Claim: David Carradine acted.

Bound for Glory is a 1976 American film directed by Hal Ashby and loosely adapted by Robert Getchell from Woody Guthrie 's 1943 autobiography Bound for Glory . The film stars David Carradine as folk singer Woody Guthrie and Ronny Cox , Melinda Dillon , Gail Strickland , John Lehne , Ji-Tu Cumbuka and Randy Quaid .   Bound for Glory was the first motion picture in which inventor/operator Garrett Brown used his new Steadicam for filming moving scenes . Director of Photography Haskell Wexler won an Oscar for Best Cinematography -LRB- 1976 -RRB- .   All of the main events and characters , except for Guthrie and his first wife , Mary , are entirely fictional . The film ends with Guthrie singing his most famous song , `` God Blessed America '' -LRB- subsequently retitled `` This Land Is Your Land '' -RRB- , on his way to New York , but , in fact , the song was composed in New York in 1940 and forgotten by him until five years later .