---
title: "Bound for Glory"
year: 1976
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/bound-for-glory"
fi1m_score: 71
critics_score: 72
critics_reviews: 6
published: "2026-09-20T05:50:18.366891+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T05:50:18.883236+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Bound for Glory (1976)

Directed by Hal Ashby · 2h 28m · Music, Drama

**Fi1m score: 71** · Critics 72 from 6 reviews

*In a sentence:* Woody Guthrie rides the rails for two and a half hours and Haskell Wexler makes every boxcar look like a painting

> Hal Ashby’s film of Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl years is beautifully photographed by Haskell Wexler and quietly played by David Carradine. It is also half an hour too long and treats a scrappy, funny man with a reverence he would have laughed at.

## Synopsis

Pampa, Texas, 1936. Woody Guthrie (David Carradine) paints signs, plays guitar on porches and watches the dust bury the town while his wife Mary (Melinda Dillon) waits for him to find steady work. He does not find it. He leaves her and their two small daughters and heads west, hitching rides and riding freights, sharing a boxcar with Slim Snedeger (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) and watching families turned back at the California line for having no money. In the fruit camps he picks for wages that drop by the day and meets Ozark Bule (Ronny Cox), who sings for the union and hears something in Woody’s playing. Ozark asks him to sing for the pickers, and then puts him in front of a radio microphone.

## Review

Hal Ashby made *Bound for Glory* between *Shampoo* (1975) and *Coming Home* (1978), and it is the most stately film of that run. Robert Getchell’s screenplay takes Woody Guthrie’s autobiography and stops before the fame: Texas in the dust years, the freight trains west, the fruit camps of California, a radio job in Los Angeles that comes with conditions. It is a handsome, serious, slow film, 148 minutes long, and about a hundred and twenty of them are worth your evening. The rest are the film admiring itself.

Start with what is on screen, because that is where the film earns its reputation. Haskell Wexler shoots the opening dust storm as a brown wall rolling over a flat town, and afterwards keeps the dust in the air, so that light comes through it in shafts and everyone looks lit through gauze. The migrant camps are shot at dusk, tents and cardboard and cars loaded to the roof, and in one long take the camera comes down from a crane and walks in among the pickers as though it had got off the truck with them. The film is generally credited as the first to use the Steadicam, and that shot is why. Michael D. Haller’s camps look built from what people could carry, and William Ware Theiss puts the whole cast in the same washed-out browns and blues, so that Guthrie is never better dressed than anyone he sings to.

David Carradine underplays, and it is the right choice. He sings in his own voice, thin and flat and unbothered about it, and he plays Guthrie as a man who cannot be made to hurry. He is not asking to be liked. This Woody leaves a wife and two small daughters in Texas and is a long time writing, takes up with a rich woman, Pauline (Gail Strickland), because she is there, and drifts into politics because somebody handed him a guitar at the right moment. The film does not excuse any of it and Carradine does not plead, and that is the most honest thing in the film.

Ronny Cox is the warmth. His Ozark Bule sings for the union in the camps, gets Woody in front of a microphone, and is the only person in the film who seems to enjoy being alive. Melinda Dillon plays both Mary, the wife left behind, and Memphis Sue, the singer Woody is paired with on air, a piece of doubling the film sets up and never explains; you can make of it what you like. Randy Quaid, as the picker Luther Johnson, gets one scene of anger the film badly needs. John Lehne’s Locke, the station manager, wants the songs cheerful and the politics out, and says so pleasantly.

Now the trouble. Robert C. Jones and Pembroke J. Herring cut the film at a walking pace, which suits the trains and the camps and does not suit Los Angeles. The radio stretch makes one point, that money will pay Woody to sing so long as he sings about nothing, and then makes it again, and again. Somewhere in the third repetition we were bored, and then annoyed, because the film had already shown us it could do better. There is also the halo. The Guthrie of the records and the books was funny, rude and unreliable, and the film has smoothed most of that away in favour of a quiet man who is right about everything. We missed the rudeness.

And yet. When Woody finally sings to a camp at night, with faces coming up out of the dark one at a time, we were moved more than we expected to be, and it was not the song that did it but the listening: Wexler holds on the people, not the singer. The same is true of the roadblock at the state line, where police turn back families with everything they own on the running boards. Nobody makes a speech, and none is needed.

Against [*The Grapes of Wrath*](https://film.one/film/the-grapes-of-wrath) (1940) it is the gentler film, and the lesser one; Ford was angry and Ashby is mostly sad. Against Ashby’s own *The Last Detail* (1973) and [*Harold and Maude*](https://film.one/film/harold-and-maude) (1971) it is missing the looseness that let those films breathe. Watch it at home, on a grey afternoon, when its pace will feel like company rather than a test. It is worth that afternoon. Do not expect the Guthrie of the records; the film has given him a wash and a good coat, and he stands a little stiffly in them.

*Fi1m score 71, published 20 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics like Bound for Glory, and the praise gathers almost entirely around how it looks. Haskell Wexler’s photography is named in nearly every review as the film’s chief asset, and the recreation of the Dust Bowl and Depression-era migrant life is admired for its detail and for the staging of its crowds. David Carradine’s underplayed Guthrie draws steady approval, and several reviews note that the songs and the score are used well. The earliest reviews are the warmest.

The reservations are about pace and tone. Even admirers find it slow and long, and more than one review says it smooths away Guthrie’s humour and irreverence, a complaint that grows louder among the later, retrospective pieces. The spread is wide: five reviews sit in positive territory against one clear dissent, with Time Out calling it overlong, sentimental and lifeless, while still allowing that Carradine and Wexler impress within those limits.

### Reviews we read (6)

- **The New Yorker**, Pauline Kael (90/100, inferred): The superbly shot film has great visual beauty and romanticism in its recreation of the 1930s, with confident performances and meticulous staging of extras and scenes. Hal Ashby demonstrates real love for the material in this substantial studio-backed production. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/12/13/affirmation)
- **Variety**, Variety Staff (85/100, inferred): Outstanding biographical cinema that sensitively chronicles Woody Guthrie's early life and the 1930s Depression era through major phases of his experiences. It features strong production values and effective use of Guthrie's songs. [Read](https://variety.com/1975/film/reviews/bound-for-glory-3-1200423759/)
- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (80/100, inferred): The film is visually stunning and faithful to Woody Guthrie's life and the Depression era, with exceptional cinematography and period detail. It moves too slowly at times and lacks some of Guthrie's humor and irreverence. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bound-for-glory-1977)
- **The New York Times**, J. Hoberman (75/100, inferred): The visually striking film amplifies the spirit of John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath and captures the Dust Bowl era and migrant life through strong performances and Haskell Wexler's Oscar-winning cinematography. It is ambitious and effective as a period piece. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/homevideo/bound-for-glory-woody-guthrie.html)
- **Time Out**, IB (30/100, inferred): Ashby delivers an overlong, sentimental and lifeless biopic of Woody Guthrie that glosses the singer into a beatific eccentric. David Carradine's underplaying and Haskell Wexler's photography are singled out as impressive within those limits. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/bound-for-glory)
- **The Playlist**, Rodrigo Perez (70/100, inferred): The critic notes that Bound for Glory is not Ashby’s best work, faltering under its sense of importance and length, but praises the unromantic portrayal of Guthrie, Carradine's performance, Wexler's cinematography, and the score, concluding it is well worth watching. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/films-of-hal-ashby-a-retrospective-essentials-20110506/3/)

## Details

- **Director:** Hal Ashby
- **Director:** Hal Ashby
- **Screenplay:** Robert Getchell
- **Cinematography:** Haskell Wexler
- **Editor:** Robert C. Jones, Pembroke J. Herring
- **Production design:** Michael D. Haller
- **Costume design:** William Ware Theiss
- **Producer:** Robert F. Blumofe, Harold Leventhal
- **Cast:** David Carradine as Woody Guthrie; Ronny Cox as Ozark Bule; Melinda Dillon as Mary / Memphis Sue; Gail Strickland as Pauline; John Lehne as Locke; Ji-Tu Cumbuka as Slim Snedeger; Randy Quaid as Luther Johnson; Elizabeth Macey as Liz
- **Runtime:** 2h 28m
- **Release (the US):** 5 December 1976
- **Genres:** Music, Drama

## Where to watch in the US

Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 1977: Best Costume Design (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Cinematography (won); Best Original Song Score (won)

## If you liked this

- *The Grapes of Wrath* (1940), Fi1m 86: Ford’s Okies, angrier and shorter; the film Ashby’s is walking behind. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-grapes-of-wrath.md)
- *Days of Heaven* (1978), Fi1m 85: Wheat fields at dusk and almost no dialogue; the pictures carry it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/days-of-heaven.md)
- *Inside Llewyn Davis* (2013), Fi1m 87: A folk singer nobody has polished, freezing through a Greenwich Village winter. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/inside-llewyn-davis.md)
- *Harlan County, USA* (1976), Fi1m 88: A real strike, real songs, and no actors to smooth anyone out. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/harlan-county-u-s-a.md)
- *Sullivan's Travels* (1941), Fi1m 88: A Hollywood man rides the rails to learn about poverty and gets a comedy. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sullivans-travels.md)

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/bound-for-glory