Michael Wilson, Salt of the Earth

Patrick Chura (University of Akron)

Ed. by Patrick Chura, University of Akron
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1954

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Cinema/ Film/ TV
- Screenplay

Resources

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Michael Wilson (1914-1978) was born in McAlester, Oklahoma and educated at the University of California-Berkeley, where he took a BA degree in philosophy in 1936. As an undergraduate, Wilson was active in student politics and joined the communist movement. After postgraduate studies and a year in Europe, he returned to the Berkeley campus as a political organizer and instructor of courses in Marxist theory (Baker 182).

Wilson had always planned to become a writer and initially experimented with “proletarian” short stories about the struggles of the working class. Eventually his brother-in-law, Paul Jarrico, persuaded him to try his hand at screenwriting in Los Angeles, where Jarrico had been writing movie scripts since the mid-1930s. Wilson moved to Hollywood in 1940 and earned five

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3084 words

Citation: Chura, Patrick. "Salt of the Earth". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 July 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41642, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Michael Wilson, Salt of the Earth

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