The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  Labor Strife in Hollywood: Screen Cartoonists and the CSU

  As detailed in chapter 1, studio moguls fiercely opposed unionization in Hollywood. Two events help to illuminate how anti-union, anti-left sentiment within the industry had been building in the decade leading up to the trial of the Hollywood Ten. The first was the Disney animators’ strike in 1941; the second was the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) strike in 1945. It is important to note that this anti-labor rancor seethed among the independents as well as the eight major studios, and that the managerial attack was aimed not just at above-the-line creatives but also at below-the-line craftspeople.

  The Screen Cartoonists Guild formed in 1938 under the leadership of Herbert Sorrell. The union quickly secured contracts with some of the major companies: MGM, Leon Schlesinger Productions (creator of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros.), Screen Gems, Walter Lanz, and Terrytoons. In the spring of 1941, many artists at Walt Disney Studios, fed up by salary cuts and layoffs, decided to join the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Art Babbitt, who was an animator on such films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia and who created the character Goofy, joined the Screen Cartoonists Guild leadership. Studio head Walt Disney saw Babbitt’s action as a personal betrayal and fired him, calling Babbitt a Bolshevik.44 The following day, in the midst of their work on Dumbo, the Disney animators went out on strike.

  The Screen Writers Guild officially expressed its sympathy for the striking animators, but the SWG leadership did not go so far as to recommend a boycott of Disney pictures.45 The tone at Disney Studios changed completely because of the strike; almost half of the employees left or were laid off within months of the walkout. Walt Disney himself declared the Screen Cartoonists Guild communistic and even offered his assistance if the Tenney Committee should want to investigate the possibility of communists infiltrating Hollywood. The strike lasted five weeks. Ultimately, with the assistance of a federal mediator, negotiations took place that ended in favor of the animators, and Disney, grudgingly, signed a union contract.

  Skirmishes involving below-the-line unions were not a new phenomenon in Hollywood. For years, craftspeople in IATSE had struggled with their union leadership. In the 1930s, organized crime syndicates and mafia bosses strategically positioned George Browne and William “Willie” Bioff in leadership positions of IATSE, and in 1936 IATSE secured from the studios closedshop status. Attempts at forming a progressive branch of IATSE met with little success. When Browne and Bioff were sent to jail for extortion, a number of independent labor groups took advantage of this vacuum in IATSE leadership to form a new joint labor union, the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), that covered a number of below-the-line technicians officially still under the jurisdiction of IATSE. Film producers far preferred the more conservative IATSE over the CSU, which they viewed as a more threatening and potentially more demanding union in negotiations.46 As historian Reynold Humphries states, “The IATSE . . . was the producers’ union: a threat to it was a threat to themselves.”47 The studio executives still felt they had an advantage, though, because the CSU could not call a strike since most Hollywood unions had agreed to a no-strike pledge during the war.

  In late spring 1944, members of thirty-eight guilds and unions gathered to discuss how to respond to attacks against labor by the MPAPAI, which was branding unions and their leaders as communists. As a result of these meetings, the unions released a statement that declared, “The unity of the war effort and the unity of the industry are inseparable at this time.”48 In April, the board of the SWG officially condemned the Alliance for its statement that “the industry is dominated by Communists, radicals and crackpots,” and asked the other Hollywood guilds and unions, as well as the MPAA, to “discuss and find ways and means of combating such harmful and irresponsible statements.”49 As a whole, SWG members were ready and willing to support the war effort and to fight what they saw as outrageous and unfair vilification.

  At issue was whether workers had the right to be represented by the union of their choosing. Their livelihoods and their basic rights as workers were at stake. The tension escalated to the point of crisis with the CSU strike in 1945. Under the umbrella of the CSU, the Painters Union local was the first of the below-the-line unions to face the producers and ask for a pay raise. Herb Sorrell, then the Painters Union’s business agent, had some success lobbying for this cause; consequently, he rose to the top ranks of the newly formed CSU. Other locals from IATSE were eager to join the CSU’s collective bargaining units and to renegotiate their contracts, and thus affiliations and local charters were granted for Story Analysts, Screen Set Designers, the Screen Office Employees Guild, and the Screen Publicists Guild.

  In January 1945, seventy-seven members of the Screen Set Designers asked to go into labor negotiations with the producers, but the producers refused to meet, declaring that they could not talk to the members without IASTE leadership present. This jurisdictional issue left the Screen Set Designers no easy choice: they could acquiesce and accept the status quo of being represented by IATSE, or they could walk out in protest. One local paper specifically questioned whether a work stoppage by the Screen Set Designers would be a strike or a lockout.50 What was clear was that others in the CSU would soon face a similar conundrum, and so the CSU unions together made the decision to strike. Producers declared that the strikers were “lawfully discharged and ceased to be employees because they struck in violation of the War Labor Disputes Act.”51 After a cooling-off period, the painters called a strike in March 1945, and soon other locals within the CSU joined. Bearing down on the strikers were not just the studio heads but also Roy Brewer, the new head of IATSE, and his anticommunist enforcers. The first few months on the picket lines were relatively peaceful; but as time went on, threats against CSU workers became more frequent, and by autumn 1945, the picket line had become a dangerous place.

  Writers were conflicted, both as a unit and individually, about how to respond to this below-the-line walkout. They had a number of concerns to weigh: their contractual obligations to the studios, their agreement not to strike during wartime, and their strong desire for solidarity with other film workers and their unions. Officially, a sympathy strike was not an option; contractually, writers were obliged to cross other employees’ picket lines. The only circumstance under which they could avoid crossing the lines would be threat of bodily harm. In the early days of the strike, the possibility of physical injury seemed absurd. As John Bright recalled, with dance directors, story readers, and publicists pacing the picket lines, the fight was far from a bloody battle.52 Many sympathetic writers felt caught between their desire to support their fellow workers and their position as “essential employees” in the war effort. Erna Lazarus remembered: “We were at war and we were considered an essential industry and, as such, we had certain privileges. But one of the things that we could not partake in was a jurisdictional strike. And I happened to be the SWG representative at Columbia at the time that this happened, and it was a very difficult thing because writers wanted to go out on strike.”53 Many writers hated the idea of turning a blind eye to their fellow workers’ struggles when they themselves had suffered so much at the hands of the producers.

  Few studio heads supported their writers, although there were some exceptions. Daniel Taradash, writer of From Here to Eternity, was at Columbia Pictures at the time. He described Harry Cohn as “much more a writer’s man. In fact, he liked to taunt his producers. In a meeting with a producer, a director, and a writer in his office, Cohn would almost always direct his questions first to the writer. The director he paid a lot of respect to. And if he wanted to make a nasty crack he would direct it at the producer.”54 But other moguls, like Zanuck, sided with their producers in any dispute. As tensions rose in Hollywood, more executives—and unions—jockeyed to take sides.

  Writers at the time were doing fairly well for themselves, and many writers were apathetic to the concerns of the CSU and hostile toward the idea of engaging in labor ac
tions, given that their long struggles for unionization had ended only four years earlier. With the MBA in place, they had a sense of security. And business was booming. The studios needed new products for their movie houses every week. Mel Shavelson, who wrote for Bob Hope for many years, saw the mid-1940s as a great era for writers, especially those who were tied to a popular star: “The day you started working on a screenplay, you’d know when it was going to appear in the theaters because the studios were like factories. Everything was done to schedule.”55

  SWG meetings were heated, with different constituencies declaring very distinct allegiances. The more conservative members asserted that, on principle and in keeping with the terms of their contract, Guild members could not and should not support the CSU. The more liberal-leaning writers demanded that the Guild take a stand in solidarity with fellow film workers. John Bright remembered Mary McCall Jr., writer of Craig’s Wife, announcing that she could not join the picket line; instead, she proposed that the SWG contribute $25,000 to the CSU strike fund. Bright found this idea disconcerting at best, the equivalent of “buying our way with money” and “putting a price tag on our conscience.”56 This kind of conflicted behavior manifested itself collectively in Guild decisions and also in the stances taken by individual writers. As William Ludwig explained, some writers played for both sides:

  A few of those people who maintained publicly that they would never walk through a picket line and got great kudos for the nobility of their principles—they wrote at home and they sent their stuff in by studio car. I never felt that this was too much of an adherence to principle because Metro never minded if you worked at home. They didn’t get off payroll. They never announced to the studio that they were not working because there was a picket line around. But they got great public acceptance for their extremely liberal positions and I always felt that was kind of shabby.57

  A handful of writers did support the strike both in word and in deed—but the punishment for this choice was severe. Bright, in good conscience, decided he could not cross the picket line and refused to continue working on a project with Arthur Freed. Though MGM’s general manager Eddie Mannix tried to strong-arm him and then to shame him by making an example of him, Bright refused to budge. As he remembered, with a laugh, “I was blacklisted before the blacklist.”58

  No matter which side each writer supported, virtually every writer experienced conflicting emotions and serious concerns about the rising temperature in Hollywood. Ring Lardner Jr. remembers that writers were worried about being associated with militant trade unionism, given that producers and the press were branding the CSU as a Red-influenced organization.59 And while the Communist Party was still active in Hollywood, the MPAPAI was drumming up recruits, too. William Ludwig recalled:

  I remember one morning . . . two writers came into my office—[they] shall be nameless. After a little fussing around they said that they had been watching me and they thought I was good material and they invited me to join the Communist Party and they left. That afternoon King Vidor came into my office and after the same kind of fussing around he invited me to join [laughs] the Association for the Preservation of American Ideals. It was one of my more baffling days. And I said to King, “What are you people for?” And he said, “Well, we are against so and so and so and so.” And I said, “King, I have decided I am not going to join anything anymore that is against. What are you for?” And he thought for a while and he said “I’ll have to ask Sam Wood.” And he left the office and I never heard about that again. And I never heard from the communist invitation again either. It was the inevitable position of the liberal—the middle.60

  The SWG itself tried to remain nonpartisan. Philip Dunne described the teetering, anxious stance the Guild leadership took as a “plague on both your houses” position.61 But as the strike continued through spring and summer and into autumn, individual writers called upon the MPAA to end the strike. Three hundred and fifty Guild members signed a petition in support of the CSU, but the Guild itself stayed neutral. Within the next five years, HUAC or the MPAPAI declared 10 percent of those who had signed the petition to be communist subversives.62

  The struggles for power during the CSU strike are critical to understanding the conservative turn in Hollywood at the close of World War II. The shifting of allegiances and coalitions would ultimately become a defining feature of the postwar era. Looking back objectively, the below-the-line workers’ cause was liberal, perhaps even marginal. The Guild position was to try to stay neutral. The CSU strike became progressively contentious and, ultimately, violent. Roy Brewer’s thugs attacked striking workers. Ceplair claims that Brewer, head of the IATSE, had brokered a backroom arrangement with the MPAA to keep the CSU’s president, Herbert Sorrell, so bogged down by strike turmoil that he had little time to focus on the jurisdictional fight against IATSE.63 Brewer’s and the trade press’s ceaseless attacks on Sorrell also helped to keep the CSU marginalized.

  In his history of labor and culture in the 1940s, George Lipsitz explains that the trouble with striking workers was exacerbated by the vast numbers of returning servicemen looking for work. “By the winter of 1945–6,” he writes, “one-quarter of all war workers had lost their jobs. Nearly two million workers found themselves unemployed by October 1, and real income for workers fell by an average of 15 percent in three months. Prospects for the future offered little hope for improvement, as 10 million servicemen and women returned to civilian life to join the competition for jobs.”64 Like any other workers on strike, writers could be replaced by returning servicemen, which only increased the pressure to conform.

  Officially, the SWG stuck its neck out only far enough to join the other guilds in requesting that studios find common ground with the striking workers and settle labor disputes. In October the SWG declared, “It is a prerequisite to renewed peace in Hollywood that all employees and union contracts be reinstated without prejudice.”65 In the end, the studios locked out 7,000 workers from fourteen Hollywood trade unions for eight months.66 For thirtythree weeks workers were intimidated on the picket line, harassed, and, on occasion, even arrested. Abraham Polonsky, who wrote Body and Soul and Force of Evil, remembers: “It was a very devastating strike, because it destroyed almost all the good unions in Hollywood. . . . The Screen Writers Guild, in effect, sided somewhat with the Conference of Studio Unions. And when the strike was lost, the leadership in the Screen Writers Guild changed, too.”67 While the Guild as a whole failed to take a strong stance in relation to the producers, and as the CSU strike built momentum, writers found a new venue for expression and their call to action.

  The Screen Writer

  In June 1945, a month after victory had been declared in Europe, the Screen Writers Guild published the first issue of its monthly journal, The Screen Writer (TSW). Although the Guild had issued publications before, both independently and jointly with the Screen Actors Guild, TSW had a decidedly different approach. It was literary in tone, it encouraged a multiplicity of voices, and it aspired to an audience broader than just the Guild membership.68 Dalton Trumbo, a novelist, screenwriter, cultural critic, and chairman of Writers for Roosevelt, was the journal’s founding editor. The editorial board included Lamar Trotti (who scripted Young Mr. Lincoln and The Ox-Bow Incident) and Ring Lardner Jr.

  One fascinating characteristic of the journal is the seriousness with which the editors undertook the task of writing about the film industry. Their passion for the craft is tangible in every issue, and their prime directives, clearly, were to elevate the profession in the eyes of fellow writers and other industry professionals and to address the role of writers within the industry. In its premiere issue, the editorial column posed to its readership the potential for the journal and explained the editorial board’s desire to use TSW as a site for conversation, discussion, and debate among writers.

  This magazine can develop in either of two directions. It can become the personal organ of a small clique consisting of particular Guild members whom the execut
ive board happened to appoint as its editorial staff. If that happens, it will only be a question of time until it withers and dies an unlamented death. Or it can become the actual voice of the Screen Writers Guild, in which case it will assume an ever-increasing stature, not only in Hollywood but among people with a serious interest in motion pictures all over the world.

  To achieve that latter and desirable goal, the pages of The Screen Writer must be wide open to all shades of opinion within the Guild, limited only by considerations of space and the judgment of its editors as to the relative value of contributions and the proper proportion of content.69

  In the early issues, there were high expectations for TSW and a sense of hope that journal could create a roundtable for conversation, instruction, and debate. Seven general categories of articles persisted throughout TSW’s threeyear run: commentary on the experiences of writers, studies on the making of films, reports on global film production and the global marketplace, essays on particular genres and emerging media, debates on the subject of authorship, and editorials on the rise of anticommunist sentiment in Hollywood. The discussions and debates in the pages of TSW illuminate the central concerns that screenwriters faced during this transformational time from the end of the war through the first few years of the blacklist.

  The first four issues of TSW offered three articles by writers who were in the armed services or who had recently completed their service. The editors believed it was central to the Guild’s mandate to support writers returning from service and to help them secure employment in the industry as soon as possible upon their return. In editorial columns, they argued that “the returning screen writer has no one but the Guild to intercede for him if intercession becomes necessary.”70 Although data on the number of SWG members who served in the armed forces vary, veterans made up between 275 and 301 of the Guild’s approximately 1,275 members.71 A call rose among these writers for producers to consider writing during wartime as part of a veteran’s overall body of work. In the pages of TSW, screenwriter Robert R. Presnell Sr., who worked in the Signal Corps during the war, criticized the studio heads for their looking at a writer’s war record of film writing as a parenthesis (or, perhaps a better analogy, an ellipsis). Rather, the returning writer represents an untapped asset for the studios: “Have any story editors or producers considered my army credits? There are no press agents or screen credits to say, ‘This man wrote a film that trained five million men to use weapons in half the estimated time. That one wrote a film that made the landing in Normandy possible. Joe Doakes saved countless lives by his dramatization of malaria prevention. Another trained pilots for the B-29s.’”72 Veterans like Presnell asserted that they should get their jobs back, but not out of sentimentality or patriotic duty on the part of the industry. Instead, he argued that many writers in active duty had developed new talents and gained experiences that could enrich their screenwriting, guaranteeing new angles and plots for cinema audiences.