Intellectual Properties of John Steinbeck are owned solely by the
Estate of Elaine A. Steinbeck.
ON
CANNERY ROW
BOOKS & MOVIES
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by Steinbeck, Ricketts and Campbell
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LOCATIONS
HISTORICAL REFERENCE
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Favorites of STEINECK & ricketts & hits of the era
Back On Cannery Row | reference music
'Tain't No Sin (To Dance Around in Your Bones)
Ruth Etting - Shine on Harvest Moon (1931)
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Motets for 5 voices
Moonlight Serenade_Glenn Miller Orchestra_Lyrics 1930's
MUSIC & RECORDINGS
MANKIND: A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER
John Steinbeck is famous for his ability to connect human stories to nature in his works - shining examples of environmental themes in Steinbeck's books include THE GRAPES OF WRATH, CANNERY ROW and SEA OF CORTEZ - all three of these books are the source materials for this series.
Ed Ricketts has become known in the marine-science community as the "Godfather of Marine Ecology". His field collecting of the entire Pacific intertidal of North America, and his research of the decline of the sardine in the Pacific were unprecedented.
Through the episodes of BACK ON CANNERY ROW, a story arc is unfolding alongside the main plot lines - an arc that reveals to the audience the very clear and present impact of human activity on the environment.
Being set between 1930 and 1950, the series characters are living between the Industrial Age and the Information Age - through their stories, we explore the world with them, as they come to understand how profoundly and quickly the activity of mankind is changing life on Earth. These are the roots of the Environmentalism of the 1970's, and the scientific consensus of mankind's role in the warming of the planet.
Cannery Row in Monterey is an industrial area of a community that lives on the bounty of the sea. Ed's lab, sandwiched between large canneries, has an unobstructed view into the workings of the seafood industry as it builds up rapidly around him and then finds itself falling apart when the populations of sardine crash due to overfishing.
Meanwhile, John is writing the true plights of Okies who have been forced from their once-fertile farms to migrate West to California - as the Dust Bowl decimates the entire Midwest in the largest man-made ecological disaster ever experienced.
This story of mankind's role in overfishing the oceans and decimating the land is told throughout the series. It is a touchstone as our characters come to dire realizations about the environment through first hand experiences across all the episodes.
ECOLOGY & ENVIRONMENT
A VISIUAL STORY OF OUR IMPACT ON THE ENVIRONMENT
The BACK ON CANNERY ROW title sequence is imagined here as a visual metaphor for "All Is One" - from the most distant star-filled galaxy to the smallest plankton in the sea; everything is connected - a story told through mankind's impact on the environment.
In the sequence, we experience life in the Pacific from the point of view of the sea creatures... we swim with a massive school of sardine that is lifted into nets above the surface onto a commercial fishing boat before we break free. We then push through a kelp forest as an otter or sea-lion and finally tumble into a lively and colorful tidepool to look back up at the star filled sky as a hermit crab or starfish.
Each episode's title sequence follows the same order of events, but is slightly different... gradually, episode by episode, the school of sardine becomes thinner, the fishing boat's catch smaller, the kelp forest less dense, the tide pool less colorful and alive. By the later episodes there are no sardine to lift into the boat. The kelp forest is an underwater desert and the tide pool is barren and polluted.
The title sequence is showing a powerfully visceral story of man's deep and negative impact on the environment.
Below is a title sequence for the first episode - with mood-boards as reference - followed by what a later episode's title sequence may look like in contrast. (Differences between the two sequences in BOLD)
TITLE SEQUENCE: EPISODE 1
EXT. DEEP SPACE - TIMELESS
Brilliant, frothy swirls of STARS and bright PLANETS.
Surreal. Silent. Still. The core of existence.
Then, each star begins to FLOAT loosely -- like particles --
REVEAL: We are actually under --
-- THE PACIFIC OCEAN
PHOSPHORESCENT PLANKTON and GLOWING JELLYFISH ride currents up towards the surface.
Distant WHALES CALL.
Clouds of silvery SARDINE swarm toward the faint, solitary LIGHT of a SARDINE BOAT - a tiny sun against the blue-black sea that seems as boundless as the universe.
-- NETTING
lifts us with thousands of sardine towards:
-- THE LIGHTED BOAT.
We break the surface - sound rushes in: MEN yell, WINCHES howl.
We slip the netting and fall back to:
-- THE PACIFIC
where a LIGHTHOUSE BEAM cuts through a WAVE that buries us into:
-- A KELP FOREST
that is teeming with life. POUNDING SURF SPRAYS as we tumble over rocks and into:
-- A BUBBLING TIDE POOL
where we are surrounded by bright SEA ANEMONES and colorful SEASTARS, scuttling CRABS and sleek EELS all alive and dead and reproducing and killing in
this tiny world.
-- ANGLE - UP FROM TIDEPOOL:
The STAR-FILLED SKY is eclipsed by a MAN'S SILHOUETTE.
-- MACRO CLOSE ON:
The MAN'S HAND thrusts into the water - tiny air-pockets stay attached to his fingers that quickly gather up a SEA HARE - clouds of MAGENTA INK fill the frame.
TITLE SEQUENCE
Below is a title sequence a later episode's title sequence may look like - after the progression of the seasons worth of title sequences:
TITLE SEQUENCE: EPISODE 12
EXT. DEEP SPACE - TIMELESS
Brilliant, frothy swirls of STARS and bright PLANETS. Surreal. Silent. Still. The core of existence.
Then, each star begins to dim into: darkness.
REVEAL: We are actually under --
-- THE PACIFIC OCEAN
A lone SEA LION searches the deep for food - a tiny creature against the blue-black sea that seems as boundless as the universe.
Silence.
Clouds of EMPTY NETTING are dragged toward the faint, solitary LIGHT of a SARDINE BOAT.
We break the surface to the rhythmic hum of the empty boat's engine comes into focus.
We slip the netting and fall back to:
-- THE PACIFIC
where a LIGHTHOUSE BEAM cuts through a WAVE that buries us into:
-- A KELP FOREST
that has died off.
POUNDING SURF SPRAYS as we tumble with DEBRIS over rocks and into:
-- A SILENT TIDE POOL
where we are surrounded by bright PLASTIC and colorful SWIRLS OF OIL, shells of CRABS and a few remaining discolored SEA STARS are
all dying off.
-- ANGLE - UP FROM TIDEPOOL:
The STAR-FILLED SKY is eclipsed by a FLOATING TRASH, DEAD FISH and a SHEEN OF OIL.
-- MACRO CLOSE ON:
The MAN'S GLOVED HAND thrusts into the water - tiny swirls of oil stay attached to his fingers that quickly gather up a SEA HARE lying dead on the rocks.
RESEARCH
SOURCE MATERIALS
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"About Ed Ricketts" by John Steinbeck (1951) addendum to "The Log from the Sea of Cortez".
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"Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck (1945)
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"Sea of Cortez" by John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts (1941)
RESEARCH | LINKS
World Events
Ecology & Science
Locations
RESEARCH | BOOKS
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"Carol and John Steinbeck: Portrait of a Marriage" by Susan Shillinglaw (2013)
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"Breaking Through: Essays, Journals & Travelogues of Ed Ricketts" editor Katharine A. Rodger (2006)
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"Between Pacific Tides" by Edward F. Ricketts and Jack Calvin (1939)
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"John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts: the Shaping of a Novelist" by Richard Astro (1973)
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"Renaissance Man of Cannery Row: by Katharine A. Rodger (2003)
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"Steinbeck: The Man and His Work: by Richard Astro and Tetsumaro Hayashi (1971)
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"Outer Shores" by Joel W. Hedgpeth (1978)
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"Outer Shores 2: Breaking Through" by Joel W. Hedgpeth (1979)
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"Leopold's Shack and Ricketts's Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism" by Michael J. Lannoo" (2014)
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"John Steinbeck, Writer" by Jackson J. Benson (1980)
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"Sweet Thursday" by John Steinbeck (1954)
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"Tortilla Flat" by John Steinbeck (1935)
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"The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck (1939)
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"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck (1937)
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"Harvest Gypsies" by John Steinbeck (1936)
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"A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living" edited by Diane K. Osbon (1995)
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"A Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell (1949)
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"The World of Sex" by Henry Miller (1940)
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"Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller (1934)
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"John Steinbeck: A Good Companion" by Carlton Sheffield (2002)
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"Beyond Boundaries" edited by Susan Shillinglaw, Kevin Hearle (2002)
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"Parallel Expeditions: Charles Darwin and the Art of John Steinbeck" by Brian E Railsback (1995)
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"Conversations with John Steinbeck" edited by Thomas Fensch (1988)
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"Obscene in the Extreme" by Rick Wartzman (2008)
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"With Steinbeck in the Sea of Cortez" by Sparky Enea (1991)
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"Of Men and their Making" edited by Susan Shillinglaw, Jackson J. Benson (2003)
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"The History of John Steinbeck's Old Ocean View Avenue" by Michael Hemp (2009)
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"A History of Steinbeck's Cannery Row" by Tom Mangelsdorf (1986)
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"Steinbeck Remembered: Interviews with friends of John Steinbeck" by Audry Lynch (2000)
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"John Steinbeck, The California Years" by Brian St. Pierre (1983)
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"John Steinbeck" by Jay Parini (1995)
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"A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia" by Brian Railsback and Michael J. Meyer (2006)
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"Where the Heart Beats: John Cage and the Inner Life of Artists" by Kay Larson (2012)
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"The Long Valley" by John Steinbeck (1938)
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"A Fire in the Mind" by Stephen Larsen (1991)
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"Steinbeck: A Life in Letters" edited by Elaine Steinbeck, Robert Wallsten (1989)
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"Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck (1939)
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"John Steinbeck: Up Close" by Milton Meltzer (2008)
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"Steinbeck's Typewriter" by Robert DeMott (1996)
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"John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation" by Joseph Fontenrose (1964)
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"The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman"
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"Inside Cannery Row" by Bruce Ariss (1988)
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"Remembrances" by Nan Ricketts (1990)
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"The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers"
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"Steinbeck and the Environment" by Susan Beegel, Susan Shillinglaw and Wesley Tiffney (1995)
RESEARCH | DOCUMENTARIES
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"Street of the Sardine" Dir. Eva Lothar (1970)
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"Grapes of Wrath: We Shall Overcome" Dir. P.J. Palmer (2015)
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"For Ed Ricketts" Dir. P.J. Palmer (2018)
ADVISORS | SCHOLARS & HISTORIANS
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Dr. Susan Shillinglaw, San Jose State University
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Dr. William Gilly, Stanford University
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Dr. Milton Heifetz, MD
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Herb & Robbie Behrens, Historians
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Michael Hemp, The History Company
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Pat Hathaway, Pacific Views
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Dennis Copeland, City of Monterey
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Don Kohrs, Stanford University Hopkins Library
ADVISORS | FOUNDATIONS, UNIVERSITIES & LIBRARIES
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The National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA
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McIntosh & Otis, New York, NY
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Ecotrust Canada, Vancouver, BC
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Hopkins Marine Library, Stanford University, Monterey, CA
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The Western Flyer Foundation, Port Townsend, WA
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The History Company, Monterey CA
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City of Monterey Museums, Pacific Biological Laboratories
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Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation
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Monterey Jazz Festival
ADVISORS | FRIENDS & FAMILY
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Ed Ricketts Jr, Mill Valley CA
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Nancy Ricketts, Sitka, AK
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Cornelia Ricketts, Las Vegas, NV
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Waverly Kaffaga, Los Angeles, CA
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Milt & Betsy Heifetz, Tahoe, CA
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Frank Wright, Carmel CA