Joe Hill film

IT WASN'T THAT WAY

By A. MINER

The history of the working
class since the fateful day in
November, 1915, when Joe Hill
died under a hail of bullets,
strapped to the executioner’s
chair in the sovereign state of
Utah attests that truly “Joe
Hill ain’t never died.”

However, the current film
“Joe Hill” considerably dimin-
ishes the stature and dimen-
sions of the man, the working
class organization he was part
of, and the times in which he
lived. I will leave the viewer to
conjecture whether this is de-
liberate or simply the end pro-
duct of artistically “new leftish”
and existentialist views of the
film maker.

Film critic for The Toronto
Star, Clyde Gilmour, has opined
that the film makers would have
done better to have used the rich
deep baritone of Paul Robeson,
instead of the thin soprano of
Joan Baez, to sign the title song
by Alfred Hayes and Earl Ro-
binson. It is no accident they
didn’t because that would have
added a dimension to the film
the producer had no intention of
dealing with or exploring.

That dimension is that Joe
Hill and Robeson, the black
artist, were both fighters for
their people and the working
class. As such they were and
are both victims of and earned
the undying, intense and bar-
baric class hatred of the capital-
ist class. Not so for “New Left”

Joan Baez.

The importance of this pro-
duction lies in the fact that, for
those who can understand the
role of the capitalist state and
courts, it affirms that they are,
in real life, instruments of viol-
ence, terror and oppression
against the people ... . and more
particularly against any “up-
pity” working class organizer
and/or artist who dares to or-
ganize to end that violence, ter-
ror and oppression. It doesn’t
matter whether they be black
or white.

Witness the Haymarket mar-
tyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, the
Rosenbergs, Martin Luther King
and the current frame-up and
death sentence hanging over
Angela Davis. And what about
the Governor Rockefeller order-
ed deaths at Attica, the violent
deaths of George and Jonathan
Jackson, of Fred Hampton and
countless others? Black and
white . . . but mostly black.
About the time Joe Hill set foot
for the first time in New York
City (1902) lynchings by the
Klu Klux racists were running
at a rate of one every three and
a half days...

But for the uninitiated, the
film evades the deep seated and
organic character of the terror,
violence and oppression of the
capitalist class, USA. Instead it
presents a superficial, Holly-
woodish and romantic charac-
terization of Joe Hill and the
working class he was part and

parcel of. The portrayal is es-
sentially of “the good guys and
the bad guys”. . . albeit in this
film Joe and his buddies are the
“good guys’. . . a merry, Care-
free, daring group, full of zest
and imagination, ready to tackle
the bad guys at the drop of a
hat.
What Is Missing

But the viewer gets little or
no feeling (beyond this some-
what rollicking group moving
from place to place, and con-
founding the powers that be) of
a working class organizing and
in motion, seeking desperately
to come to grips with their op-
pressors, working out their own
tactics, and, within the limits of
their. basically anarcho-syndical-
ist theory, courageously raising
high the red banners of revolu-
tionary struggle and solidarity.
Because their theories were
limited, in the end they were
defeated. But because the class
“dared to storm the ramparts”
of entrenched capitalism, the
owners killed Joe Hill.

In failing to project Joe Hill -

as the embodiment of that pro-
cess and as a product of that
class war, the film markers con-
demned his celluloid image in
this film to that of a romantic,
enigmatic soul, hardly credible
to his own people . . . the work-
ing class.

There is no doubt that Joe
Hill was a complex and sensitive
man. He himself said “I have
lived as an artist and I will die

World-wide cry: Free Angela’

By DONNA RISTORUCCI

NEW YORK — Hundreds of
thousands in Europe in all
walks of life are active in the
international campaign of soli-
darity with Angela Davis, Mrs.
Fania Jordan, sister of Angela
Davis, told a press conference
here.

Mrs. Jordan and Felicia Cow-
ard, a black member of the
Young Workers Liberation
League, have just returned from
a six-week whirlwind tour or-
ganized by the World Federa-
tion of Democratic Youth, of 11
European countries to appeal
for support in the struggle to
free Angela Davis.

The tour, part of WFDY’s

“Youth Accuse Imperialism”
campaign, was conceived at the
meeting .of world youth in Sep-
tember in Santiago, Chile.
_ Mrs. Jordan and Miss Coward
took part in 36 massive rallies
in France, Italy, Belgium, Eng-
land, West Germany, the Ger-
man Democratic Republic, Hun-
gary, Soviet Union, Finland,
Czechoslovakia and Denmark.

The rally in France on Oct. 3
drew 60,000 people.

“The tour made it clear that
the campaign to free Angela
Yvonne Davis is being waged
not only by political organiza-
tions on the left in Europe,”
said Mrs. Jordan, “but also by
broader forces.”

She pointed out that in Italy,
for example, she and Miss Cow-
ard met with parliamentary
groups which included members
of the majority social-democra-
tic parties, and that they had
contact with the Christian
Democratic Party and the vice-
premier of Italy, as well as
meetings with the Italian Com-
munist Party and the Young
Communist League.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1971 — PAGE 6

“Thousands of workers,” she
said, “convened in their own
factories, and thousands of stu-
dents gathered on university
campuses all over Europe to ex-
press solidarity with Angela, the
Black liberation movement and
all progressive movements in
the U.S.

“In the socialist countries
even kids in the street can give
you the facts on Angela’s case.”

While in ‘Europe, the two

travelers met with students
from Asia, Africa and Latin
America.

“These meetings,” said Mrs.
Jordan, “revealed that Angela
has become a vibrant symbol
for the people on these contin-
ents. struggling for national

liberation.”

A trip to Africa is being plan-
ned, she announced.

Mrs. Jordan and Miss Coward
also met abroad with the World
Peace Council, WFDY, World

Leningrad university students at a solidarity meeting

Federation of Trade Unions and
the International Union of Stu-
dents, all of which have agreed
to send or are seriously con-
sidering sending delegations of
observers to the trial.

The WPC plans to raise the
question of Angela Davis in the
United Nations Committee on
Apartheid.

Miss Coward noted _ that
throughout Europe hundreds of
thousands have written letters
and postcards and have signed
petitions to President Nixon,
California Gov. Ronald Reagan
and the California courts pro-
testing the frame-up of Miss
Davis and the arbitrary denial
of bail.

Emphasis was given by Mrs.
Jordan to the fight for bail,
made urgent by Angela Davis’
deteriorating eyesight. Miss Da-
vis is. suffering from glaucoma,
which can lead to blindness if
not treated. :

ft

for Angela

at which her sister Fania Davis Jordan spoke.

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In 1971 as in 1915...

as an artist.’”” His very commit-
ment to the working class strug-
gle made him the more enigma-
tic to his class enemies. In the
film the best of it is still Joe
Hills
direct, sparkling and razor sharp
songs, and poetry, full of satire
and laughter and love and some-
times pathos for his people. But
there is no doubt either that he
used them deliberatély (and with
malice aforethought for his class
enemies) as weapons in that
struggle.
Song as Weapon

Attestation to the enduring
sharpness of those weapons
came when the audience of
mostly young people burst into
spontaneous applause, when, in
a memorable scene he sings
down the Salvation Army with
his song “The Preacher and the
Slave”. . . and thus confounds
the strong arm of the law.

Romantic interest is provided
by an episode that doesn’t quite
wash .. . but that has remained
a mystery to this day in the
actual case of Joe Hill. The film
would have us believe that an
early love in New York of an
Italian working class girl who
deserted him to marry an opera
singer is the woman he refused
to identify to anyone. This cost
him his life according to some
authorities in the actual case.

Maybe .. . but then again...
maybe not. d

A‘Sarring note is injected into
the film when three of his fel-
low Wobblies solemnly ponder
the question “What would be
better for us .. . if they shoot
him, or if they don’t”. . . as the
execution day draws close. The
impression is left, that one of
these three, Ed Rowan, inaccur-

ately portrayed as a major fig- _

ure in the IWW, really wouldn’t
mind. having some _ bona-fide
martyr material in the form of
Joe Hill’s ashes. At the end of
the film these are left sitting
starkly in a pile on a table with
a spoon stuck in them, while
Rowan and two more unidenti-
fied IWW figures, who had been
spooning the ashes into enve-
lopes go off to dance to the

“catchy” music of the anar-
chists.
Historically, it is true that

“Big Bill’ Haywood and other
IWW leaders did present. to
delegates at a following conven-
tion, envelopes -containing Hill’s
ashes, so they were returned to
every state in the Union except
Utah, as well as to some other
countries where the syndicalist
movement existed.

ie SEs

by that I mean his:

‘question, “What are ah din

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move the blindfold 59 4
see his executioners.,
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Distorted Image 4,
Another deliberate * ‘¢
in dimension and stall,
the portrayal of Elizabé
ley Flynn. In the film,
ious, vital and them
“Rebel Girl” is show
colorless; almost
character, dowdily 9
the conventional attire ons
young church-going ™ ‘rol
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spirited, fighting lea ef
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Communist woman.
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and the working: clas
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and dimension. It is t0® oft
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a film released throus ye
mount Pictures would hé
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ed in their historic 2” pit!
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But the flowering of
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as Norman Corwin Wi ig
the victory over fascl®! ce
“so wild a dream, 45 ptt!
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