Salt of the Earth

Silver City, N. Mex. (pop. 7,000) was beginning to look like a frontier outpost. Townspeople carried guns, and a detachment of state police patrolled the streets keeping the peace. The enemy this time was a small group of moviemakers--some of whom are alleged to be Communists --filming a semi-documentary about miners. The picture, Salt of the Earth, is sponsored by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (ousted from the C.I.O. in 1950 for being Communist-dominated), and the cast is composed largely of Mexican-American miners and their families from the Silver City region (TIME, Feb. 23).

The issue, according to the gun-toters: either the so-called subversive moviemakers got out of town pronto, or they would be shipped out "in black boxes." Here & there, fist fights flared; Clinton Jencks, international representative of the I.U.M.M.S.W., was twice rocked by socks in the jaw; 50 Silver City men tussled with the camera crew until state police broke it up. U.S. immigration officers arrested the feminine star of the picture, Mexican Cinemactress Rosaura Revueltas, for illegally entering the U.S.

In El Paso, Scriptwriter Michael (Five Fingers) Wilson, who refused to affirm or deny Communist Party membership before a House committee in 1951, pooh-poohed the charges of subversion. Said he: "This picture is pro-American in the deepest sense. It is a picture that depicts honest working men & women of our country in a light most Hollywood films have ignored ... The film does not inflame racial hatreds. On the contrary, it stresses brotherhood and unity ..." But by that time, few people seemed concerned with what the picture itself had to say.

At week's end, the air in Silver City began to clear. Cinemactress Revueltas abandoned her plan to fight deportation left voluntarily for Mexico. The movie crew completed location shooting, packed its equipment, prepared to go to California for final work on the picture. The townspeople packed their guns and the state police drove away. Silver City was through with the film--until next summer, anyway, when the city, by present plans, will be the scene of the world's first showing of Salt of the Earth.

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