Bound for Glory

Bound for Glory is a 1976 American biographical film directed by Hal Ashby and loosely adapted by Robert Getchell from Woody Guthrie's 1943 partly fictionalized autobiography Bound for Glory. The film stars David Carradine as folk singer Woody Guthrie, with Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, John Lehne, Ji-Tu Cumbuka and Randy Quaid. Much of the film is based on Guthrie's attempt to humanize the desperate Okie Dust Bowl refugees in California during the Great Depression. Bound for Glory was the first motion picture in which inventor/operator Garrett Brown used his new Steadicam for filming moving scenes. Director of photography Haskell Wexler won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the 49th Academy Awards. All of the main events and characters, except for Guthrie and his first wife, Mary, are entirely fictional. The film ends with Guthrie singing his most famous song, "God Blessed America for Me" (subsequently retitled "This Land Is Your Land"), on his way to New York, but, in fact, the song was composed in New York in 1940 and forgotten by him until five years later. Plot Set during the 1930s Great Depression, Woody Guthrie, a sign painter and musician, is unable to support his family in Pampa, Texas, a town badly affected by the drought known as the Dust Bowl period. He hears great reports about California, including from those headed there; unable to find work, he joins the migration westward to supposedly greener pastures via boxcar riding and hitchhiking, leaving his wife a note promising to send for her and their children. Woody discovers the low pay and no job security for California's casual labor fruit pickers. He joins singer/union activist Ozark Bule in using music to fight for people's rights. He becomes a celebrated folk singer on radio with partners Ozark and Memphis Sue while campaigning for his causes.