In the 1930s, as the Great Depression deepened in America, tens of thousands of families in Texas and the Midwest fled poverty and the Dust Bowl for the promise of jobs in California.  Many of these refugees, failing to find steady work, were herded into migrant camps. A famous novelist, John Steinbeck, and a little-known folksinger who hailed from Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie, would soon become friends and allies in exposing the horrific conditions.

Now, a new documentary, narrated by Rosanne Cash, explores for the first time the conditions and chain of events that brought these two American icons together in California starting in 1938.  Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today includes almost a dozen of Guthrie’s greatest songs, plus one by Bruce Springsteen inspired by Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and by Woody Guthrie. It also features little-seen footage and two dozen classic photographs of Depression-era hardship by noted photojournalist Dorothea Lange.

While Steinbeck, who had researched the plight of farm workers for several years, was writing The Grapes of Wrath at his Los Gatos home, Guthrie was just starting to write some of his immortal songs (such as “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”).  Meanwhile, he was gaining exposure via a Los Angeles radio station. Soon they would both be involved in the popular movie based on the Steinbeck novel, while also appearing together at migrant camps and rallies. Guthrie would write one of his most famous songs, named for Tom Joad, the lead character in The Grapes of Wrath. Decades later, Springsteen would draw on Guthrie’s lyrics for his song, “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

The documentary was written and directed by Greg Mitchell and produced with Lyn Goldfarb.  Their recent films have earned many awards, including from the Los Angeles Press Club, as well as Los Angeles Area Emmy Award nominations. The new film will premiere on PBS SoCal in Los Angeles in June, will be available for broadcast on PBS stations nationally (check local listings), and will stream on the free PBS app. It was edited by Rob Burgos. Famed singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, the father of narrator Rosanne Cash, cited Woody Guthrie as one of his main influences.

GREG MITCHELL, Writer, Director, and Producer
Greg Mitchell’s four previous films have been aired via PBS since 2021. He is also the author of more than a dozen books, including The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and one of five finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. It was later named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five greatest books ever written about an election race. His film  Atomic Cover-Up won the top film prize from the Organization of American Historians in 2024, received three additional awards, and was screened at more than twenty festivals around the world.  
 
LYN GOLDFARB, Producer
Lyn Goldfarb is an Academy Award−nominated and award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, with nineteen films broadcast nationally on PBS and major cable networks. Her latest documentary short, Eddy’s World, was screened at more than thirty film festivals and was featured for several months on The New Yorker magazine’s site. Her feature films include:  With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade; The New Los Angeles; Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race; Danger: Kids at Work; People in Motion; and the series: The Roman Empire in the First Century, Japan: Memoirs of a Secret Empire, and California and the American Dream. Goldfarb was the director, producer, and writer of "We Have a Plan," an episode in the acclaimed 1993 The Great Depression docuseries, produced by Blackside, Inc.