Description:Pampa, Texas. 1936. Hard times during the Depression. Woody Guthrie (David Carradine), his wife Mary (Melinda Dillion), and their two small children hardly have enough money to get by. Woody's one marketable skill is sign painting but he enjoys music more. And just being with people. Occasionally, he plays dance halls and bars. For a Pampa, Texas. 1936. Hard times during the Depression. Woody Guthrie (David Carradine), his wife Mary (Melinda Dillion), and their two small children hardly have enough money to get by. Woody's one marketable skill is sign painting but he enjoys music more. And just being with people. Occasionally, he plays dance halls and bars. For a while, Woody even sets up a practice as a fortune teller, helping out a dispirited widow and a social outcast from a nearby town.
Confident that better things are to be found out West, Woody leaves a note — "Gone to California — will send for you all" — and hits the open road. Hitching rides and hopping railroad freight trains, he learns something essential about the despair and dreams of jobless men. Songs take shape in his subconscious. Arriving in California, Woody finds that it is not the Garden of Eden. Thousands of Okie farmhands are turned back at the border and those who have fifty dollars to gain entry discover all too soon that there are very few jobs available. They are crammed into migrant labor camps.
Woody meets Ozark Bule (Ronny Cox), a radio performer who gets him an audition. Before long he's got a steady job singing on the radio. In his spare time, Ozark tries to organize the farm workers into camps. But whereas he can separate his career from his politics, Woody can't; he gets in trouble with the station when he refuses to submit to censorship of his protest songs about the Dust Bowl refugees. Woody's commitment to these impoverished folk also wreck his romantic relationship with a wealthy volunteer worker.... (more)(less)
"This film is an excellent biography of Woody Guthrie, one of America's greatest folk singers. He left his dust-devastated Texas home in the 1930s to find work, and discovered the suffering and strength of America's working class. "