Salt of the Earth by Herbert Biberman (1954)

1 hour, 29 minutes

“In every discipline there appears at least one personality or event so

basic that no student contemplating a career should fail to study it. In

anthropology it may be Margaret Mead, in evolution, obviously Charles

Darwin, and in film making the focus should be Salt of the Earth. No movie made before or since has attempted to reflect such honorable and progressive sensibilities while simultaneously attracting the venom of its own industry, the United States Congress, and our government’s agents overseas” (Tom Miller, Cineaste v25: 3 (Summer 2000): 59)

Film Backdrop[based on actual events]:

For about eighteen months, beginning in the fall of 1950, Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Mine-Mill), went on strike against Empire Zinc. The local, based in Bayard, New Mexico, was comprised primarily of Mexican-American workers, and its nemesis, based two thousand miles away in New Jersey, was headed by intransigent industrialists. The sense of civic entitlement and empowerment that Mexican-American soldiers brought home from World War II had contributed to the miners’ determination. Company housing for Mexican-American miners was pitiful, with indoor plumbing a rare luxury. These same workers earned half the wage paid Anglos and suffered segregated toilets and washrooms. As the strike progressed and negotiations didn’t, a judge, at the behest of Empire Zinc, barred strikers from picketing. Miners’ wives took over the line the next day and held it for months against company goons, scabs, and sheriffs deputies. As the women’s picket line gained confidence, both against the company and against their hesitant husbands, they added housing conditions to the list of strike demands.

Making and Casting the Film:

The events briefly summarized above attracted support from around the country and interest from Independent filmmakers looking for material for their first effort. The principals—producer Paul Jarrico, director Herbert Biberman, and screenwriter Michael Wilson—each visited the union community in Southwest New Mexico and spoke at length with strikers, picketers, and union organizers. The union resolved to cooperate; for its part the production company agreed to grant script approval to Local 890. Offering guidance throughout was Mine-Mill organizer Clinton Jencks. When Michael Wilson presented the local with the script, the miners insisted on a number of changes, mainly to combat stereotypes of Mexican-Americans.

When it came time for casting, most of the miners and their families were played by miners and their families. For Esperanza (name meaning “hope” in Spanish), the female lead who embodied the women’s growing political awareness and emerging dignity, Biberman went with Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas. For the union organizer and his wife, Clint and Virginia Jencks played themselves. After considering different possibilities for the leading man, the producers chose Juan Chacón, a leader in the strike, to play Esperanza’s husband, Ramón Quintero. Because the Hollywood crafts unions forbade its members from taking part in the location shooting, Local #890 provided skilled labor. Local businesses, while wary, benefited from the infusion of production dollars at their stores, and for a while things went smoothly.

Suppression of Salt of the Earth:

In mid-February 1953 labor columnists and The Hollywood Reporter began to scream about “commies” in the desert, a cry that California Congressman Donald L. Jackson took up on the floor of the House of Representatives. The film industry from Howard Hughes (see Hughes letter file) on down did what it could to sabotage production and eventual distribution. The Immigration and Naturalization Service deported Rosaura Revueltas before filming was complete (a few scenes with Revueltas were later shot near her home outside Mexico city, then brought into the States cloaked as audition footage of an aspiring actress). The U.S. Information Agency and the CIA made sure Salt got as little overseas distribution as possible. [The FBI never succeeded in finding Soviet money behind the film production].

Heroically, some in Hollywood allowed their facilities to be secretly used for processing the film, a procedure that required tight security and covert operations. When it came time for Salt’s release, mainstream distributors threatened theater owners that they’d be cut off if they showed the film, and the projectionists’ union and others did what they could to ensure that theaters wouldn’t show it, either. The American Legion lobbied against its release. Eventually, a handful of theaters in major cities—and the Silver Sky Vue drive-in outside Silver City, New Mexico—premiered the film for extremely brief runs. Reviews were generally excellent, but comparatively few people got to see it and financially it was a disaster. Overseas the situation was almost as glum despite Salt’s enthusiastic reception in Mexico.

For years Salt of the Earth was reduced to an organizing tool at labor rallies in Southwestern mining camps. That is, until the 1970s, when it surfaced as a focus for interest in Mexican-American history, women’s studies, film courses, Cold War hysteria, and labor studies. Since then it has aired nationally, become the object of academic study, and made authentic heroes out of the strikers and filmmakers. A 1984 documentary, A Crime to Fit the Punishment, tells the Salt story, and “Esperanza,” an opera based on Salt, premiered in Madison, Wisconsin in the summer of 2000.

Sources consulted:

The Journal of American History (June 2001), pp. 274-275.

James Lorence. The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America. University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

Tom Miller, “The Suppression of ‘Salt of the Earth.’” Cineaste. V25:3 (Summer 2000), pp. 59-63.