Singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, Oklahoma-born composer of “This Land is Your Land,” was doubly-honored at Los Angeles County’s Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum Aug. 3. The folksinger was posthumously given the Will Geer Humanitarian Award during WGTB’s Echoes in the Forest annual gala at Topanga Canyon. Woody’s former cabin there was also opened that day as the Shelter, a museum with artifacts and replicas, including Woody’s lyric sheets and artwork; photos of musicians like Pete Seeger, Odetta, who performed there; a documentary on a big-screen TV; and stills from Will Geer’s movies, etc.
Born 1902 in Indiana, Geer is best known for the 1970s TV series The Waltons; portrayed Wyatt Earp in 1950’s “Winchester ’73”; played the Senate minority leader in 1962’s “Advise & Consent”; and co-starred in 1954’s “Salt of the Earth.” Will’s daughter Ellen Geer, Producing Artistic Director of the Theatricum, a 300-seat amphitheater, was interviewed in late July.
Tell us about the Shelter?
ELLEN GEER: The Shelter has become a museum that tells about the background of Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. We named it “the Shelter” because it was a shelter in the early 1950s during the House Un-American Activities Committee time. My father and mother moved out here because their work was taken away from them in Hollywood. It became a haven for not only blacklisted actors, but for folksingers, people who were put aside in that very strict time.
I was just a child then, but my parents made a living selling fruits and vegetables because my father was a horticulturist. So, not being able to act anymore, he began Geer Gardens … It was a very poor time, very hard. I don’t know how my family did it actually, the guts they had to create this space for artists to continue to work during that dark period … Pop stopped being a strong man or father image, he just wandered around and dug in the dirt …
What’s the Shelter’s connection to Woody Guthrie?
EG: Woody arrived at our door – it was just beginning, his Huntington’s Chorea [neurodegenerative disease]. My father and Woody were really good friends. They met each other at the end of the ’30s. They both had children together. My mother and Woody’s first wife were pregnant at the time, and they both ended up having their babies in the film “Fight for Life.” They were very close, spent lots of time together.
So, when Woody arrived, of course he became part of our space. He wasn’t playing as much anymore, but he wrote like crazy, so many songs here.
What are some of your personal memories of Woody?
EG: I remember Woody very well. For somebody who was not even a teenager yet, he was somebody I’d sit back and look at. I think he had a thing for my older sister, so I was protecting her. [Laughs.] … In the 1950s Woody met his wife Anneke [van Kirk] at the Shelter.
When does the museum officially open?
EG: Our grand opening is August 3, when we’re having a big gala … This year we’re giving the Will Geer Humanitarian Award to Woody at the gala. His grandson Damon is coming down and he’s going to sing one of his songs which he’s written. Previously, Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger have been here.
What’s exhibited in the Shelter?
EG: The Topanga Historical Society’s Pablo Capra spent hours in [my home’s] backroom where I have all these archives of my father’s life, his work in theater and labor camps … Newspapers, pictures, letters from Joan Crawford to Pop, all sorts of wonderful things … Many artifacts were found by Pablo, who took lots of photos of newspaper clippings [and obtained materials at Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., the Guthrie family’s archive].
Like when Pop got in trouble … and got beat up and Kate Hepburn had to bail him out. There are so many adventures of the life of being a liberal and caring about people … Library of Congress asked for the records, but I wanted this to happen first. To be on the home ground where the actual happenings happened in the ’50s. I thought it would be good – to me it’s hallowed ground, for anybody to have gone through what happened in the early fifties, and for us succeeding in creating a space that continues the passion and education of the arts …
Other Shelter artifacts include a wonderful bust of Woody. There’s a bust of my great-grandmother, Ella Reeve Bloor [a leftwing agitator]. There’s a letter from Woody to the family in the 1940s [and replica of] the lyrics to “This Land is Your Land” handwritten on paper by Woody.
Is “This Land is Your Land” a socialist song?
EG: It’s a people’s song.
How much is admission to your museum?
EG: Free!
When’s it open?
EG: Around showtimes.
Tell us about WGTB’s summer’s repertory season?
EG: We have Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”and “The Winter’s Tale.” An adaptation of Moliere’s “Tartuffe” by Freyda Thomas, set in the 1980s about televangelists. In the end the FBI gets Tartuffe, and I always thought he was Trump. [Laughs.] … Wendy’s retelling of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan.” Also, Bernardo Cubria’s “The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/ Latine Vote.”
Do you know about Woody’s song regarding Donald Trump’s father?
EG: Yes. We actually sang it at one of our Geer Family and Friends biannual story about Woody … Because Woody lived in New York City he wrote “Old Man Trump.” It just puts down the way Fred Trump treated people as a landlord. Now Donald wants to be a landlord of the country and I don’t think we should allow it.
Your father’s probably best known as Grandpa Zeb, America’s archetypal grandfather, on “The Waltons.” What kind of a dad was he offscreen?
EG: My favorite thing was to go to a nursery with him, because he’d talk to the plants. He was so supportive. He wasn’t like your regular father. He didn’t have rules … He was a wonderful man, a very good man.
What did your father play in 1954’s pro-union, pro-Latino, feminist film “Salt of the Earth?”
EG: Pop went to New Mexico to play the sheriff. It was one of the most remarkable experiences of his life. They had to work so hard to get this film about working class people being taking advantage of by the mine owners … I was just 10-years-old then and … they finished some of it here and I remember hanging clothes on a clothesline as a kid – my first film experience.
Oct. 11, we’re presenting a 70th anniversary commemoration of “Salt of the Earth” at the Theatricum. We’ll show this remarkable film and have a panel you’ll moderate with myself, Becca Wilson, daughter of Salt’s screenwriter Michael Wilson, Bill Jarrico, son of producer Paul Jarrico, and hopefully Eva Bodenstedt, niece of Mexican co-star Rosaura Revueltas. United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta has also been invited to participate. I’ll also read my father’s 1951 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Did Will become an informer and give HUAC names of suspected progressives?
EG: No ... He knew he wasn’t going to speak against his friends; he took the Fifth Amendment. Pete Seeger took the First and Lillian Hellman did it by a letter to HUAC.For info see: https://theatricum.com/.
This is an edited version of a story originally published by Truthdig, you can find the longer version at (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/woody-guthries-shack-becomes-a-shrine/).
Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. Rampell is the author of “Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States” and he co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book,” now in its third edition.
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2024
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