21, 1952. Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Italian painter (Sistine Madonna). The film was warmly received overseas, especially in France, and it won the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Film. Another movie about beleaguered workers opened to quite a different reception that same year. ‘I think we romanticized the Hollywood people, and the Hollywood people romanticized us.’ Some locals pitched in to help build a mine façade on the ranch of Alford Roos, an elderly independent mine owner, archeologist, explorer, writer, and rifle-toting Mohammedan with Jeffersonian political leanings. Director David Riker on the set of his previous film, “La Ciudad.” Courtesy of Echo Lake Productions. They also point out that "white list" is not the opposite of a blacklist, but rather a list, often kept by unions, of people suitabl… A union of mostly Mexican-American mine workers goes on strike and gets help from the women. He found television work and wrote films such as The Day That Shook the World. The strike sometimes became violent, as local authorities attempted to arrest picketers or strikebreakers tried to push through the picket lines. The zinc mine that was the site of the strike closed in 1967. In this assignment, you are to watch the film Salt of the Earth (which you can also find on YouTube if you prefer) and then take some time to do your own research on McCarthyism and the Hollywood Blacklists. Worse, the tin-roofed editing quarters became so hot the film began to shrivel. Salt of the Earth Assignment 1. Kazan and his writer, Budd Schulberg, had both named names — identified movie people they said were Communists — when questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). But “Salt” had a second act. At a time of intense frustration around homelessness, Gabriel Donnay’s killing by an intruder who police say was living in his car has family, friends and neighbors saying change must come. In the end, Kazan received his award without incident. Sacagawea (also Sacajawea), American explorer. The American Legion called for a boycott. Salt of the Earth (1954 b 94') En: 6 Ed: 8. Biberman had to use a stand-in for some sequences, but he still needed the actress for voice-overs and frontal shots. Jarrico sued him but lost. After eight years of litigation, they lost their suit. Its plot centres on a long and difficult strike, based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. The next day two carloads of troublemakers broke up the filming in front of the union hall. Screening the Film? ‘El Biberman, as we came to call him, was happiest when we were just ourselves.’ In the first scene Biberman shot with dialogue, Jencks’ character restrains Ramon from attacking the foreman. The writer (Michael Wilson) director (Herbert Bieberman) and producer (Paul Jarricho) of the film were members of the Blacklisted Hollywood Ten who had to set up a seperate production company to get the film produced as they were banned in Hollywood at the time. As the theater lights dimmed for a showing of “Salt,” Dolores Huerta, the renowned labor leader who, with Cesar Chavez, founded the United Farm Workers, cried, “Viva la justicia!”. (Jarrico, a leading figure in Hollywo… HUAC’s most visible targets were the so-called Hollywood Ten, filmmakers the committee charged with contempt of Congress in 1947 after they refused to answer questions about Communist affiliations. by Brian Brooks. About the Production: The film was called subversive and blacklisted because the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers sponsored it and many blacklisted Hollywood professionals helped produce it. Some of the blacklisted figures attempted to work entirely outside the studio system. Both movies were shot on location with the participation of those who had lived the real stories. The strike nearly collapsed after eight months when Empire Zinc opened the mine to scab labor and obtained a court injunction prohibiting union pickets on company property. A major theme that I see is struggle, the struggle to be seen as more than cheap labor, the struggle to create a better life for your kids, and the struggle to stand up to an unjust power. Heroically, some in Hollywood allowed their facilities to be secretly used for processing the film, a procedure that required tight security and covert operations. The director thought that ‘Johnny’ Chacon was too gentle, too small, and too shy for the part, but he let him audition. He died of bone cancer in 1971. “I’m not making the comparison to McCarthyism, but I do think that, under cover of creating an atmosphere of war, government can overreach and take power and limit people’s freedom and rights in ways that could not occur were it not for this atmosphere of fear,” said Moctesuma Esparza, who is producing the remake of “Salt of the Earth.” Esparza, who produced “The Milagro Beanfield War” and “Gods and Generals,” expects filming on the remake of “Salt” to begin later this year. A Silver City schoolteacher wrote to Walter Pidgeon, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and expressed concern that a Communist film company was manipulating the local Mexican Americans. There the similarities ended. The movie is based on the actual events of the Empire Zinc miners’ strike. Incarcerated with him was another of the Ten, writer Alvah Bessie. Herbert Biberman made a film Salt of the Earth, about striking Mexican-American mine workers, but it was boycotted by distributors, media refused to carry advertisements for … A people.’ As Wilson labored to complete a final script over the next year, he had union members and their wives look over all his drafts. And both movies shared a history in the Hollywood blacklist. Like Kazan’s film, Salt of the Earth was based on an actual situation, in this case a mining strike in New Mexico. ‘There has been a real Communist plot to capture our unions in Hollywood,’ he had told HUAC in 1947. He cringed at Biberman’s incessant good manners and his penchant for preaching politics to guards and prisoners, but he did have to admire Biberman’s dedication to his beliefs, especially when he learned that the director had offered to serve six extra months to get Bessie released earlier. There the similarities ended. A Fight Back: Salt of the Earth. Salt of the Earth premiered at the Grande Theater on March 14, 1954, to mostly positive reviews. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. In Mexico, the company found award-winning actress Rosaura Revueltas, whose young career included only a few films. Congressman Donald Jackson said the film was ‘deliberately designed to inflame racial hatreds and to depict the United States of America as the enemy of all colored peoples.’ It was, he said, ‘a new weapon for Russia.’. 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