Bound for Glory | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster by Tom Jung | |
Directed by | Hal Ashby |
Screenplay by | Robert Getchell |
Based on | Bound for Glory 1943 book by Woody Guthrie |
Produced by | Robert F. Blumofe Harold Leventhal |
Starring | David Carradine Ronny Cox Melinda Dillon Gail Strickland Randy Quaid |
Cinematography | Haskell Wexler |
Edited by | Pembroke J. Herring Robert C. Jones |
Music by | Leonard Rosenman (conductor and music adaptor) George Brand Joan Biel Guthrie Thomas Ralph Ferraro |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 147 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $10 million[1] or $7 million[2] |
Bound for Glory is a 1976 American biographical film directed by Hal Ashby and loosely adapted by Robert Getchell from Woody Guthrie's 1943 partly fictionalized autobiography Bound for Glory. The film stars David Carradine as folk singer Woody Guthrie, with Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, John Lehne, Ji-Tu Cumbuka and Randy Quaid.[3] Much of the film is based on Guthrie's attempt to humanize the desperate Okie Dust Bowl refugees in California during the Great Depression.
Bound for Glory was the first motion picture in which inventor/operator Garrett Brown used his new Steadicam for filming moving scenes.[4] Director of photography Haskell Wexler won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the 49th Academy Awards.
All of the main events and characters, except for Guthrie and his first wife, Mary, are entirely fictional. The film ends with Guthrie singing his most famous song, "God Blessed America for Me" (subsequently retitled "This Land Is Your Land"), on his way to New York, but, in fact, the song was composed in New York in 1940 and forgotten by him until five years later.