This week, the Silver Nitrate Witches travel to New Mexico to explore the reviews and reception of Salt of the Earth (1954), a film based on the historic 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company. This two-part series has everything: communists, Catholic newspapers, feminism, deportation, and even a prison full of women chanting “We want bathrooms!”

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches, Laura Valenza and Isabelle Lang, on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

The Silver Nitrate Witches attend a show by Lady Lou in the Bowery this week, exploring the reviews and reception of the film She Done Him Wrong (1933), starring Mae West and Cary Grant. From critics body-checking the leading lady to a history of the beer growler, of all things, this episode transports us to a pre-Code Hollywood salacious story.

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.

This week, the Silver Nitrate Witches check in at the Grand Hotel (1932) to explore the reviews and reception around a film with one of the most star-studded casts of the era. We look at the predictions of catty leading ladies, the censorship of Joan Crawford, and even how technology like the typewriter and switchboard liberated women, both economically and in other ways…

You can find your Silver Nitrate Witches on various online platforms @ljvalenza and @bellang303. You can check out more about Fine Motor at finemotormusic.com.