As a spotlight shines on Hollywood’s shutdown, SAG-AFTRA and the WGA continue to battle it out with the studios. We take a look back at how the film studios captured the struggle and victories of unions and labor throughout history.
From the biographical tale of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Hoffa, to classics like On The Waterfront starring Marlon Brando, and hits such as The Pajama Game, Norma Rae, and 9 to 5, featuring Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda. The latter film drew inspiration from the women’s movement, addressing issues of gender inequality, workplace harassment, and unequal treatment in the workforce.
Take a look at the selection of films that embody labor solidarity on the silver screen.
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STRIKE, 1925
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, starring Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Maksim Shtraukh & Mikhail Gomorov in a film about a group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.
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BLACK FURY, 1935
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring J. Caroll Naish (dark pinstripe suit, pointing), Vince Barnett (moustache, porkpie hat) and Paul Muni (center, boe tie, bowler) about a immigrant coal miner finds himself in the middle of a bitter labor dispute between the workers and the mine owners.
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THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES, 1941
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Sam Wood, starring Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, Jean Arthur in a film about a tycoon goes undercover to ferret out agitators at a department store, but gets involved in their lives instead.
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ON THE WATERFRONT, 1954
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando as an ex-prize fighter turned New Jersey longshoreman who struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses, including his older brother, as he starts to connect with the grieving sister of one of the syndicate’s victims.
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SALT OF THE EARTH, 1954
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Herbert J. Biberman, starring Juan Chacón, Rosaura Revueltas, Will Geer as Mexican workers at a Zinc mine who call a general strike. It is only through the solidarity of the workers, and importantly the indomitable resolve of their wives, mothers and daughters, that they eventually triumph.
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INSIDE DETROIT, 1956
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Fred F. Sears and starring Pat O’Brien as a former racketeer head of a Detroit local of the United Automobile Workers of America, A.F.L. He attempts to destroy his successor, Blair Vickers (Dennis O’Keefe), so he can put his old rackets back into the auto factories. Vickers fights him off, ultimately winning help from Linden’s attractive daughter, Barbara (Margaret Field), and from Joni Calvin (Tina Carver), Vickers’ moll.
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THE PAJAMA GAME, 1957
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen, starring Doris Day as a Iowa pajama factory worker falls in love with an affable superintendent who had been hired by the factory’s boss to help oppose the workers’ demand for a pay raise.
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THE ORGANIZER, 1963
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Mario Monicelli, starring Agenore Incrocci & Furio Scarpelli in a film about a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a late 19th Century textile factory.
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F.I.S.T., 1978
Image Credit: United Artists/courtesy Everett Collection Directed by Norman Jewison, starring Sylvester Stallone as the rebellious Cleveland warehouse worker who rises through the ranks of a trucking industry union to become union president but his organized crime links cause his eventual downfall.
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NORMA RAE, 1979
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film/Everett Collection Directed by Martin Ritt, starring sally field as a young single mother and textile worker who agrees to help unionize her mill despite the problems and dangers involved.
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NINE TO FIVE, (aka 9 TO 5), 1980
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film/Everett Collection. Directed by Colling Higgins, starring Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda in a film about three female employees of a sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot find a way to turn the tables on him. The film was inspired by the real-life experiences and frustrations of working women in the 1970s, particularly around issues related to gender inequality, workplace harassment, and unequal treatment in the workforce.
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LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, 1989
Image Credit: Cinecom Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Directed by Uli Edel, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang and Burt Young in a film set in Brooklyn during the 1950s against a backdrop of union corruption and violence.
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HOFFA, 1992
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film/ Everett Collection Directed by Danny DeVito and starring Jack Nicholson as the notorious American labor union figure Jimmy Hoffa, who organizes a bitter strike, makes deals with members of the organized crime syndicate, and mysteriously disappears in 1975.
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NEWSIES, 1992
Image Credit: Everett Collection Directed by Kenny Ortega and starring Bill Pullman, Robert Duvall and Christian Bale in a musical based on the New York City newsboy strike of 1899. When young newspaper sellers are exploited beyond reason by their bosses they set out to enact change and are met by the ruthlessness of big business.
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NORTH COUNTRY, 2005
Image Credit: Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection Directed by Niki Caro, starring Jeremy Renner, Frances McDormand and Charlize Theron in a fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States, Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit.
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