The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild
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It seems difficult today to understand why this brilliant and talented writer on a meteoric rise to the top of this newly formed media industry posed such a threat to his fellow screenwriters. One reason is that Oppenheimer had created a television series so popular that it kept audiences at home watching Lucy instead of heading out to the movies. In 1953, the big studios faced significant obstacles: the 1948 Paramount Decree was forcing the studios to divest themselves of their theater chains; the seven-year contracts for all above-the-line talent were tying up key financial resources; and film audiences were dwindling at the larger city movie houses. The studios, and their employees, were anxious to stop this financial hemorrhaging. Oppenheimer and the TWA were easier to attack than the more diffuse troubles the film industry faced.
IMAGE 17 Madeline Pugh, writer for I Love Lucy, with producers and stars of the series, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, c. 1953.
Writers Guild Foundation Archive, Shavelson-Webb Library, Los Angeles
But something else about Oppenheimer that made him a concern for screenwriters: he was both a writer and a producer. The SWG was in the business of representing writers in negotiations and disputes with the studios, and their chief opponents were producers. Screenwriters had battled fake, studio-backed unions before, including the Screen Playwrights, and they were wary of any representative that could be aligned with management. It is not surprising, then, that after twenty years of battling with studio producers, the Screen Writers Guild leaders could not fathom the notion that an upstart writer-producer forming a new union could be good for their constituents.
While Oppenheimer was among the first writer-producers in the industry, there had been other kinds of hyphenates that had not provoked the ire of the Guild, including Ernst Lubitsch and John Huston. Writerproducer-director Billy Wilder ruled a rowdy writers table in the studio lunchroom. Dore Schary and Phillip Dunne, among others, were active members of the SWG and became producers without having to renounce their membership. Schary even rose to the stature of studio head at MGM. When Dunne became a producer at Twentieth Century–Fox, he contacted the SWG to say that he would rarely, if ever, supervise the work of other writers in his role as a producer, but he did ask for clarification: “Does my new status in any way affect my membership in the Guild? Are there any special dues and obligations I incur in this situation? Must I, for instance, grow a mustache like [former SWG and current AMPAS president] Charlie Brackett’s?” The SWG assured him that being a writer-producer did not affect an individual’s membership.12 Dunne struggled with this hyphenated role: “even the writer-producer is not completely free. He is still, however glorified, an employee, subject to the directions, and, in some cases, the apparent lunacies, of the studio executives. His chain may have become a mere web of gossamer, but he is still caught.”13 What was unique about hyphenates in television was that this new position was quickly becoming the rule rather than the exception.
A writer-producer of a television series, especially in the early days of television, would also quite often be the creator of the series. A creator provides the original story, builds a story world that the show’s cast inhabits, and often has a continuing role as head writer-producer. This head writer is, at best, a benevolent dictator who oversees the consistency of voice from episode to episode, runs the writers’ room, works on set with the director, actors, cinematographer, and designers to ensure that the words on the page translate to the screen, and often sits in the editing room. Stanley Rubin, writer and producer on Your Show Time, explains: “In television, the power lies not in the field of direction but in the field of producing. The producer or the writer-producer in television is the strongest individual on a show. He’s the one who’s there from start to finish. He provides the continuity to a show. Not the actors and not the director. Not even the individual writer on an individual episode but the writer-producer or producer on a series. He’s the one that the network wants to know about first. When it buys a series, the network says who’s going to produce it.”14
In both film and television, the writer-producer hyphenate straddles territory that is difficult to define in terms of labor rules. While a hyphenated writer-producer for film might work in different capacities from film to film, the hyphenated role for television usually remains consistent for many years, as in the case of serialized television series. Gertrude Berg embodied the hyphenate as a true television pioneer: she was a writer, producer, and actor on The Goldbergs. Unquestionably, she was a showrunner forty years before the term was conceived.
The SWG desperately wanted to control this new medium, but the Guild’s leaders did not yet understand what television was, what its writers’ needs were, or how television writers as members could expand the reach of the Guild. They focused narrowly on the danger of producers becoming writers, overlooking the fact that the vast majority of these hyphenates saw themselves as writers first. But in just a few years, the Guild’s perceived threat—the television writer-producer—became its most powerful asset. By 1960, film and television writers were walking the picket lines together, a display of unity and determination that, arguably, has never manifested itself so purely again. And the Guild negotiated its biggest wins. Writers gained the right to a fixed percentage from the studios’ royalties and, later, won residuals on television reruns and on the broadcasting of cinematic films on television. They also secured health and pension benefits for writers working for signatory companies.
This chapter traces this critical era of transition, from the earliest days of television, to the battle over the jurisdiction of television writing, to the formation of the Writers Guild of America, East and West branches, and to the 1960 WGA strike and its aftermath. Though at first this brokered writers union was an uncomfortable marriage of convenience, by the mid-1960s, the members’ alliance—and their solidarity—emerged as a powerful labor force and defined the Writers Guild of America as the strongest voice for creative workers within American media industries. And by the end of this era, the voices of television writers dominated the Writers Guild.
The Coming of Television
I said, “How much will you pay me?” [And Paramount producer Y. Frank Freeman] said, “Oh, nobody has ever written a television show before. We have no idea what to pay you. . . . Maybe three years from now when the salaries are established, we will pay you the highest salary going for that kind of writing.” I said, “Fine, you will get the script in exactly three years.”
—The Writer Speaks: Mel Shavelson (three-time president of the WGAw), 1996
In 1944 the appeal of the little screen was simply its novelty. When Michael Kanin first saw a television set that year, he wasn’t exactly clear about what it was or what it would become, but he was sure that he had see something significant:
One day a friend took me to someone’s house. . . . They took us into the back room where in a corner was a box. On the box was a picture. That was the first time I had ever seen a television set. The programming at that time was all very experimental and cursory. There were no regular programs of any kind. But I stared at this damned thing and it fascinated me because there it was: the future before my eyes. And it was so obvious that it had to be an important thing. The following night there was a Screen Writers Guild board meeting. . . . When the subject of New Business arose, I raised my hand and I told them of this experience . . . and I said, “You know, I don’t claim to be a prophet but obviously anybody can see that this is going to be a new development of great importance to all of us and I suggest that we investigate it.” And I don’t know why that touched the funny-bone, but there was a big, big laugh. But at any rate, as a kind of half-joke, I suppose, I was appointed a committee of one to investigate television.15
While its aesthetics were inchoate, Kanin and others saw the possibility of a medium that would broadcast image and sound into homes as professionally and economically exciting. Realizing that other guilds were interested in studying television, Kanin began talking with them. What e
merged was the Affiliated Committee for Television, a coalition of fifteen guilds and unions in Hollywood—including writers, directors, cartoonists, and cameramen—all working together to “investigate television.”16 The committee also collaborated with professors at UCLA to develop a curriculum for teaching the technical aspects of television to students who wanted to master the new trade.
These film workers were not altruistic in their pursuit of information about television. They were hoping, as one journalist reported, to harness television to the needs of the motion picture industry. They claimed that “the coming of television has reduced the unemployment problem to a remnant of what it was. . . . Television film production affords a picture professional work of the kind he knows how to do when he can’t find it in the studios; for less money, to be sure, but work. . . . Bit by bit, evidence piles up to indicate . . . that television’s ultimate place . . . will be one of an advertising medium and training school, maybe a proving ground, experimental laboratory. Could be a pretty good thing.”17 But much to Hollywood’s dismay, television was not going to slow its pace in order for film practitioners—never mind the film studios—to keep the medium under its control. Soon this device moved beyond the experimental stage to become a legitimate commercial medium. It beamed its mercurial pictures into American homes with tinny jingles as exuberant actors peddled products to anyone listening. The small screen was rapidly becoming a big medium, and with such wealthy corporations behind it, from radio networks to national product sponsors, television was a powerful new force in entertainment. The question not yet answered for writers was how television would transform their craft.
Even in its earliest iterations, television desperately needed writers. Young hopefuls flocked to television writing positions, and television studios and their deep-pocketed sponsors attracted some exceptional talent from the New York stage and vaudeville. Among the new challenges for the guilds in organizing television writers, first and foremost was basic geography. Television writers were scattered across studios, agencies, networks, and independent production houses primarily in, but not restricted to, New York and Los Angeles. In an age of telegrams and postal mail, any attempt to organize this group would not be easy.
In addition, there were significant differences between television production on the East Coast and production on the West Coast. Ernest Kinoy, who was president of WGA East from 1967 to 1969, saw greater polarization in television than in film production.18 Los Angeles production was an outgrowth of the film industry, and there producers controlled decision making. Most series were filmed, only a few of them in front of live audiences. In contrast, New York television programs were produced live and were simultaneously recorded on kinescope (a film capture of a television monitor) for later airings. There the industry was rooted in the work of playwrights, radio writers, and news writers, who already understood the speed, structure, needs, and peculiarities of live production.
There were other differences, as well. Writers in New York had more control of talent. David Dortort, creator of Bonanza, took part in the casting process for the projects he wrote in New York. The actors who came to audition were all theatrically trained. Coming out of a theater model, where the playwright is celebrated as the author of the text, writers were expected—or allowed, depending on one’s perspective—to play a more active role in television production. As Dortort simply put it, “Writers were held in more respect in New York.”19
The issue of authorial identity and reputation became a problem in television, particularly for writers on anthology series (the leading exemplars of which included Playhouse 90 and Philco Playhouse). Certain writers began gaining acclaim in this milieu. Erna Lazarus highlighted what this kind of recognition meant to television writers: “Television brought the writer’s name into prominence. Suddenly people spoke of the Rod Serlings and the Paddy Chayefskys. . . . Prior to this nobody ever knew who wrote the screenplay. Never [knew] who wrote the picture. . . . But television did bring importance to the writer, and I don’t think we would have it today if there had never been television.”20 But as Jon Kraszewski explains, the networks and advertising agencies were disinclined to promote the names of writers or highlight their identities because television writers at that time were not under exclusive contracts with the studios.21 Writers were employees, and the studios, as the owners of their writers’ words, vied for copyright control, redefining themselves as the authors of the television text.
Television was not as profitable for writers as film had been, but the probability of getting hired for repeat business was much greater. In 1952, the federal Wage Stabilization Board set the minimum salary for writers working for independent producers at $250 a week, which was made retroactive to work starting in April 1951.22 The board also set prices for first use, exclusive use, and reuse (via kinescope recordings) of live television stories.23 Signatories to the Wage Stabilization Board had exclusive use of content for up to sixteen years, as long as they used it originally and continued to reuse it. Writers would also get paid if a character they created for one series became a central character in another series. Mary McCall Jr., president of the SWG, declared to the membership in a memo, “We are determined that writers in this new medium shall retain the creators’ rights in the work of their brains and shall continue to profit from the continuing use of those works in all media forever.”24
It is difficult to compare salaries for film and television writers at the time, since a television script may be two to four times shorter than a film script. But to get some sense of the numbers, pay for live television writing was noted as approximately one-sixth of theatrical scale, with minimum compensation for a television script set at $500, and minimum for a motion picture at $3,000. Two rewrites of any script were expected as gratis unless a writer had been contractually guaranteed a better deal.25 The Independent Motion Picture Producers Association had flat fees for film writers: $2,000 (up from $1,500) for pictures budgeted under $100,000, and $3,000 (up from $2,250) for pictures over $100,000.26 Producers paid writers of telefilms (filmed television series) between $650 and $750, but writers complained that they were often spending up to three weeks in script conferences and hammering out rewrites without any additional payment. In comparison, top radio writers at the time, who often worked freelance, were paid between $400 and $450 per radio script.27
The SWG saw television’s potential for profit, but many members were more focused on the medium’s impact on film writers, the film industry, and writers’ profits. Karl Tunberg, who adapted Ben-Hur and who was president of the WGAw from 1950 to 1951, remembered that a number of elite film writers wished to reject any sort of professional alliance with their small-screen brethren. He and his fellow film writers suggested a calculated compromise: “We felt we had to adopt this monster; otherwise it would come in and murder us. . . . [Although it] would not raise the standards of the craft, nor our intelligence, nor education; we needed them for two reasons: one, because we’ve got to have access into their business and two, each one of them is a potential strikebreaker.”28
The Battle for Jurisdiction
Television was viewed by many screenwriters, playwrights, and radio writers as an inviting and lucrative new space for their creative labor. The popular genres and commercial structure used in early television derived almost wholesale from the radio program model. The live audiences reminded playwrights of the stage. The combination of sound with illuminated images on a screen made television an obvious counterpart to film. Furthermore, television was desperate for stories—and writers. Historian William Boddy quotes the manager of NBC’s script department in 1948: “Television’s primary need is for material, and the one who provides that material in a suitable form may be said to be one of the most important, if not the most important, person in the television picture—the writer.”29
Writers who worked in live television during its first decade speak of accidents, the brutality of the work schedule, the slapdash style of writi
ng in groups, and the pleasures of crafting material to be performed in front of a live audience. Robert Schiller, writer on I Love Lucy, All in the Family, and Maude, embraced the actors’ occasional slips and falls: “It was immediate. No turning back. I liked that. Thrilling.”30 For Leonard Stern, who wrote on The Honeymooners and Get Smart, “Live television was exhilarating. There’s nothing comparable. The Gleason Show was opening night every week and 3,500 people [were] in the audience. So you have got to realize, when you got a laugh, you got a laugh. And all of us there knew each other. There were only about twenty comedy writers. And if we didn’t personally know each other, we certainly knew of each other.”31 Writers were feeding on the energy, but they were also living an untenable lifestyle. Norman Lear, who worked on The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Martha Raye Show during those early years, remembered the impossible pace: “We were all last-minute writers. . . . [We wrote] a book musical every two weeks, and I’d work until two o’clock in the morning, sleep for three hours, get up at five, be at the mimeograph—a word you may not know—at seven, page by page coming off the machine, for rehearsal that started at ten, and I was directing. So there was a pharmacy . . . where we used to get our Seconal to sleep and our Dexedrine to stay awake. No prescription or anything. Every writer I knew was taking something to help sleep, something to wake up.”32 Though many memoirs celebrate the storied writers’ room on Your Show of Shows, Carl Reiner, who acted on the series and later wrote sketches, disputed the term room. He remembered a stairwell: “The writers’ room in the old days was Max Liebman’s office. He used to leave and we used to hang around. Until [the writers] got their own room, they used to go into the landing between the stories. Or into the toilet.”33 This was a medium in its infancy and many writers fell in love with the speed of the production schedule, the exponentially growing audiences, and the inventiveness and adventures of creating a new form of entertainment.