SHANE AND SALT OF THE EARTH: TWO GREAT FILMS FOR EVERYTIME AND CERTAINLY NOW

SHANE AND SALT OF THE EARTH: TWO GREAT FILMS FOR EVERYTIME AND CERTAINLY NOW

Yes indeed.  These are very tough times for sure.  I can remember a few late '30s Depression and Dust Bowl scenes and I certainly recall vividly the extremely grim and dismal 1950s.  That's when I began to really come of age.  Activism of the good variety was as scarce as "rich men in heaven" and negative and stifling activism was pervasive. Still, even in The Pits, significantly hopeful signs were emerging: the incipient and growing Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South and scattered social justice struggles around the land.  A couple of very fine, stirring films came early in that challenging decade.  As I wrote some time ago:

"Shane [1953], which especially influenced a whole generation of Western
young people, involves a gun fighter well aware of Changing Times who rides
into the Wyoming side of the Teton Basin around 1889 -- great photography of
that range -- and becomes involved on the side of embattled homesteaders
under attack by big cattle interests, themselves essentially unaware that
socio-economic things are never static.  A professional gunman from
Cheyenne, imported by the cattlemen, dressed appropriately in black [and
with a black Stetson] adds a thought of "the devil himself, come riding down
the trail."  Most of the homesteaders falter in the face of cruel violence,
save Shane's hostman, who unrealistically indicates his intention to take on
the villains single-handedly.  Shane, to save his friend who would be surely
killed, knocks him unconscious -- and then takes care of the situation
himself.  He then, wounded, rides over the Tetons toward our part of Idaho.
This whole scenario is probably taken very vaguely from Wyoming's Johnson
County War.  Change to Dakota Territory in the 1870s and 1880s and you have
a maternal great grandfather of mine from Ontario accumulating a very large
land holding indeed for horse ranching purposes -- using considerable force 
to keep the homesteaders at bay.  Shane never came and my voracious kinsman
became, to put it mildly, well-to-do. [In the bitterly cold isolation of
Dakota winters, he was known to throw things -- like blacksmith anvils -- at
his eleven children, the oldest of whom was my grandfather.  Fortunately,
the old man always missed.]

If Shane is the gutty gunfighter as "lone wolf organizer,"  [or vice versa],
Salt of the Earth -- the great Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers film of
1953/54 -- is a fine and enduring testimonial to courageous collective
action and solidarity of inter-ethnic and inter-gender strikers in the face
of the brutal hostility from zinc bosses and their sheriff/deputies
sycophants.  Based, with a very few somewhat fictional digressions, on the
historic and predominately Chicano [and ultimately successful] Empire Zinc
strike in Southwestern New Mexico's Grant County in 1950-1952, most of the
workingclass acting in Salt is done by the local people [men and women]
themselves.  Blacklisted Hollywood actors play the "other side." [David
Sarvis, who depicts the Eastern mine high muckety-muck, was the nephew of
Ethel Mae Taylor, a Tougaloo teaching colleague of mine, who sometimes held
and jiggled Baby Maria.]  Salt was systematically blacklisted in the United
States for years, playing only in union halls and church basements and
academic settings as the Sixties emerged.  [We used it in the Jackson
struggle.]  Salt did play successfully over much of the world, won many top
awards, and several years ago was picked by the Library of Congress as one
of the 100 most significant films ever made in this country."

When Shane comes around on the tube which it often does, I always make a point of seeing it.   And "Shane country" -- the Tetons -- isn't far from Eastern Idaho where we now live.  Since I'm a Northern Arizonian, I do like guns, traditional ones and properly utilized of course.  And sometimes even the most "collectivist" community organizer has to be the effective lone wolf activist, at least for a time.

Salt of the Earth is extremely special for me in the personal sense. It and I have always had a very close relationship.  For a long time indeed, it was very difficult to see Salt -- unless you knew where to look.  I used to borrow it, for showing in my organizing and teaching work, from its home local union, the Amalgamated Bayard District Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Local 890.  In those days, it came to us in three 16 mm film rolls and, after I married Eldri, she faithfully operated the film projector -- sometimes carefully using a bit of scotch tape if there was any breakage.

The reason that "Salt" could be very hard to find stemmed. of course, from the almost pervasive blacklist levied by the Feds and many other reactionary critters in the U.S. that prevailed through the '50s and '60s and even beyond. It never made it to mainline film theatres or prime time television.  Fairly recently, it has appeared on Turner Classic Movies. And it's now quite available for seeing on the Internet itself. Salt is a very special film for me since, even though I was in the Army when it was made in 1953-54, I very soon thereafter connected closely with the union directly involved -- Mine-Mill -- and came to know some of the union people involved in both the historic New Mexico strike and in the film itself.

Here is the Link to our full webpage on Salt of the Earth.  And then see the film.  It's powerfully good medicine for these times.  http://www.hunterbear.org/salt.htm

And remember, while the '50s were tough -- damn tough -- Spring did come again as it always does and always will.  Even for us in this here-and-now.

In Solidarity,

Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See Witch Hunt Continues:  (Civil liberties, red-baiting, and
smear challenges faced by a successful organizer and
teacher -- with new comment, new photo:
http://www.hunterbear.org/witch_hunt_continuesthe_southern.htm

And see the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63.
http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm