v. Class Battles on Screen:
Reading and Decoding Cinematic Ideology

Worker Counterattacks

These visual assaults against labor and the left did not go unanswered. In 1918, the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen bought David Horsley's Hollywood studio, hired Upton Sinclair as their screenwriter in residence, and launched the Motive Motion Picture Company (fig. 118). The next year, Seattle workers founded the Federation Film Corporation (FFC). Likewise, socialists and militant trade unionists in New York organized the Labor Film Service in 1920 to produce, distribute, and exhibit worker-made films (fig. 119). Smaller labor film companies were started in other cities and towns around the nation.

fig 118:Motive Motion Picture Company

fig 119:Labor Film Service

Although their political sensibilities varied, these companies shared a common desire to combat the negative depictions of organized labor and to offer a series of solutions to the most perplexing problems of the day. The New Disciple (1921), produced by the FFC, portrayed worker-owned cooperatives as the best solution to postwar problems. The film delivered its serious political message in the form a love story between John McPherson, a factory worker's son, and Mary Fanning, factory owner's daughter. Like conservative filmmakers, New Disciple's producers used casting decisions to enlist audience sympathies. They cast the handsome Pill Trenton to play John, and the lovely Norris Johnson to play Mary (fig. 120, 121).

fig 120 & 121:The New Disciple (1921)