^^1 Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Nighf
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autobiography as told to Ben Reitman. In the film, Bertha is portrayed by
Barbara Hershey, who often plays second fiddle to love interest Big Bill Shelley
(David Carradine). Shelley’s name is apparently a reference to the IWW’s Big
Bill Haywood, although the union in the film is simply called The Brotherhood
of Workers. Union man Shelley is a reluctant participant in the robberies
engineered by Bertha and her gang in an effort to take from the rich and give to
the poor. Shelley’s idealism was evidently a greater threat to the establishment
than Bertha’s criminal activity as the film concludes with Shelley being
crucified on a boxcar by company thugs. This somewhat over-the-top scenario
potently captures the exploitive violence and nudity of this film which was
produced by Roger Corman, the king of exploitive films in the 1960s. Although
the film is clearly attempting to cash in on the fame of its more illustrious
predecessor, Bonnie and Clyde (1968), Boxcar Bertha is sympathetic to labor,
albeit perpetuating the violent image of the IWW found in most history
textbooks.'^
The embracing of radicalism in these early 1970s films was certainly
not apparent in director Hal Ashby’s film tribute to Woody Guthrie, Bound for
Gloty (1976), whose life and career wa s influenced by the legacy of Joe Hill and
the Wobblies. Bound for Glory concludes with the folksinger departing
California for the greener pastures of New York City in the early 1940s. As he
rides a freight train, Guthrie, portrayed by David Carradine, sings “This Land Is
Your Land,” which he wrote in February 1940. Under the direction of Ashby
and the cinematography of Haskell Wexler, the film’s conclusion becomes a
bicentennial tribute to the resilient spirit of the American people. Film viewers,
however, would certainly not surmise that Guthrie penned his anthem in angry
response to the narrow nationalism of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” As
Bryan K. Garman suggests in A Race of Singers, the problem with Ashby’s film
“is that it depicted Guthrie as a romantic individualist.” Garman writes, “The
most important thing about the filmic Guthrie is not that he fought for social and
economic justice but that he celebrated the American landscape and inspired all
people to take pride in themselves and their individual accomplishments.”'^
Despite the deradicalization of Guthrie in Ashby’s film and the anti
labor onslaught of the 1980s led by Ronald Reagan (the only union leader
[Screen Actors Guild] to ever be elected President), the Wobblies continued to
appear on the silver screen. In 1979, documentary filmmakers Stewart Bird,
Deborah Shaffer, and Dan Georgakas released The Wobblies, weaving together
archival footage with interviews of former activist Wobblies—most of whom
were in their eighties or nineties when the film was made. The witnesses
chronicle the highlights of the IWW history such as the Lawrence and Paterson
strikes of 1912-1913, as well as the murder of free speech advocates in Everett,
Washington. While this testimony describes violent encounters between the
Wobblies and company thugs, there is a cautionary note regarding popular
conceptions of IWW violence. One witness asserts that sabotage was less about
destroying the work place than the “conscious withdrawal of efficiency” in