On Strike and on Film
Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America
Ellen R. Baker
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 09/2012
Pages: 368
Subject: History, Social Science
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9781469606545
DESCRIPTION
Baker also explores the collaboration between mining families and blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers that resulted in the controversial 1954 film Salt of the Earth. She shows how this worker-artist alliance gave the mining families a unique chance to clarify the meanings of the strike in their own lives and allowed the filmmakers to create a progressive alternative to Hollywood productions. An inspiring story of working-class solidarity, Mexican American dignity, and women's liberation, Salt of the Earth was itself blacklisted by powerful anticommunists, yet the movie has endured as a vital contribution to American cinema.