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Salt of the Earth

123 statements
23 feature instances
8 referencing feature instances

Salt of the Earth	type	TVTItem
Salt of the Earth	label	Salt of the Earth
Salt of the Earth	page	SaltOfTheEarth
Salt of the Earth	comment	Salt of the Earth is a 1954 independent film directed by Herbert J. Bieberman, written by Michael Wilson, and produced by Paul Jarrico.It is a dramatization of a real miners' strike in New Mexico. Esperanza and Ramon Quintero are a married couple living in the company town of Zinc Mine; Ramon is a miner. All the miners are exploited by their callous employers at Delaware Zinc Inc., but the Hispanic miners have it even worse, living in sad company shacks that lack running water. When Delaware Zinc's cheapskate insistence on having the Hispanic miners work alone instead of in pairs leads to a man nearly getting killed, the miners go on strike.The strike is a months-long ordeal. Delaware Zinc tries to get scab workers through the picket lines but the union holds fast. Ramon spends thirty days in jail on trumped-up charges of assaulting a scab. The strike seems to be doomed when Delaware Zinc obtains a Taft-Hartley injunction requiring the miners to give up picketing or face arrest. However, one of the miners' wives notes that while the miners can no longer picket, the injunction doesn't say anything about the wives doing the picketing.The wives take their place on the picket line. While they are successful in keeping the mine closed and frustrating the will of Delaware Zinc, the role reversal does not go down well with many of the miners. Ramon in particular is not happy about being left with the housekeeping and domestic chores while Esperanza leads the wives on the picket line.Salt of the Earth proved highly controversial in the era of the Red Scare and The Hollywood Blacklist. Bieberman, Wilson, and Jarrico had all been blacklisted for their left-wing sentiments; Bieberman in fact was one of the infamous "Hollywood Ten" who were held in contempt of Congress for their refusal to name Communists in the movie industry. Salt of the Earth was Bieberman's first job after spending six months in prison. Additionally, the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, which was behind the Real Life strike and which financed the film, had been booted out of the CIO in 1950 for having Communists in its leadership. As a result, the film was almost completely suppressed in the United States in 1954, appearing in only 12 theaters.The movie featured only five professional actors: the three evil white company men, the evil white sheriff (Will Geer, who later played Grandpa on The Waltons), and Rosaura Revueltas, who starred as Esperanza. The other actors were local people and members of the real International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Local 890.Compare Letters From Marusia, a Mexican film with a similar story about heroic strikers.
Salt of the Earth	fetched	2024-03-15T15:00:05Z
Salt of the Earth	parsed	2024-03-15T15:00:06Z
Salt of the Earth	isPartOf	DBTropes
Salt of the Earth / int_18d15922	type	Title Drop
Salt of the Earth / int_18d15922	comment	Title Drop: The last lines of dialogue, as Esperanza reflects on what they've won.
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Salt of the Earth / int_1c5002bc	type	The Stoic
Salt of the Earth / int_1c5002bc	comment	The Stoic: Esperanza.
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Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Salt of the Earth / int_1c5002bc
Salt of the Earth / int_1e679bd0	type	The Quisling
Salt of the Earth / int_1e679bd0	comment	The Quisling: Sebastian, a Mexican who first tries to sneak through the picket line to work as a scab, then identifies the female leaders of the strike so the sheriff can arrest them. Ramon holds him in particular contempt for betraying his own people.
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Salt of the Earth / int_229f6872	type	A Day in Her Apron
Salt of the Earth / int_229f6872	comment	A Day in Her Apron: Ramon has to spend quite a bit of time doing the domestic chores and looking after the kids while Esperanza is on the picket line. He does not like it at all.
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Salt of the Earth / int_4b1afa0d	type	Spiteful Spit
Salt of the Earth / int_4b1afa0d	comment	Spiteful Spit: A disgusted Ramon does this when he catches Sebastian, a fellow Mexican, trying to break through the picket line. This is all the sheriff needs to arrest Ramon on assault charges.
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Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Salt of the Earth / int_4b1afa0d
Salt of the Earth / int_4e3decd5	type	A Friend in Need
Salt of the Earth / int_4e3decd5	comment	A Friend in Need: When word spreads that the Quinteros are getting evicted from their shack, everyone comes to their aid, and not just people in the town, but people who came over from the nearby open pit mine and the local mill.
Salt of the Earth / int_4e3decd5	featureApplicability	1.0
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Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Salt of the Earth / int_4e3decd5
Salt of the Earth / int_52989fee	type	Narrator
Salt of the Earth / int_52989fee	comment	Narrator: Esperanza's narration plays over the story.
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Salt of the Earth / int_67711aa	type	Company Town
Salt of the Earth / int_67711aa	comment	Company Town: Delaware Zinc owns everything, including the general store and the houses the miners live in.
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Salt of the Earth / int_6bda9a30	type	Meaningful Name
Salt of the Earth / int_6bda9a30	comment	Meaningful Name: Esperanza means "hope" in Spanish.
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Salt of the Earth / int_73d4b01a	type	In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It
Salt of the Earth / int_73d4b01a	comment	In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: The title card says "Salt of the Earth by Michael Wilson".
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Salt of the Earth / int_7f8a8edd	type	Amateur Cast
Salt of the Earth / int_7f8a8edd	comment	Amateur Cast/Autobiographical Role: In general the union members, but in particular Juan Chacon (Ramon), Clinton Jencks (Frank) and Henrietta Williams (Teresa, the leader of the women's auxiliary) play fictionalized versions of themselves and their roles in the actual strike.
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Salt of the Earth / int_87572663	type	Wrong Side of the Tracks
Salt of the Earth / int_87572663	comment	Wrong Side of the Tracks: Literally, as Esperanza notes that the white miners living on the other side of the railroad tracks have better homes, that have running water.
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Salt of the Earth / int_87629455	type	No Communities Were Harmed
Salt of the Earth / int_87629455	comment	No Communities Were Harmed: Zinctown is the thinly fictionalized equivalent of Hanover and Silver City, where the actual strikes took place.
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Salt of the Earth / int_8b60a09b	type	Capitalism Is Bad
Salt of the Earth / int_8b60a09b	comment	Capitalism Is Bad: This film really never stood a chance of getting seen in the United States, seeing as how it's a portrait of brave, determined laborers joining together to fight against greedy capitalist bosses and their law enforcement lackeys. It did, however, get shown in Commnuist China, being the only American film shown there between 1950 and 1979.
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Salt of the Earth / int_950bbfa7	type	Take a Third Option
Salt of the Earth / int_950bbfa7	comment	Take a Third Option: Sending the wives out on the picket line, rather than giving up or remaining defiant and going to jail.
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Salt of the Earth / int_a8556a04	type	Video Credits
Salt of the Earth / int_a8556a04	comment	Video Credits: Divided into the professional cast and the non-professional cast.
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Salt of the Earth / int_a90fff3	type	Based on a True Story
Salt of the Earth / int_a90fff3	comment	Based on a True Story: The Empire Zinc Strike of 1950-52, with events fictionalized and the name of the town and the company changed. Real Life union organizer Clinton Jencks plays Frank Barnes, an Expy of himself.
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Salt of the Earth / int_d794962b	type	Public Domain Feature Films
Salt of the Earth / int_d794962b	comment	Public Domain Feature Films: The film's copyright lapsed in 1982.
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Salt of the Earth / int_e11b003d	type	Translation Convention
Salt of the Earth / int_e11b003d	comment	Translation Convention: Inconsistently applied. For most of the film the actors speak in English rather than the Spanish that the real Mexican mine workers surely would have used. In a couple of scenes where the actors veer into Spanish, Esperanza's narration explains what they're saying.
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Salt of the Earth / int_e9e35e8f	type	Exact Words
Salt of the Earth / int_e9e35e8f	comment	Exact Words: The miners are facing the bleak dilemma of either giving up their strike and getting nothing, or going to prison. Then one of the wives points out that while the injunction forbids the miners from picketing, it doesn't say anything about the wives.
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Salt of the Earth / int_f951f89b	type	Bad to the Last Drop
Salt of the Earth / int_f951f89b	comment	Bad to the Last Drop: How Esperanza gets involved with the strike. Ramon hates the coffee made by the other women.
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Salt of the Earth / int_fe0330fb	type	Brick Joke
Salt of the Earth / int_fe0330fb	comment	Brick Joke: At a party, one of the wives tells the others that if anyone dances with her husband, they'll have to deal with his excessive butt-swiveling dancing. Later, at another party, as the husband is swiveling away, the wife points at his butt and nods to the other wives.
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Salt of the Earth / int_name	type	ItemName
Salt of the Earth / int_name	comment
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Salt of the Earth / int_name	itemName	Salt of the Earth

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

SaltoftheEarth	sameAs	Salt of the Earth
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	A Day in Her Apron / int_89649840
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Capitalism Is Bad / int_89649840
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Company Town / int_89649840
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Latino-American Media / int_89649840
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Spiteful Spit / int_89649840
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Video Credits / int_89649840
Salt of the Earth	hasFeature	Wrong Side of the Tracks / int_89649840

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