The Film

Inspired by a Woody Guthrie Song 
A Story of Greed and the Ruin It Brought to an American Town

Produced and Directed by Ken Ross & Louis V. Galdieri

1913 Massacre follows singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie to the town of Calumet, a once-thriving mining town on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula still haunted by the tragic events that inspired Woody Guthrie’s ballad, ‘1913 Massacre.’

On December 24, 1913, the striking copper miners of Calumet were gathered with their wives and children for a holiday party at the Italian Hall. After the festivities had begun, someone — to this day, no one knows who — yelled Fire!

Despite efforts to keep the Hall under control, panic took hold of the crowd. The miners, their wives and children made a mad rush for the stairs. In the ensuing chaos, seventy-four people were crushed and suffocated to death on the stairway. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. There was no fire.

In the version of events that found its way into Woody Guthrie’s song, the “copper-boss thug-men” had plotted to yell Fire! and were holding the door of Italian Hall shut, so that the miners and their families could not escape.

The town itself is still divided over exactly what happened. And no one can explain why they tore down the Italian Hall in 1984.

1913 Massacre captures the last living witnesses of the 1913 tragedy and reconstructs Calumet’s past from individual memories, family legends and songs, tracing the legacy of the tragedy to the present day, when the town –out of work, out of money, out of luck — still struggles to come to terms with this painful episode from its past.

Dreamland Pictures presents “1913 Massacre”
Produced and Directed by Ken Ross and Louis V. Galdieri
Edited by Phyllis Famiglietti
Writer and Story Editor Louis V. Galdieri
Director of Photography Ken Ross
Assistant Editor Kirk Larsen
With music by Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, Oren Tikkanen, The Finn Hall Band, Frank Christian, Les Ross, Helmer Toyras, Randy Seppala and Johnny Perona.
Copyright © Dreamland Pictures LLC. 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Major Funding By:
The Jerome Foundation
New York State Council on the Arts
Illinois Humanities Council
Keweenaw National Historical Park
The Woody Guthrie Foundation
The Puffin Foundation
Marquette County Labor Council
Teamsters Local Union No 328
Delta County Trades and Labor Council
Dickinson Iron Counties Labor Council 4-9
Michigan Labor History Society

Fiscal Sponsor:
Center for Independent Documentary