The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  As 1959 ended and negotiations came to a standstill, film writers realized they would have to go back on strike. David Harmon remembered, “We were not prepared for a strike. We were very ill prepared. We didn’t expect it. We figured a compromise would come around. That we would give and they would give. They were like a stone wall.”98

  Writers’ income from film and television totaled approximately $30 million in 1959.99 In a strange turn of events, the WGA realized that it could help fund the film writers’ strike against the major studios through a 2 percent assessment on wages from those members still actively working, including members writing for television who were being paid by the same studios that some film writers were striking against. At the time, twenty-seven of the ninety-eight primetime half-hour series were being produced by the majors.100 And finally, the WGA membership voted to put $47,000 from the Writers Guild Foundation holdings into the WGA’s strike fund.

  It wasn’t long before television writers were ready to strike as well. They wanted extended residuals for reruns and foreign distribution of programs and a ban on speculative writing.101 The WGA’s screen board of directors and television board of directors realized that if they went out on strike together and if they were to respect each other’s picket lines, they might find strength in their numbers and a unity in unionism.102

  On January 16, 1960, 80–90 screenwriters who were working on assignment as well as 425–500 working telefilm writers walked out on their television producers.103 Two days later the studios laid off a hundred secretaries who had been assigned to writers.104 The studios seemed to be warning the writers that they had no intention of backing down, or perhaps they hoped the tactic would force the work stoppage to end quickly. And yet that week the WGA and the SAG (whose contract with the major studios would expire at the end of the month) finally met not with the studios’ lawyers, but with their presidents, including Spyros Skouras (Twentieth Century–Fox), Barney Balaban (Paramount), Joseph R. Vogel (MGM/Loews), Jack Warner (Warner Bros.), Abe Schneider (Columbia), and Steve Broidy (Allied Artists/Monogram Pictures).105 After negotiations over live television broke down in February, approximately 250 additional writers who worked for live series at NBC, CBS, and ABC joined the telefilm writers in their strike.106

  Early in the strike the Guild drafted written warnings to all television writer-producers, story editors, and writer-directors to clarify what work they were and were not permitted to continue during the strike.107 None of these hyphenates were allowed to write, provide ideas for lines, or discuss plotting. A special ground rules committee was established to explain to writer-producers the divide between their writing roles and the other aspects of their work, and every hyphenate was asked to come to Guild headquarters personally to learn the ground rules. Hyphenates were “expected to confine themselves to such non-writing production activities as casting supervision, budget, dailies, editorial, sets, makeup, costumes, etc. They may cut scripts for reasons of budget. They may change a line on set for purposes of bridging. But any basic writing services such as changes in character, plot, motivation [were not allowed. . . . A hyphenate] may diagnose script problems and discuss the same with a studio chief, but he may not prescribe a remedy.”108 This specification of the work of the producer and the writer was a novel idea. Producers could provide language to bridge scenes or actions, and they could cut scripts; writers could not transform, touch up, doctor, rewrite, or do anything that might be considered performing creative labor. What had become a powerful new job in the television profession—writing and producing together—was now being ripped apart for the sake of strike rules.

  For individuals, being a part of the managerial ranks and an employee was a particularly difficult position during a work stoppage. Stephen Lord, who was a writer and associate producer on Johnny Ringo at the time of the strike, showed his allegiance to writing—and claimed credit for the first use of the term “hyphenate.” “I said ‘I may be a producer but I’m a writer first and there’s a hyphen between those two words.’ I said, ‘If you noticed I put the writer before I put the hyphen and the producer was last.’ I said, ‘If you want to call me anything call me a hyphenate.’ And there, I believe, following that meeting there was published a letter in which the word hyphenate was used for the first time in an official missive from this Guild committee.”109 There was much anxiety about whether hyphenates would go out on strike, or, if they did not, whether they would sabotage the strike by writing during the walkout. But most of the hyphenates were committed to the strike, even though many of them, like Rod Serling with The Twilight Zone, were paid well enough not to need any of the contractual changes that writers were fighting for.110 But as the strike went on month after month, some striking freelance writers started to distrust some hyphenates, wondering if they were writing or editing scripts.111

  The studios did come up with ingenious, if devious, methods for getting new material. Perhaps the most audacious case was that of Warner Bros. Producers. Nonwriters—perhaps secretaries or associate producers—took scripts from one series and switched around characters and locales, thereby turning what might have been a detective series into a Western, and then the company filmed an episode.112 The credits would read, “Written by: W. Hermanos”—namely, Warner Brothers. Writing credits for W. Hermanos appeared on episodes of 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Colt .45, and Bourbon Street Beat, among others.

  The SAG had a “no strike” clause in its contract at that time; actors could give as much lip service as they wanted, but they could not go out on a solidarity strike. Rather, SAG continued negotiations for its upcoming contract with the Alliance through the winter. Ultimately, the leadership of SAG settled by conceding revenue on films between 1948 and 1960 in order to assure compensation for films and television series made after 1960. Also as part of the settlement, the Alliance established a pension plan for SAG. The DGA agreed to a similar plan: post-1960 compensation and a pension plan in exchange for any rights to residuals for films before 1960.

  IMAGE 18 Credits sequence for the episode “Sierra” of 77 Sunset Strip that aired during the 1960 WGA strike, which gives the writing credit to W. Hermanos, or Warner Bros.

  Screen grab. 77 Sunset Strip. Warner Brothers, 1960

  After months of striking, the writers were eager to find consensus and get back to work. One of the sticking points was the type of compensation structure the studios would create. Many in the WGA were originally interested in a royalty-based plan, which Lew Wasserman was willing to support. The problem was that the writers would receive zero compensation for the first replay.113 In comparison, the residual plan would allow for pay up front, with gradually diminishing payments for each repeat showing. For a successful film or television series, a royalty plan with continued, steady payment over time would be much more lucrative.

  The concept of a royalty plan spoke to old understandings of what it meant to be a writer versus a studio employee. Royalties elevate the level of a writer’s authorial control, because royalties are structured on a concept of ownership of written material. With a royalty structure, a screenwriter would become much more like a literary author—something that James M. Cain had petitioned the SWG to fight for fifteen years earlier. Frank Moss, who wrote on Combat!, agreed, but “unfortunately Mr. Cain . . . was pretty much booed off the floor for having dared to suggest that writers give up their cushiony salaries at Metro, Universal, and Fox in return for owning their copyrights as members of the Dramatists Guild.”114

  The negotiating committee in 1959 was eager to set up a royalty system, in part because it would ensure that every showing in every country would deliver a payment. Kay Lenard (The Cimarron Kid, Father Knows Best, Combat!) lamented the committee’s focus on the royalty structure at the expense of a system that could provide income from series that were not long-lived: “The negotiating committee was willing to give up a great deal for the illusion of being paid from every country where American television was shown. And in the three years
between 1960 and 1963 we found out that what the producers had given us was a big goose egg.”115 Royalties were ultimately written into the contract in 1960, but by 1966, frustrated writers turned to a residual system of compensation.

  As the strike wore on, writers and management realized that they would have to relent on some key issues in order to reach consensus. Screenwriters conceded compensation for their pre-1960 films in order to receive a lump sum to establish a pension plan and a health plan. This sacrifice by older writers to give up their chance at getting royalties in order to guarantee the rights of current writers was an extraordinary act for the greater good of the Guild membership. William Ludwig explained what this provision meant for writers like him. “In 1960, I had thirty-eight feature credits. We threw all of our pictures into the pot in order to get the $600,000 to start the pension plan and that was the grandfather clause. We begged—I remember Jim Webb [writer of Cape Fear and How the West Was Won] begged the membership to make it a contributory plan because it would have almost doubled their potential pensions and the membership . . . said, ‘To hell with it. Why should we put in any of our money? Let the goddamn producers put it in,’ and they voted down the contributory plan.”116 John Bright expressed his frustration with the sacrifice: “I have no participation in residuals because all of my pictures were pre-1948 and I feel, and I still feel very strongly, that that contract should have begun—should have been rolled back to the beginning of talking pictures because there isn’t a night goes by that one of my pictures is not shown on television and I get nothing.”117 While writers still working would now get percentages of profits, all that former writers could expect was a guaranteed pension and health plan based on their credits and past work in the industry.

  Another impasse concerned the role of pay TV. Charles Boren, vice president of the Alliance of Motion Picture Producers, argued that the WGA should accept the same deal agreed to by the SAG, that theatrical exhibition would include any form of distribution on the as yet barely developed model of pay TV. But WGA members held their ground: “The writers’ position is that pay-TV may be the biggest thing to hit the industry in years, with single movies bringing in fantastic revenue.”118

  After five months of wrangling and work stoppages, the strike ended. Film writers established a three-and-a-half-year contract, and television writers signed a six-year contract. The independent production houses and producers that had made deals beforehand and were able to continue employing writers during the strike, now had the opportunity to sign on to the same deal the major studio signatories had brokered. Sadly for the writers, the agreement with the majors was worse financially for them.

  Film writers saw an increase in salaries through the minimum basic agreement (MBA); 2 percent of proceeds from sales of films to television within the next six years would go to writers; and the signatories set up pension and welfare plans, with producers contributing the equivalent of 5 percent of writers’ salaries (up to $100,000) per picture. Producers also agreed to put a one-time sum of $600,000 into the pension and welfare fund in lieu of residuals for pre-1960 films.119 Foreign box office royalties were established for some countries, including France and Spain, where ticket sales were tracked.120 The agreement also put in place a system of film credits. The writing credit would have its own card unless a film required additional credit for the source material from which the screenplay was adapted. The writing card would immediately precede the cards of the director and producer; also, a writer’s name had to appear in a trailer if the director’s and producer’s names appeared in it. Finally, the writer owned publication rights three years after the date of contract or six years after general release of the film.121 Pay TV was left on the table to be picked up again at a later date.

  The terms of the television writers’ new contract included an increase in salary scales, the signatory’s contribution equivalent to 5 percent of a writer’s salary toward health and welfare, and a royalty formula for domestic and foreign reruns. The royalty for television was no less than 4 percent of gross, but initial sales of a series in the United States and Canada were excluded.122 The royalty plan was set to last through 1965, and the writers subsequently negotiated for a residual structure thereafter.123

  There were differences between the structures and controls set in place in this contract for television writers in the East and television writers in the West, in part because of the differences between live and filmed television. The WGA East retained copyright of live series, such as Studio One and Playhouse 90. In effect, it leased performance rights to the production company and to the network. In contrast, the WGA West gave up copyright of telefilms, just as film writers had done before them. Frank Pierson, who was WGAw president from 1981 to 1983 and 1993 to 1995, pointed to the 1960 strike as a key moment in defining the relationship between the East and the West branches of the Guild: “Sometimes the members of our board of directors in the West will ask me, ‘I don’t understand, the East are so impossible. Why are they so damn hard to deal with?’ And I have to tell them, ‘Because we gave away something which was absolutely, terribly important.’”124 Writers working in the tradition of New York theater expected copyright control; writers in Los Angeles had long ago given up hope of owning the copyright for screenplays. But as live television became scarce in primetime and many television writers moved west, the easterners realized they could not bring their copyright deal with them into the telefilm medium.

  Although neither film nor television writers achieved all that they had hoped for, negotiations had finally established a system of compensation that has since ensured writers will see a profit from the replaying of films and television series, along with guaranteed pension and health benefits. And for all screenwriters, having one’s name in the credits ensured not just recognition but also an enduring mode of financial compensation. The card at the beginning or end of a production’s credits carried extra weight: writers were now guaranteed a stake in future profits. It was around this same time that Otto Preminger announced that Dalton Trumbo had written the script for his new film Exodus. That one of the Hollywood Ten was finally using his own name again and would not only be paid for writing the film but also, according to the new MBA, collect royalties on the film was an extraordinary landmark that demonstrated how many battles the writers had won in the past thirteen years.

  Looking Forward into the Unknown

  Though at its start the WGA existed as an uncomfortable marriage of convenience between film and television writers, by the 1960s its members had realized that this alliance could serve as a powerful labor force and as a strong voice for creative workers within the American media industries. The screenwriters had been eager to gain jurisdiction over the new medium, though reluctant to embrace its practitioners. Herb Meadow, creator of the series Have Gun—Will Travel, pointed out that before the SWG merged to become the WGA, television was a lost opportunity: “The [SWG] had no teeth. It couldn’t function in television. . . . I don’t mean the television industry but the television writers were the ones who gave it to us. There were no fat cats. There were no elitists among them. They were working stiffs and they knew they had to go out and march.”125

  The merger signaled new challenges in understanding the work of the writer and highlighted critical differences between film and television in terms of prestige and authorial power for individual writers. While the jurisdictional battles had been hard fought, these writers’ choice to join ranks in 1954 saved the Guild during troubled times and redefined the power and potential of entertainment writers and of their union. Nate Monaster, who speculated in the early 1950s that it might be thirty years before a television writer became a president of the Guild, became the first for the WGA West in 1963, and Ernest Kinoy was the first for the WGA East in 1967.126 By the mid- to late 1960s, screenwriters could see change coming. Edmund North said in 1978 that a “preponderance of power both numerical and otherwise in the Guild has shifted towards television now—the screenwriter
being in the minority as he was not originally.”127 When asked about how the Guild had changed over time, Michael Kanin, who had introduced television to the SWG and had been charged to investigate it as a committee of one, said, “The most distinct change has been the fact that it has become now a Guild of television writers, with the screenwriters in a minority.”128

  A number of critical issues for writers and the Guild emerged during the 1960s: a call for fair and equal treatment of women writers, the ongoing struggle to define the labor status of the writer-producer hyphenate, the shift from studios owned by individuals to studios run by corporations or conglomerates, and the evolution of new genres in film and television. Women had always been in the Guild, but the situation for female writers had in many ways regressed since the 1920s. Regarding the treatment of women like her during the 1960s, Jay Presson Allen, who scripted Marnie and Cabaret, remembered: “One, the writer is a lowly thing, and two, a woman writer is a doubly lowly thing, perceived as being so unthreatening that they can say anything in front of you.”129 Starting in the 1970s, a group of concerned writers—women and men—asked the Guild to compile research that would help improve the situation for women within the profession.