Why Suppress Salt of the Earth?

While the largest American audiences of 1954 watched James Stewart studying his neighbors in Rear Window, or Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge shooting it out in Johnny Guitar, or Victor Mature fondling Susan Hayward in Demetrius and the Gladiators, while many savored the inspired lunacies of Beat the Devil, there was one film that most were protected from seeing. Salt of the Earth, made independently by blacklisted writers—directed by Herbert Biberman of the Hollywood Ten, written by Michael Wilson, and produced by Paul Jarrico—was presented by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which had been expelled from the CIO in 1950 on charges of Communist domination. The movie was beleaguered from its inception. Filmed in Silver city, New Mexico, Salt of the Earth was based on the 1951-1952 strike by the Mexican-American zinc miners of Mine-Mill, who had demanded equality with their Anglo colleagues, as well as safety regulations on the job.

Since the film was shot before the Korean War was over, certain conservatives on the right deduced that the movie was part of a Stalinist conspiracy to encourage a copper miners’strike that would hinder the production of weapons for the war. There were ample problems in hiring a cast and a crew, because many professionals were reasonably afraid that they would be blacklisted if they worked for those who were said to be Communists. Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, headed by Roy Brewer, were not allowed to participate. The leading actress, Rosaura Revueltas, was harried by immigration officials and deported to Mexico as an “illegal alien” before the filming was finished. Vigilantes disrupted the production, shot at the film makers’ cars, and thrashed some of the crew.

Meanwhile, Congressman Donald Jackson of California, a member of the Committee [House Committee on Un-American Activities], quoted Hearst columnist Victor Riesel in Congress, warning that Communists were making a picture close to the atomic testing grounds of Los Alamos: the subversives’ proximity to secret weapons was deemed ominous. (Jackson, who was determined to quash the movie, which he called “a new weapon for Russia,” also noted that the film company had “imported two auto carloads of colored people for the purpose of shooting a scene of mob violence”—it didn’t occur to him that the black arrivals were actually film technicians.) Other technicians and laboratories declined to work on the sound and film developing; the Pathe laboratories withdrew from the film processing. Distributors boycotted the movie; even after ten years’ litigation, the producers failed in their efforts to enforce antitrust laws against the suppression of their film. Roy Brewer had assured Congressman Jackson that the Hollywood AFL Film Council would do "everything” possible to prevent Salt of the Earth from being exhibited, and projectionists and theater owners who were members of Brewer’s union would not show it. The American Legion forestalled a number of bookings. Still, the movie had sporadic engagements in ten cities. Those who saw it in Los Angeles were urged to park far from the theater because FBI agents were said to be collecting license plate numbers from cars in the lot beside the movie house.

In order to understand why Salt was suppressed, it is important to re-enter the mentality of the fifties in the United States. In 1954, it was still suspect to declare that corporations exploited their employees, or that “racial minorities” were underpaid or abused on the job, or that a company could be indifferent to the safety and health of its underlings. Only disloyal citizens would choose to discredit our democracy with such distortions; an indignant article in Films in Review claimed that the film’s “basic situations” were “untrue in terms of American life” and that the movie would be “unbelievable to all except those, here and abroad, who resent the measure of individual freedom that Americans possess.” But even if the film makers had been politically spotless, Salt of the Earth would not have been produced by any studio in Hollywood.

The Hollywood Screen Actors Guild (SAG) also played a catalytic role in the mobilization of Salt’s enemies. SAG’s vigorous response to events in New Mexico are best understood against the background of the escalating attack on Hollywood that had climaxed with the HUAC hearings of 1951, the committee chaired by Wisconsin Senator Eugene McCarthy. As a result, SAG president Ronald Reagan and executive secretary John Dales crafted a tough anticommunist stance and worked to cleanse the movie industry’s image in response to persistent allegations of Communist influence. Even more threatening was the reaction of film mogul Howard Hughes, who outlined in meticulous detail the steps that could be taken to kill the film during the post-production process. The carefully crafted Hughes letter (see file) was a blueprint for suppression. As Jarrico later noted, the struggling company (Independent Productions Corporation founded by Biberman and Jarrico) encountered trouble at every step mentioned in the Hughes plan, which “spelled out the procedure” to prevent the film’s completion and distribution.

Not long after the humiliation and deportation of Rosaura Revueltas, official persecution of the Salt circle took another turn with a legislative inquiry into the business enterprises and political opinions of Independent Productions Corporation president Simon M. Lazarus. From the earliest stages of the controversy, HUAC, INS, and the State and commerce departments had been keenly interested in the financing of the film. Now HUAC, in response to a suggestion from SAG’s Buck Harris, turned up the heat by compelling Lazarus to testify in Los Angeles on his involvement with the company. Acknowledging his role in the Salt project, Lazarus proudly disclosed his association with the picture. Prior to his testimony, he issued a sizzling press release criticizing HUAC for its attack on free enterprise through “Congressional investigation and censorship.” While refusing to reveal his political affiliation to the committee, he disclosed to the press his lifelong membership in the Democratic Party. Lazarus went on to lecture HUAC on the protections afforded by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

A motion picture is a most public document. It is meant for the

public and the public has its constitutional rights and its human

rights to receive it or reject it. To interfere with this honored

American process is not merely unconstitutional but is an insult

to the intelligence and patriotism of the people themselves. I will

not join in any attack upon the competence and intelligence and the

patriotism of the American people. (qtd, Lorence, 87)

With these words, Lazarus was acknowledging that Salt was intellectual property belonging to the men and women who made it rather than the political party they adhered to.

As James J. Lorence concludes in The Suppression of Salt of the Earth, “[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” (Lorence, pg. 202-03).

Resources consulted:

James J. 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.

Nora Sayre, “Unglaring Exceptions: Dissent in the Films of the 1950s” Monthly Review 53:5 (October 2001): 37-44.