According to the California Department of Finance (1), by 1929, California was "the nation's leading agricultural state, with crops valued at over $1 billion" with the industry dominated by large corporate owned farms. The aerospace industry also emerged in California in the 1920s, with firms such as Lockheed and Douglas Aircraft becoming leaders in this sector (State of California, 3). The motion picture industry established itself in Hollywood in the early decades of the twentieth century, becoming another major business sector shaping the history and development of California. The Department of Finance (3) has stated that agriculture, aerospace, and entertainment businesses all found the temperate climate and long, sunny days of California to be a major attribute of the state which made it an appealing location for these businesses.
Films such as John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, based on the novel by John Steinbeck, serve to depict the California agricultural sector in the Great Depression (Ebert, 1). This film focuses on the experiences of the Joad family from Oklahoma and depicts the struggle of farm workers to unionize and in the process acquire a higher standard of income than was made available to migrant workers in the 1920s and 1930s in California. At that time, the film shows California as a place of great wealth but where migrants were marginalized and oppressed by corporate and big business interests (Ebert, 1). Interestingly, the efforts of United Farmworkers of America founder and leader Cesar Chavez in the 1960s indicate that the oppression of migrant workers by agribusiness in California had continued over time with relatively few improvements made in the treatment of workers. In this sense, therefore, one might make the case that very little actually changed in California over the course of almost half a century.
A film depicting the aerospace industry in California that also addresses issues re...