South Central New Mexico

As “On the Waterfront” was winning Oscars during the 1954 Academy Awards, including for director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg, another movie dealing with unions was actively being suppressed across the country. The juxtaposition of “Salt of the Earth,” filmed in Grant County, New Mexico using real strikers and telling the thinly veiled the story of the Empire Zinc mine strike of 1951 with the movie taking place on the docks of New Jersey, similar on the surface could…

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“Ring of Fear” is part “Halloween,” part “The Greatest Show on Earth” and part “Mike Hammer, Private Eye.” Only very partially filmed in New Mexico, the movie begins with a documentary feel as the Clyde Beatty Circus is shown unloading equipment, circus animals and various acts while roustabouts set up the tents and a narrator welcomes viewers to a place that “brings joy and happiness to the young and old, the hopeless and despairing of the world.” The scene quickly…

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Pursued (1947). Directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Robert Mitchum and Teresa Wright, filmed in Gallup. Director Raoul Walsh lost an eye during the filming of this film noir Western when a jack rabbit leaped through the windshield of his car. The dark mood of the film was largely the result of cinematographer James Wong Howe, one of the most sought after cameramen of the 1930s and 1940s and known for his deep focus cinematography that allowed the foreground and the…

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