- “31 Days of Oscar” on TCM – Day 14: On Feb. 26 (daytime), Turner Classic Movies’ lineup of Academy Award-pedigreed titles consists of four narrative features in which a labor strike plays a key role in the plot, in addition to the documentary Harlan County, U.S.A., about a real-life strike.
‘31 Days of Oscar’ on TCM – Day 14 (daytime): Black Fury and Harlan County, U.S.A. among 5 titles dealing with labor strikes
Turner Classic Movies’ 2026 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Thursday (daytime), Feb. 26, with the airing of four Oscar-winning or -nominated narrative features in which a labor strike has a key role in the plot, in addition to the Oscar-winning documentary feature Harlan County, U.S.A., about a real-life strike. (See TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar 2026 – Day 13: On Strike” movie schedule further below. Most entries should remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Below is a brief overview of each “31 Days of Oscar – Day 14: On Strike” title, listed in chronological order.
Black Fury (1935)
More of a historical curiosity than an exemplar of cinematic high drama, Warner Bros.’ political-socially conscious Black Fury stars soon-to-be Best Actor winner Paul Muni (The Story of Louis Pasteur, 1936) as Slovakian laborer Joe Radek, who, as fate (and obstinacy) would have it, becomes the leader of a group of striking workers in Pennsylvania’s coal country.
Dragging down the proceedings, Muni plays Radek not as if he were an adult man with a thick foreign accent, but as an overgrown child whose clunky English (“Why you all time talk?”) is indicative of his “innocent” worldview – an approach to the character that is both condescending and irritating. Not helping matters: Muni and the far more personable William Gargan have about zero chemistry with nominal leading woman Karen Morley.
Black Fury was directed by future Academy Award winner Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, 1943) from a screenplay by Abem Finkel and Carl Erickson, itself based on Judge Michael A. Musmanno’s short story “Jan Volkanik” and on Harry R. Irving’s play Bohunk (which never reached Broadway).
These, in turn, were inspired by the real-life story of Polish immigrant and striking Pennsylvania coal miner John Barkowski (or John Barcoski; the spelling of his surname differs depending on the source), who was beaten and tortured to death by three members of the private police force (!) known as the Coal and Iron Police.*
Although bypassed when the 1935 Academy Award nominations were announced, Paul Muni was the runner-up† in the final Best Actor ballot, trailing (nominated) winner and even bigger ham Victor McLaglen for another political drama, John Ford’s The Informer.
* The corporate-fascist cops were acquitted of first-degree murder. Later on, two of them would be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
† For the 1934 (after voting for the winners had already begun) and 1935 Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences allowed write-in votes. That was a direct result of the uproar that followed after Bette Davis failed to be shortlisted for her star-making turn in John Cromwell’s Of Human Bondage.
Of note, Warners’ 1935 fantasy A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains the only title to have won a write-in Oscar: Best Cinematography (Hal Mohr).
The Valley of Decision (1945)
A mashup of Upstairs Downstairs and How Green Was My Valley (minus the coalminers), Tay Garnett’s socially conscious romantic drama The Valley of Decision stars Best Actress Oscar nominee Greer Garson* as an Irish housemaid who becomes emotionally involved with the handsome son (Gregory Peck*, nearly 12 years her junior) of her boss (How Green Was My Valley [1941] Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Donald Crisp), owner of a steel mill in 1870s Pittsburgh.
The problem here isn’t confined to class disparities, as labor unrest and the cruelty of runaway capitalism are brought to the fore as well. Ultimately, Garson’s heroine finds herself in an uncomfortable spot: On one side, the family of the man she loves; on the other, her own striking family and friends.
Note: In the past, TCM’s print of The Valley of Decision failed to do justice to this hugely successful Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release boasting black-and-white cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.
* The Valley of Decision earned Greer Garson her fifth consecutive (sixth overall) Best Actress Oscar nomination; a seventh and final nod would follow 15 years later, for Sunrise at Campobello. Gregory Peck, for his part, received his first of five Best Actor nods that same year, but for a different movie: John M. Stahl’s The Keys of the Kingdom.
On the Waterfront (1954)
Best Picture Academy Award winner On the Waterfront, in some quarters hailed as one of the greatest American motion pictures of the 1950s, is one of nine movies* to have received five nominations in the Oscars’ acting categories: Eventual Best Actor winner Marlon Brando; Best Supporting Actress winner Eva Marie Saint (in her big-screen debut); and Best Supporting Actor nominees Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Rod Steiger. (Cobb, Malden, and Steiger lost out to Edmond O’Brien for The Barefoot Contessa.)
The basic narrative thread: A priest (Malden) is fights to expose the danger a mobster/labor union boss (Cobb) poses to New Jersey’s longshoremen. Brando is an ex-prizefighter turned longshoreman turned snitch, but unlike Victor McLaglen in The Informer, his character is someone we’re all supposed to sympathize with.
Of note, during the House Un-American Activities Committee’s anti-Red crusade, On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg “named names,” this ruining those individuals’ careers and livelihoods. Schulberg’s Oscar-winning screenplay adaptation is from Malcolm Johnson’s investigative series “Crime on the Waterfront,” published in 1948 in the New York Sun.
Also of note, New Jersey native Eva Marie Saint, who fully deserved her Oscar win, will be turning 102 next July 4.
Lastly, playwright Arthur Miller’s response to On the Waterfront is called A View from the Bridge.
* Also with five nominations in the Oscars’ acting categories (in chronological order): Mrs. Miniver (1942), All About Eve (1950), From Here to Eternity (1953), Peyton Place (1957), Tom Jones (1963), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Godfather Part II (1974), Network (1976).
The Organizer (1963)
Starring a nerdy Marcello Mastroianni as a labor activist, Mario Monicelli’s The Organizer / I compagni (lit., “The comrades”) chronicles the efforts of textile factory workers to form a union in turn-of-the-20th-century Turin. Also in the French-Italian cast: Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, and scene-stealer Elvira Tonelli.
The finale is as unexpected as the one found in Monicelli’s Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award nominee The Great War (1959). But unlike the earlier film, The Organizer wraps things up in a more coherent – and profoundly moving – manner.
The Organizer was shortlisted in the Oscars’ Best Original Screenplay category for the year 1964, when it opened in the Los Angeles area. The nominees: Monicelli, and frequent collaborators Furio Scarpelli and Agenore Incrocci (a.k.a. Age & Scarpelli).
That year’s winner at the elitist Oscars: The light comedy Father Goose (S.H. Barnett, Peter Stone, and Frank Tarloff).
Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Barbara Kopple’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Harlan County, U.S.A. depicts the 1973 coal miners’ strike against the Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, Kentucky. Eastover was a subsidiary of the Duke Power Company (now Duke Energy Corporation).
Considering the corporate-led vileness and violence involved – workers suffering from black lung disease, picketers shot at – Harlan County, U.S.A. would be an ideal double feature with Black Fury.
Fourteen years after her Academy Award win, Barbara Kopple would become the first woman to take home two Best Documentary Feature Oscar statuettes. Her second one was for American Dream.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar – Day 14 (daytime): On Strike” schedule.
‘31 Days of Oscar – Day 14 (daytime): On Strike’: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 26
10:00 AM Black Fury (1935)
Director: Michael Curtiz.
Cast: Paul Muni, William Gargan, Karen Morley, Barton MacLane, John Qualen, J. Carrol Naish, Vince Barnett, Tully Marshall, Henry O’Neill, Joseph Crehan, Mae Marsh, Sara Haden, Willard Robertson.
92m11:45 AM The Organizer (1963)
Director: Mario Monicelli.
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Folco Lulli, Bernard Blier, Gabriella Giorgelli, Raffaella Carrà, François Périer, Franco Ciolli, Vittorio Sanipoli, Mario Pisu, Kenneth Kove, Edda Ferronao, Elvira Tonelli.
130m2:00 PM The Valley of Decision (1945)
Director: Tay Garnett.
Cast: Greer Garson, Gregory Peck, Donald Crisp, Lionel Barrymore, Preston Foster, Marsha Hunt, Gladys Cooper, Reginald Owen, Dan Duryea, Jessica Tandy, Barbara Everest, Marshall Thompson, John Warburton, Dean Stockwell.
111m4:00 PM Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Director: Barbara Kopple.
103m6:00 PM On the Waterfront (1954)
Director: Elia Kazan.
Cast: Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, Leif Erickson, James Westerfield, Martin Balsam.
108m
“Oscar Movies on TCM: On Strike” notes
“31 Days of Oscar on TCM: On Strike” schedule via the TCM website.
Harlan County, U.S.A. image: Janus Films
“Oscar Movies on TCM: On Strike” last modified in February 2026.