The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

by Miranda J. Banks

  Much of the tension within the television membership of the Guild was between hyphenates and freelancers. In 1967, Hal Kanter was irritated by the assumption some writers made about the motivations of hyphenates: “It’s also a myth that when a writer becomes a hyphenate, he becomes the enemy . . . no longer a fellow writer. Almost every man who gets up to scream about the injustices being done to him as a freelancer would grab at the chance to be a hyphenate—a story editor, producer, whatever would be offered to him. Does this disagreement then boil down to envy? That’s hardly a sound basis for good judgment.”36 Some freelancers, many of whom were hired by hyphenates, found it disquieting that their supervisor at work could also be on the board of directors for their rank-and-file union, especially during negotiations. Carey Wilber, a writer on Rawhide and Star Trek, expressed his outrage at the idea that a union would allow someone in management to decide critical Guild matters. “Listen, for Christ’s sake, old man Hearst had cards in half a dozen different types of newspapers unions. He had a card in the typographical union, but they sure as hell weren’t asking him to sit around in a decision-making capacity.”37 Writers who were particularly incensed about hyphenates believed that there should be no place for them in the setting of Guild policy. As Ben Roberts, writer on Mannix and creator of Charlie’s Angels, put it, “There is a strike and push comes to shove, the writers are not going to back you simply because they consider you the enemy. Most writers who’ve worked for us—we consider them our friends. . . . But when it comes to their livelihood, to their families and themselves, I think it becomes a battleground.”38

  Problems came to a head for hyphenates and their relationship with the WGA in early 1973. At stake during negotiations that year were improved health and welfare benefits, salary increases for television writers, and a share in supplemental markets and scales increases for income from these markets (including pay TV and newly introduced videocassettes).39 As the Guild teetered on the precipice of a strike, the weight of hyphenates on both the labor and the management sides became a crucial factor in seeking a solution to the labor dispute. In anticipation of a strike, the WGA distributed rules to its entire membership, including members who were currently working on series as writer-producers. Among the key provisions was a broad prohibition against any member crossing a WGA picket line, even to perform producing or directing work. In addition, writers could not resign from the Guild during a strike to continue their supervisory roles. Sy Salkowitz, a longtime freelancer on such series as Naked City and Ironside, remembered, “That night . . . was the first dawning on the hyphenate that he was no longer safe. That he would have to stay out of work. They were aghast. There was an outcry of rage and all kinds of things. However, we held firm.”40 As in the 1960 strike, the studios expected their writer-producers, writer-directors, and writer-story editors to continue their duties on the management side during the walkout. The WGA sent letters to hyphenates who continued to work, threatening them with penalties. The Guild issued disciplinary sanctions for approximately thirty hyphenates and stripped nine additional hyphenates of their union membership, including David Victor, creator of Marcus Welby, M.D., and Jack Webb. The strike lasted sixteen weeks (from 6 March to 24 June), but the feud ignited between the Guild and hyphenate members would blaze for another five years.

  Hyphenates were alternately bewildered and outraged by their censure. Virtually all of them considered themselves writers first and foremost; the daily experience of working was not that of wearing two entirely different hats, but rather of one role providing a seamless transition to performing the second role better than anyone else could. Sherwood Schwartz said about being a hyphenate, “I don’t believe they’re separate. I think that writing and producing—if the same man is involved with both—are a unit. It’s not two separate functions [like] . . . a producer with credits. I have been a producer since 1963. I have rewritten every script because you have to.”41

  One group of hyphenates, outraged that their peers had been fined and expelled from the WGA for working as producers during the 1973 strike, created a new organization. It was first called the Hyphenate Committee and then became the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors. Leonard Stern, a founding member of the hybrid organization, believed that its role was to protect hyphenates from being exploited or betrayed by any one union.42 Although the organization never had much legal power, over the years it developed into a lobbying group, becoming the “moral conscience” of the industry and tackling causes such as the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, ageism, violence on television, and media consolidation.43 There was also some talk at the time that hyphenates might leave the WGA and join the Producers Guild of America (PGA), which had united the Screen Producers Guild and the Television Producers Guild in 1962.44 Ultimately, the WGA was able to hold all of its writers together. As the Guild leadership now understood, hyphenates were some of the most successful working writers within the union and brought the most money into Guild coffers. The WGA could not afford, politically or financially, to cut them off.

  Eventually, by action of the membership, the Guild rescinded its penalties against the hyphenates, but by then the hyphenates—with the backing of the studios and later the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—had decided to sue the Guild. ABC Television, the NLRB, and the AMPTP argued in their filing that the WGA West had violated the National Labor Relations Act during the strike by barring hyphenates from entering their workplace to perform non-writing tasks. The Guild won the case in the US Court of Appeals in 1977, but the matter was ultimately appealed to the US Supreme Court. Oral arguments took place in 1978, and in June of that year Justice Byron White delivered the Court’s five-to-four decision in favor of the hyphenates, the studios, and the NLRB.45 The ruling centered not on the premise that hyphenates should be able to work in their capacity as producers, but on a technicality. The majority held that the WGA had violated Section 8(b)(1)(B) of the National Labor Relations Act, which states that “it shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization . . . to restrain or coerce . . . an employer in the selection of his representatives for the purposes of collective bargaining or the adjustment of grievances.” By barring hyphenates from the workplace, the Guild had denied their employers of their right to select representatives and assess employee grievances. The majority noted that “hyphenates who worked were . . . faced not only with threats but also with the actuality of charges, trial, and severe discipline simply because they were working at their normal jobs. And if this were not enough, they were threatened with a union blacklist that might drive them from the industry.”46 The Court’s ruling did not clarify the role of the hyphenate. Justice John Paul Stevens expressed serious concern in his dissent. “In reversing the judgment of the Court of Appeals, this Court today forbids a union from disciplining a supervisor-member who crosses its picket line—who clearly gives ‘aid and comfort to the enemy’ during a strike . . .—solely because that action may have the incidental effect of depriving the employer of the hypothetical grievance-adjustment services of that particular supervisor for the duration of the strike. . . . In short, the Court’s decision prevents a union with supervisory members from effectively calling and enforcing a strike.”47

  The situation for hyphenates had been resolved at the highest legal level, but they still needed to define their own principles on a practical level. Sam Rolfe cited the absurdity of these dual roles during a walkout: “We cannot be management when there’s no strike . . . and Guild when there is a strike!”48 Stirling Silliphant asked the Guild leadership if he could picket in front of another studio instead of his own in the event of a strike. Because, he laughed, “it looks foolish for me to be picketing my own show.”49 Hyphenates came to accept that they would always be in a difficult spot during negotiations, but nearly all of them continued to identify themselves as writers. Patricia Falken Smith, a writer on Guiding Light, Days of Our Lives, and General Hospital, was certain where a writer-producer’s loyalties must s
tand. “The enemy is clearly defined. We are our own enemy. . . . Now we’re negotiating with ourselves. Well, that’s typical of writers. . . . Basically when the chips are down a writer is a writer is a writer. Any writer who crosses a Guild picket line is not a real writer because no real writer would.”50 And yet, according rules established by the WGA following the Supreme Court decision, hyphenates could not be asked to honor the picket lines as producers. This no-strike rule for hyphenates continued to confound many writers who felt that they were doing a disservice to their union by working. As Saul Turteltaub explained, “I didn’t think was fair or right to the writers, to my writer part of my being, because I was now still going into work and making a living, and the writers were not.”51 Through the strikes of the 1980s, hyphenates continued to strike as writers and simultaneously to work as producers. It was only with the mobilization of showrunners during negotiations in 2007 and the ensuing strike of 2007–2008 that the WGA again found a way to leverage the power of the hyphenate.

  Independents and Independence

  Even as their Guild endured tortured battles over the possessory credit and the role of the hyphenate, writers during this era were creating some of the most innovative and exciting films and television. The productions of the 1970s pushed emotional boundaries, delving deep into grittier, more honest characters. Theatergoers in the 1980s saw the return of the blockbuster film, and primetime television audiences were finding edgier ensemble dramas and independently produced comedy series.

  The 1970s were a period of extraordinary freedom for film writers, producers, and directors. Marc Norman describes how “[v]eteran screenwriters look back on the early 1970s as the Happy Time. Almost anybody with a good idea could land a development deal, almost any screenwriter who’d written a few profit-turners stood a good chance to direct.”52 Patrick McGilligan discusses how writers were able to work inside the parameters of a studio with “hitherto unheard-of independence.”53 And those who worked outside the studio system could do so without harming their careers in Hollywood. Many of these writers came from film school backgrounds; others rose up through the Hollywood ranks or came from the world of literature. Novelist William Goldman learned screenwriting in the 1960s from watching films. He found the young writers of the film school generation perplexing. “When I started, there weren’t film schools. . . . I never saw a screenplay until I was 33 years old . . . [when] I first heard about film schools I thought it was the stupidest fucking idea I’d ever heard of. . . . Now movies are important, which they never were when I was a kid.” In years to come, Goldman’s memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade, would be required reading in film schools.54

  As discussed earlier in this chapter, this new independence allowed writers to get into directing as well. But some writers, like Paul Schrader, realized that directing was not at all what they had imagined. “Being a director is not nearly as rewarding as I thought it would be. Far more tedious. You never get a sense of artistic completion as a director. . . . As a writer you really get a sense of the whole. That is very, very difficult to do as a director, because you are just dealing with pieces, repeated over and over again.”55

  With the further conglomeration of the media industries and the rise of the blockbuster and high-concept films in the 1970s and 1980s, the industry in Hollywood saw a dramatic structural shift. Geoff King argues that these shifts in the workplace brought new challenges and uncertainties for writers: “The freedoms of the Renaissance period were given to filmmakers by the big studios. They could also be taken away. . . . Freedom was a product of uncertainty and transition. It did not last.”56 The radical deregulation of the media industries in the 1980s and 1990s, which remains in effect to the present day, led to a corporatization of the culture of media production at the top. In an interview, Marc Norman tracked the radical shifts in executive personnel and his own sense of alienation from industry insiders. “The 1970s wave was creative people coming out of film school. The 1980s and 1990s wave was business people coming out of business school who saw in the movie business a chance to make a lot of money. . . . It had gone from this domestic, silly-ass little business to this wide kind of megalith. . . . When I started out . . . not only had nobody been to business school, nobody had been to film school. A lot of them had not been to school. What they knew was making movies and exhibition and what the public wanted.”57 This takeover of the executive suite by a business mentality heralded a radical transition: beginning with films such as Star Wars and Jaws, Hollywood’s biggest concern would be to find the next screenplay that would attract mass audiences. The independent filmmakers and small studios still had a critical place in American storytelling, but increasingly into the 1980s, the major studios began to dominate. The rise of Miramax from a small independent producer and distribution company to a studio subsidiary in the 1990s was just one example of how the “independent film” was absorbed into the mainstream.58

  Although American television in the 1970s did not have the visual aesthetics or the energy of contemporary American cinema, it was groundbreaking in its own way, most notably in its content. The miniseries and the movie of the week were places where many screenwriters found a home in the world of television writing. In 1979, Stanley Rubin explained: “[There used to be] very rigid lines between the television writer and the screenwriter, between the television producer and the screen producer, or the screen writer-producer and the television writer-producer. . . . That rigid line is being erased more every single year starting in the last five years or so. That change has been particularly speeded up by the long form in television. Not only the two-hour movie but, more importantly, the four-hour movie for television. . . . The division is disappearing completely.”59 Some of the most forward-thinking programming in this era came from miniseries and made-for-television movies. If this was the second Golden Age of Television, then the movie of the week was the equivalent of the previous Golden Age’s anthology show.

  Fay Kanin, who had been a successful screenwriter with her husband, Michael Kanin, talked about her experience with Tell Me Where It Hurts, a 1974 made-for-television film she wrote that starred Maureen Stapleton. Until then, she had watched her films only in movie theaters.

  I was sitting in my living room and I didn’t hear anybody laugh, I didn’t hear anybody cry, I didn’t hear anybody. And I said to Michael, “I hate this medium. I want to be in a theater with an audience. This is for the birds.” And then the next day I went out . . . to the drugstore, I went to the bank—everywhere I went I heard the women talking about this movie. . . . And I suddenly understood the impact of television. Rather in some movie houses where even if 500 people saw it—that there were going to be hundreds of thousands of people who had seen this. It had a very good rating and just blew my mind. This was a terrific opportunity. . . . I found my medium now—this is it.60

  Kanin realized that the power of television was in its ability to tell a small story well. The reach of television was thrilling for writers interested in being a part of a conversation with their audiences on cultural and social issues. Kanin went on to win two Emmys for her work in television.

  In these television films, writers were able to tackle controversial issues, including racial prejudice (William Link and Richard Levinson with My Sweet Charlie, 1970), cancer (William Blinn with Brian’s Song, 1971), homosexuality (Link and Levinson with That Certain Summer, 1972), child abuse (Gerald DiPego with Born Innocent, 1974), nuclear war (Edward Hume with The Day After, 1983), and domestic violence (Rose Leiman Goldemberg with The Burning Bed, 1984). Levinson and Link detailed their frustrations at ABC with the making of That Certain Summer, and how the network pushed back out of concern for presenting both sides of the issue. “We countered that the script was neither pro- nor anti-gay and we suggested that a much larger issue was involved: the question of the writer’s rights to use the public air for the expression of opinions, popular or otherwise. Was controversy to be denied anyone who wrote for television because of equal ti
me considerations? If a writer dared to take a position, must the countervailing view always be incorporated in the script? What if ‘balance’ was in conflict with good drama?” Levinson and Link argue that political and social ideas could be challenged and debated within dramatic entertainment.

  The most noteworthy entry in the genre by far was Roots. Fred Silverman, who was ABC’s programming chief at the time, knew that he had something extraordinary: “Every other week, Brandon Stoddard, who ran the movie operation . . . would come in and say, we need another hour. . . . Next thing you know, we have twelve hours of this thing. But it was good. It was really good. We had great writers on it—Bill Blinn and Ernie Kinoy. . . . Sixty percent of the population of the US watched that show. By the time we got to the fourth or fifth night, people were not going out. They were not going to the movies. They were mesmerized.”61 By the end of the week of its first airing in January 1977, approximately eighty million people were tuning in; the final episode had an astonishing Nielsen rating of 51.1 and a 71 share (that is, more than half the households in the United States were watching the series, and 71 percent of all people watching television were tuned into that series during its time slot). In all, 85 percent of American homes with televisions tuned in to least some part of the series.62 When asked how he was able to write about a black family through the generations, William Blinn, a white man from Toledo, Ohio, explained that he not only had access to Alex Haley (who wrote the book the series was based on), but he also related to the story’s family dynamics. “I was writing about Kunta Kinte, I’m writing about a farm kid in a community where the father is the absolute ruler of the roost, outwardly, but everybody knows that momma holds the power. And I do know that world. I know what it’s like to say to a kid in stern tones, ‘You do it and do it right now.’”63 The series was a powerful experience for the American people in portraying slavery and African American heritage and generational history, but it also stood out for its lack of representation of minority voices behind the screen.