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Included in the prestigious National Film Registry of the Library of Congress,
Salt of the Earth represents a milestone in the history of American movies. It was produced, written, and directed by filmmakers who were still blacklisted when the film was made in 1953, during the anticommunist witch-hunts that plagued Hollywood (and the entire country) at the height of the McCarthy era. While the filmmakers faced misguided suspicion of promoting anti-American sentiments, the film was financed in part by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which strongly supported this powerful social-realist drama about a strike by Mexican American zinc miners in New Mexico. Featuring a prominent role for blacklisted actor Will Geer (later famous as Grandpa on TV's
The Waltons), the story intensifies when the strikers are forced to stop picketing and their wives take up the cause. Focusing on one struggling couple to illustrate its themes of individual dignity and human rights, the film was released in only 13 theaters nationwide in 1954, receiving a majority of highly positive reviews. Still,
Salt of the Earth was surrounded by controversy before, during, and after its production, and it was widely misinterpreted as a call for social revolution. It remained largely unseen in America until the 1960s, but this boldly independent film has since been duly recognized for its artistic and social importance.
--Jeff Shannon
About the Director
One of the Hollywood Ten, emprisoned for refusing to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Herbert Biberman emerged to make this independent masterpiece with a screenplay by Michael Wilson, produced by Paul Jarrico. Selected by the Library of Congress as one of the 100 films to be preserved for posterity.
