On this day in movie history - Boxcar Bertha (1972 movie & book):

Boxcar Bertha

directed by Martin Scorsese

written by Joyce H. Corrington and John William Corrington,

based on the book Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha by Ben Reitman,

 released in the United States on June 13, 1972.

Music by Gib Guilbeau and Thad Maxwell.

Cast: Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Barry Primus, Bernie Casey, John Carradine, Victor Argo, David Osterhout, Grahame Pratt, ‘Chicken’ Holleman, Harry Northup, Ann Morell, Marianne Dole, Joe Reynolds, Jerry Cortez, Louie Elias, Michael Fitzgerald, Gerald Raines, Gayne Rescher, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Scorsese. #Noir

Recommended reading:

Sister of the Road:
The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha

by Ben Reitman.

Filmed as Boxcar Bertha (1972), directed by Martin Scorsese.

Published by AK Press.
First published 1937.

ISBN-10: 1902593030
ISBN-13: 9781902593036

Description:

Born in the shadows of a railroad yard, of a wandering mother who took her lovers where she found them and a father who was scarcely conscious of her arrival in the world, Bertha Thompson took to the road as soon as the restless impulses of adolescence stirred in her. She was more interested in wanders than those who settled down in homes, more interested in criminals than law-abiding citizens. She wanted to see how they lived, live as they did, know what they were like. As a result of her restlessness and curiosity, she became, in fifteen years of wandering, a hobo, treveling from one end of the country to the other in box-cars, decking passenger trains, and hitchhiking; member of a gang of shoplifters, traveling as the mistress of one of the men; a prostitute working in a Chicago brothel; the mother of a child of an unknown father; and a research worker for a New York social service bureau. Sister of the Road is Bertha s own story of those fifteen years and the record of her conclusions about them. Gifted with a naturally keen intelligence, fearless of consequences to herself, willing and eager to do and be everything which other members of her group did and were, her story is a mine of little-known information and a succession of moving human stories about that vast and growing army of homeless, jobless, wandering women who live by begging, stealing, cheating, prostituting themselves, and occasionally working at legitimate jobs.